Industry experts note that Indian advertisers are steadily leaning toward hybrid programmatic models, combining in-house ownership of strategy and data with agency-driven execution
By the close of 2025, India’s digital advertising market is projected to fall within the Rs 49,000–59,200 crore range, expanding at a strong 20–21% year-on-year pace.
Programmatic advertising has scaled quickly within this environment, delivering the majority of digital impressions (some estimates suggest as much as 90% or more), though it represents a smaller share of total value.
Industry projections place programmatic’s share of digital ad expenditure at around 42–44%, equating to roughly Rs 20,000–26,000 crore annually. While this trails more mature global markets where programmatic dominates digital buying in value terms, it highlights the format’s increasing operational importance in India, especially across display and video-focused formats.
Within this ecosystem, adoption varies significantly by format and advertiser category. Video remains the leading programmatic channel, powered by platforms such as YouTube and OTT services. Connected TV (CTV), despite rapid expansion, still accounts for a relatively modest slice of the overall market. Total CTV ad spending in India is estimated at Rs 2,300–2,500 crore by the end of 2025, with only a share of this traded programmatically.
For large advertisers, the shift is becoming more about governance than capability. Rajiv Dubey, Head of Media at Dabur India, notes “a clear movement away from fully outsourced programmatic structures toward more hybrid operating models,” with brands bringing “strategic oversight, data ownership, and governance in-house, while continuing to collaborate with agencies for scale and specialist execution.” According to Dubey, the motivations are familiar: “the increasing demand for transparency and accountability in media investments,” the growing relevance of first-party data, and the maturity of programmatic platforms that enable internal teams to make “quicker, more informed, and business-aligned decisions.”
In this framework, he adds, brands must control “strategy, audience design, measurement systems, and business KPIs,” while agencies deliver “operational excellence, innovation, and the ability to manage scale.”
Crucially, this evolution does not signal a loss of trust in agencies. Instead, it reflects a desire to shorten the gap between decision-making and accountability. As programmatic budgets expand and finance teams seek deeper clarity, advertisers are less comfortable delegating responsibility alongside execution. Still, fully in-housed programmatic models remain uncommon, limited to under 10% of large advertisers, mainly in ecommerce, fintech, and gaming. Most large Indian brands now follow hybrid structures, keeping strategy, data, and measurement in-house while relying on agencies for execution. This marks a cautious but deliberate move toward tighter oversight rather than wholesale insourcing.
This imbalance—where programmatic is pervasive, yet confidence trails—continues to prompt advertisers to reconsider how much control they should outsource.
Programmatic has become too integral to digital delivery to be treated as a black box, yet it remains too intricate, fragmented, and talent-heavy to fully internalise.
The outcome is a rising preference for hybrid operating structures that redefine the boundary between strategy and execution. Agency leaders caution against viewing this as a sweeping in-housing wave. Russhabh R Thakkar, Founder and CEO at Frodoh, says he does not see the current phase as a broad retreat from outsourcing. “Agencies remain highly specialised partners, particularly with dedicated programmatic trading teams operating at scale,” he explains.
True in-housing, Thakkar observes, is confined to “a small group of very large, performance-driven advertisers,” and even there it is “rarely comprehensive.” What brands actually seek is “greater influence over decisions rather than hands-on execution,” with visibility into how performance is achieved and how data connects to business results, while buying and optimisation stay with specialist teams.
That distinction—control versus execution—lies at the core of the hybrid approach. Although programmatic platforms have grown more automated, effective trading still demands constant optimisation, platform fluency, and scale that is hard to replicate internally without major investment.
Regulatory developments and evolving tools have further accelerated this rethink. Vedavyas Badri, VP of Programmatic at LS Digital, says brands are shifting away from outsourced arrangements “where they lack visibility into partner processes” toward hybrid models that offer stronger control over data and decision-making.
This change, he explains, is driven by “the heightened need for transparency and data control among brands due to regulatory frameworks such as the DPDP Act,” alongside concerns about sharing sensitive customer and business information externally.
At the same time, the emergence of white-label DSPs and AI-powered tools has made it easier for brands to engage more directly in programmatic governance, even if execution remains complex. In Badri’s view, “ownership of data and strategy should firmly rest with the brand, while agencies excel in execution and innovation.” Agencies, he adds, bring “platform expertise,” cross-industry knowledge, and the “advantage of scale” in managing multiple DSPs, publisher relationships, and emerging formats—capabilities individual brand teams often struggle to match.
From an outcomes perspective, this division of responsibilities is becoming clearer, albeit at a steadier pace than some programmatic players might expect.
Tejas Maha, Associate Director – Media at White Rivers Media, says brands are bringing strategy, data infrastructure, and performance measurement in-house to ensure media spending aligns with revenue goals rather than “surface-level metrics like impressions.”
Control over first-party data, he notes, has become “an essential risk-mitigation step,” especially as privacy standards tighten. Agencies, meanwhile, continue to add value through “supply-side optimisation, fraud prevention, and DSP negotiations,” leveraging scale and multi-client buying power that standalone brands lack.
Collectively, these viewpoints suggest Indian advertisers are not abandoning outsourcing but redefining it. Hybrid programmatic models are emerging as a way to balance oversight with complexity, enabling brands to stay closer to data, measurement, and intent without assuming the entire operational burden of execution.
In a market where programmatic is indispensable but not yet fully trusted, reshaping the outsourcing model may be less of a disruption and more of a necessary recalibration.
