When Trust Meets Data: How are publishers placed in the battle for digital ad budgets

India’s digital advertising market has matured into the primary engine of media growth. Digital today accounts for close to 60 to 65 per cent of total advertising spends, with the market estimated between Rs 70,000 crore and Rs 1 lakh crore. But beneath that expansion lies a concentration that is reshaping the balance of power.

Nearly 65 to 70 per cent of digital ad spends are captured by big tech platforms, retail media networks and OTT ecosystems. The remaining share is fragmented across the open web, where digital news operates despite commanding daily attention and functioning in high trust environments built on credible journalism.

The industry’s centre of gravity has shifted. Media planning is no longer about scale. It is about measurable business contribution. Influence is being scrutinised for its role in performance. And digital news finds itself at a strategic inflection point as highlighted by the industry experts at a recent media event.

From Reach to Results: The New Currency of Media

The most significant shift underway is the move from impression led buying to outcome based accountability.

Kartik Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Omnicom Media Group India, believes the challenge is not one of product viability but measurement evolution. “I think it's a mix of not so much a product, otherwise it wouldn't have survived. Definitely there are areas on the measurement side which need more focus. Most of the clients are buying based on their impression.”

But impressions alone are losing persuasive value. “Most of the clients are moving away from those metrics to metrics like maybe it is what we loosely call an outcome. There are layers of outcome. Ultimate being sales. But it could be a brand lift measure. It could be a lead. It could be a form field. Or it could be signing up for an event,” Sharma adds.

Vinod Thadani, CGO, Dentsu Media and CEO, iProspect, frames it as a definitional shift. “Whether it's 70 per cent, 60 per cent, 80 per cent, more than that, the question is, what is performance. Everyone terms performance as outcome based and it's only CPA and cost per sale and all. But for me, performance can be on different measures.”

Driving qualified website visits, influencing consideration or improving brand lift can qualify as performance if tied to business objectives. “If you need to monetize, you need to go out there and not be labeled only as top of funnel,” Thadani says. “Generally, news publishers come and say this, and they themselves only talk about the top of the funnel.”

Santosh P Kumar, Chief Operating Officer, Innocean India, reinforces the accountability shift. “It’s not about remaining in the part of the upper funnel. It’s about also bringing the measurability very clearly,” he notes, adding that measurement must go beyond CPM and impressions to engagement depth and brand lift.

Hemant Jain, President and Head of Digital Sales at Lokmat Media, acknowledges that buying logic has fundamentally changed. With planning moving from media assets to audience buying, publishers can no longer rely on scale and context alone. Authenticated audience insights and outcome linked narratives are becoming table stakes.

The signal across the ecosystem is unmistakable. Performance is no longer a downstream layer. It is the organising principle.

Data, Determinism and the Logged In Advantage

The consolidation of digital spends around retail media and walled gardens is not accidental. It is rooted in data structure.

Retail media thrives on transaction visibility. Big tech platforms operate in logged in environments with identity graphs. Deterministic data has become the backbone of allocation decisions.

“Deterministic data comes from a logged in environment. News is mostly non logged in and public data,” Kumar points out. “How we solve this can be very well solved with more integration and collaborations within the publisher ecosystem and outside.”

Sharma echoes the need for measurable signals. “Move away from impression to at least talk of getting x number of visitors to a client's website can be a good starting point. Because all the digital publishers are sitting with the rich data.”

Thadani rejects the idea that trust and data are competing currencies. “There is no one against the other. Data is more deterministic, trust you need to build on time.”

He notes that in the cookieless transition, data clean rooms and collaborative environments are already operational. He shared with e4m, “There is client data, there is publisher data, there is our data and it helps us target the clients better. We spoke about efficiency and effectiveness, that’s where most of it comes from.”

Jain argues that news publishers must accelerate investments in technology, identity frameworks and sharper taxonomy structures if they are to compete for performance budgets that are increasingly routed through deterministic channels.

Without logged in environments or collaborative data ecosystems, bottom of funnel allocations will continue flowing elsewhere.

Brand Suitability, Context and the Value of Credible Journalism

For years, brand safety concerns have constrained news participation in media plans. That stance is evolving.

“Most of the brands have moved from brand safety to brand suitability,” Kumar says. Context now matters more than blanket exclusions.

News, particularly regional and political coverage, remains deeply embedded in daily discourse. It operates in a high intent environment where audiences engage with seriousness rather than scroll fatigue.

Yet the commercial argument must be articulated clearly. Sharma points out that product strength alone will not guarantee share. Without measurable storytelling around impact, revenue will stagnate.

Thadani believes publishers must reposition themselves within the full funnel. “If you need to monetize, you need to go out there and not be labeled only as top of funnel.”

Jain emphasises that contextual relevance is an asset retail media cannot replicate. But unless publishers proactively demonstrate transparency, audience authenticity and business impact, perception gaps will persist.

Brand suitability offers an opening. But it must be paired with outcome measurement.

AI, Zero Click Futures and the Next Disruption

Even as publishers grapple with retail media and walled gardens, another disruption is emerging.

Thadani pointed out to e4m that it is significantly early to have conversations around AI generated answers and answer engine optimization.

“That’s yet to be figured out. We are just speaking to brands. Some brands are warmed up, some brands are not. Too early in the day to put a number to it to be honest.”

The absence of defined budgets should not mask the direction of travel. If AI interfaces intercept user queries before they reach publisher properties, traffic flows and monetisation models could compress further.

Sharma acknowledges that technology shifts cannot be resisted. They must be integrated. The digital publishing business, he argues, must think like a tech business rather than operate with legacy placement logic.

Kumar adds that measurement frameworks must evolve in parallel with distribution shifts. Attention metrics, brand lift studies and commerce integrations may become essential differentiators in a zero click world.

Jain sees this as a decisive moment. With preferred deals, pricing compression and performance scrutiny already tightening margins, AI could amplify structural pressure.

The Accountability Test for the Open Web

The broader trend is difficult to ignore. The funnel is collapsing. Upper funnel influence is being interrogated for its contribution to lower funnel results. Agencies are being evaluated on business impact. Retail media monetises transaction proximity. Walled gardens monetise deterministic targeting. AI threatens to redefine discovery.

Digital news still commands credibility and daily engagement. But credibility without attribution will be discounted. Trust without data will be sidelined. Across agencies and publishers, the consensus is converging on one point. Influence must translate into measurable effectiveness.

The defining question for digital news is no longer whether it deserves a larger share of digital ad budgets. It is whether it can prove, in hard commercial terms, that credible journalism drives business outcomes in a performance first economy. The answer to that question will determine not just share of wallet, but long term relevance in the evolving media equation.