The Programmatic Pie: Why the next AdTech battle will be over reach, not fees

India's developing digital ad business is witnessing a new debate - better reach vs cheaper impressions.

This debate is crucial as the market for programmatic advertising in India is expected to make up 60-68% of all digital ad spending in 2025, bringing about a fundamental change in the way brands purchase, evaluate, and maximize media.

According to Dentsu's Martech Landscape in India, 2025 research, the nation's digital advertising market is expanding rapidly and is predicted to reach ₹69,856 crore ($8.15 billion) by 2026, growing at a rate of around 19% per year. Programmatic purchasing, which accounted for 42% of digital media spending in 2024, is expected to increase to 44% by 2026, demonstrating its increasing power.

Read e4m-Dentsu report on programmatic numbers 

Yet as programmatic matures, competition is no longer being driven by fees or cost efficiencies, say industry observers. The real battleground now lies in reach, data connectivity, and measurable impact. For marketers, the question has shifted from “How cheaply can I buy impressions?” to “How effectively can I connect with incremental audiences?”

This evolution has been powered by three converging trends: the mainstreaming of Connected TV (CTV), the integration of AI-led optimization and predictive analytics, and the rise of first-party data and identity-based targeting within a privacy-first framework. Transparent, independent Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) are redrawing the competitive landscape as advertisers value authenticity, interoperability, and verifiable outcomes.

With reach, not cost, emerging as the new currency of digital success, India's programmatic maturity is about automation for effectiveness rather than efficiency.

Beyond Cost: The Trust and Transparency Equation

The emphasis is moving from price to principle as India's programmatic advertising market accelerates toward 2025, when programmatic is predicted to make up 60-68% of digital ad investments. Transparency, interoperability, and quantifiable results are the new competitive advantages rather than less expensive media.

Read e4m analysis on festive makeover for programmatic  

Tejinder Gill, MD, The Trade Desk, notes that the real challenge isn’t what marketers pay, but what they get for their money. “Transparency,” he says, “is not a feature anymore; it’s a prerequisite.” In a landscape where some DSPs act as both media sellers and buyers, the lines of accountability blur. Gill asserted that independent, inventory-agnostic platforms will define the next era of programmatic, those that separate media ownership from buying, ensuring decisions are guided by data, performance, and advertiser objectives.

With this change, the AdTech industry in India is moving away from closed ecosystems and toward transparent, data-driven cooperation where each impression can be tracked, validated, and tied to a specific result.

e4m explains why traffic shaping is the new programmatic move

CTV and the Redefinition of Reach

If transparency is the foundation, Connected TV (CTV) is fast becoming a programmatic growth engine. Once a marginal format, it now commands audience attention at scale. According to Affle’s recent festive report, 42% of viewers discover content first on CTV, underscoring how cross-screen behavior is rewriting reach itself.

Nikhil Kumar, Chief Growth Officer, mediasmart, powered by Affle, believes this evolution is forcing advertisers to rethink what reach truly means. “In a multi-device world, reach isn’t about hitting a number, it’s about sustaining recognition across every context a user moves through,” he explains. mediasmart’s AI-led tools like CTVSafe and its patent Maximize User Awareness model are emblematic of this shift, blending identity mapping, inventory validation, and behaviour-based optimization to ensure every impression counts.

Read e4m report on surge in programmtic buying share

Therefore, the next chapter of Programmatic is about verifiable scale, or reach that is not simply substantial but also authentic.

AI as the Connective Tissue of Programmatic

As audience journeys grow more fragmented, AI has emerged as the connective tissue binding media, data, and measurement. Ramya Parashar, COO, MiQ, points out that predictive intelligence is now central to how DSPs deliver performance. MiQ’s Sigma stack uses AI to forecast bid landscapes, automate budget reallocations, and recommend optimal audience-creative mixes resulting in faster optimization cycles and measurable uplift across ROI metrics.

For Parashar, the future of programmatic will belong to partners who combine reach, privacy-safe data connectivity, and operationalized AI with auditability. “The winners,” she says, “will be those who can prove impact across channels — not just promise it.”

From Automation to Orchestration

Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO of ReBid, believes that India’s programmatic maturity is entering a new phase, from automation to orchestration. “As India pushes toward 60–68% programmatic share, the winners won’t be the cheapest,” he says. “They’ll be the ones that connect first-party data, control overlap and frequency across channels, and prove incrementality.”

ReBid’s data from recent campaigns underscores this direction: frequency waste down 22–38%, incremental reach up 12–20%, and cost per incremental reach down 15–25% through AI-driven overlap suppression and cross-channel measurement. It's an obvious indication that brands today demand verified, data-backed growth, and that efficiency without transparency is no longer sufficient.

The Next Wave: From Programmatic Growth to Programmatic Intelligence

The next phase of programmatic growth, which is expected to occur between 2026 and 2027, will be characterized by AI orchestration, identity resolution, and data sovereignty as India's digital economy develops. After reaching scale, the ecosystem's next goal is intelligence, or the capacity to precisely and responsibly link audiences, settings, and conversions.

AI will go beyond bid optimization to full-funnel experience orchestration, dynamically adjusting creative, context, and frequency in real time across all screens. Identity resolution will also become the cornerstone of a sustainable programmatic approach in the upcoming years, particularly as privacy-first frameworks develop and cookie deprecation quickens. The value chain will be led by DSPs that can combine disparate identifiers, such as retail data, household graphs, and mobile IDs, into a unified, consented identity layer.

Crucially, India is no longer just a growth market; it’s becoming a programmatic innovation hub. With local DSPs experimenting in AI-driven targeting, cross-channel attribution, and vernacular video personalization, the country is setting global precedents for scalable, privacy-resilient advertising models.

The criteria for success will change once more by 2027, moving from performance to predictive intelligence and from purchasing impressions to creating results. Once centered on automation, India's programmatic journey is rapidly transitioning into an era of orchestration, when market maturity, machine intelligence, and human insight come together to reinvent the potential of advertising.