AI to influence up to 80% of large Indian brands' digital ad spend by FY27

August 21, 2026 · storyboard18.com

Up to 80% of large Indian advertisers' digital media spend could carry a meaningful AI or algorithmic optimisation layer by FY27, according to Akshay Mathur, founder and CEO of Unpromptd, who puts the figure at 70-80%. Rajiv Dingra, founder and CEO of ReBid, estimates a comparable 65-75% by the same year. Automated bidding, audience selection, creative optimisation and budget allocation are becoming embedded into mainstream media buying, with platforms increasingly deciding bids, audiences, placements, creative combinations and campaign-level allocation as an invisible layer inside existing tools. Dingra says 40-50% of digital ad expenditure is already targeted, bid, personalised or optimised using AI today, up from 20-30% some 12-18 months ago, even as direct spend on standalone AI tools and platforms sits at just 10-15% of a large advertiser's digital budget.

Campaign execution work built around manually setting bids, audiences and budgets loses economic value as algorithms take over those decisions, Dingra says, while agency fees can hold steady when revenue shifts toward data, technology, measurement, experimentation, creative intelligence and AI orchestration. Mathur expects agencies built mainly around platform operation to face more pressure, while agencies offering deeper business understanding, data strategy, platform architecture and measurement become more valuable. Planners move from manually changing bids, audiences and budgets toward defining objectives, customer strategy and measurement frameworks. Only 25-35% of current AI investment is genuinely incremental, Dingra estimates, so the money funding this shift for many advertisers already sits inside existing budgets for manual campaign operations, agency execution fees, conventional production, standalone martech tools and repetitive analytics.