WPP Bets Big on AI as India's Ad Market Surges Past Global Peers

WPP pivots to AI as India's ad market outruns global growth

Advertising is getting redefined in real time. WPP Media's latest outlook doesn't just forecast spend; it reframes the ecosystem around AI, data, and new channel logic.

More than 57% of global advertising was driven by content last year, and over 80% of all categories originated from digital channels, including the digital extensions of television, print, and audio. That's not a trend. That's a reset.

What changed: a new map of media

WPP Media reclassified channels to reflect how buyers actually plan:

• Digital: now includes digital extensions of traditional media-streaming TV apps, audio platforms, and online news.
• Intelligence: search reframed, acknowledging disruption from AI chatbots and assistants.
• Location: physical formats like billboards and cinema.

Translation for marketers: budget taxonomies, KPIs, and reporting stacks need a tune-up. If your dashboards still treat "search" as a monolith, you're flying with outdated instruments.

AI moves from tool to operating system

Three of the ten trends shaping Indian advertising are AI-led: agentic ecosystems, the evolution of search, and precision audience targeting. The message from WPP leadership is blunt-marketers don't just need to use AI; they need to orchestrate it across insights, creative, activation, and measurement.

Teams are already leaning on AI for market research and end-to-end campaign management. As tasks get more complex, multiple AI agents now collaborate-deep research, media mix suggestions, creative variants, QA, and post-campaign learning-working as an "agentic ecosystem."

The macro picture: growth with new gravity

• Global: Ad revenue grew 8.8% in 2025 to nearly $1.2T (ex-US political) and is projected to rise another 7.1% this year.
• India: Outperformed at 9.2% growth to ₹1.84T, with commerce advertising up 24% (e-commerce apps, financial portals, OTAs). All major channels grew-print up 4.4% and audio up 1.5%-while globally, print fell 5%+ and audio was flat.
• Outlook: India is set to grow 9.7% in 2026, pass ₹2T, and outpace mature markets like the US and UK. Only Brazil is expected to grow faster (14.4%).
• Headroom: Ad spend is ~0.5% of India's GDP, well below the 1-1.5% range in Europe and North America. There's runway.

For those who want the primary source, WPP's This Year, Next Year report details the reclassification and projections. See the report overview.

What this means for marketers

• Restructure your plan around "Intelligence." Treat AI-augmented search as a distinct channel with its own creative, bidding, and measurement logic. Build content assets meant to be parsed and summarized by assistants, not just ranked by blue links.
• Stand up an agentic workflow. Use multi-agent setups for research, creative iteration, media mix modeling, and live optimization. Human roles shift from "doers" to "conductors."
• Exploit India's full-funnel opportunity. With print and audio still growing locally, test hybrid plans: digital extensions for reach and speed, location for memorability, and intelligence for demand capture.
• Double down on first-party data. As WPP leaders noted, organizations with deeper data and faster behavioral adaptation will win. Prioritize consented data, clean rooms, and audience feedback loops.
• Measure for learning velocity. Build closed-loop systems-pre-flight benchmarks, live diagnostics, and post-flight causal reads. Success is the speed at which you can course-correct while campaigns are live.

Inside WPP's AI playbook (signals to watch)

• Orchestration over tooling: Professionals are expected to coordinate AI systems across insight generation, creative development, targeting, and measurement.
• Agentic ecosystems: Multiple specialized agents handle complex tasks (e.g., deep researchers for category dynamics and consumer behavior queries).
• Search → Intelligence: Planning shifts from keyword obsession to answer quality, entity coverage, and structured data that assistants can ingest.
• Market structure: Consolidation and pressure from tech platforms continue, with network agencies repositioning around AI capability and speed.

Action plan: next 90 days

• Audit your channel taxonomy: Re-map budgets to Digital, Intelligence, and Location. Add assistant-exposed surfaces (AI answers, chat results) as line items.
• Deploy a research agent: Spin up an AI "deep researcher" to track competitors, category shifts, and consumer Q&A patterns weekly. Route insights to media and creative.
• Refit creative for assistants: Create structured summaries, FAQs, and schema-rich pages that AI agents can cite. Pair with short-form variations for streaming and audio extensions.
• Rebuild your MMM/MTA loop: Integrate agent-driven scenario testing and live budget reallocation rules. Measure for incremental lift, not vanity CTR.
• First-party data sprint: Grow consented audiences via value exchanges (content, utilities, offers). Set governance and model pipelines now.

Why India is the testbed

India's growth across every major channel-plus an aggressive shift to commerce media-creates a practical sandbox for AI activation. If it drives lift here, it's likely to scale elsewhere.

The constraint is capability, not opportunity. Teams that organize around data, deploy agents, and optimize in real time will set the curve.

Keep building your AI edge

• AI Learning Path for CMOs - strategy, orchestration, governance, and metrics for leaders.
• AI Learning Path for Marketing Managers - hands-on activation, real-time optimization, and audience targeting.

Bottom line

AI is no longer a sidecar. It's the operating system for how budgets are planned, creative is produced, audiences are found, and performance is learned. India's momentum proves the model-and raises the bar.