India’s ad market is growing. Why are publisher economics still broken?

The advertising market is booming. News publisher economics aren't. That contradiction lies at the heart of a growing debate within the news industry in India. 

Globally, advertising has entered another record year. According to Dentsu's latest Global Ad Spend Forecast, worldwide advertising investment is expected to grow 5.1% in 2026, crossing the $1 trillion mark for the first time. Digital is projected to account for nearly 69% of total advertising spend, while print is expected to decline by another 3%.

India mirrors the same broad trend, albeit with an important distinction. The Pitch Madison Advertising Report (PMAR) 2026 shows that print advertising grew 3% in 2025 to ₹20,866 crore, adding ₹594 crore over the previous year. But print's share of the advertising market slipped from 19% to 18%, suggesting that while advertisers continue to invest in newspapers, incremental ad budgets are increasingly flowing elsewhere.

That is the paradox confronting publishers. Advertising revenues are not disappearing—they are simply growing faster in other parts of the media ecosystem. 

Changing consumer habits and shrinking circulation are widely blamed for the revenue impasse confronting India's legacy media. Many of these institutions were not merely news organizations; they were active participants in the country's freedom struggle and have since played a vital role in informing citizens and shaping public awareness.

Read: Why is news traffic falling across the globe?

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AI & multiple digital platforms eating away 

For newspaper publishers, this is no longer a cyclical downturn. It is a structural redistribution of advertising value.

“Digital platforms, retail media networks, commerce ecosystems, streaming services and AI-powered advertising solutions are attracting a disproportionate share of new ad investments,” quips a leading publisher who argues that original journalism, despite remaining central to brand credibility and informed audiences, is receiving a diminishing share of incremental advertising budgets.

“The challenge extends beyond print. Digital news publishing is undergoing its own transformation. Search and social platforms, once the primary engines of audience discovery, are becoming less reliable sources of traffic. AI-generated summaries, zero-click search experiences and changing platform algorithms increasingly answer users' questions without directing them to publisher websites,” says Pradeep Gairola, Business Head, The Hindu Digital.

For years, publishers built digital businesses around a straightforward assumption: produce quality journalism, attract audiences through search and social platforms, and monetise that traffic through advertising. That assumption is now weakening. As referral traffic fragments, so does advertising revenue, forcing publishers to rethink business models that have depended on platform-led audience acquisition for more than a decade, Gairola noted. 

The flawed assessment of the medium could also be one of the factors, argues S Balakrishnan, editor of a leading English daily. According to him, “Some of the top newspapers are taking media planners for a ride by basing their ad tariffs on the 2019 readership survey which is vastly outdated. The media planners should insist on the latest ABC figures so that realistic tariffs can be discovered.”

Why Publishers Can't Simply Raise Ad Rates

That changing landscape also explains why publishers cannot respond to rising costs in the same way consumer brands do.

Unlike FMCG or automobile companies, publishers cannot simply pass higher input costs on to advertisers. Advertising rates are determined less by production costs than by measurable outcomes, audience quality and return on investment, insiders say.

A senior marketer said, “Publishers' demand for higher rates overlooks how advertisers evaluate media investments. When FMCG or auto brands raise prices, there is a demand impact because consumers can switch to cheaper alternatives. Besides, when the government reduces taxes, such as the GST rate change last year, it is also passed on to consumers. Print media and its advertising do not work similarly. Rates do not increase simply because input costs have gone up. Advertisers look at audience delivery, campaign effectiveness and measurable outcomes before agreeing to pay more.”

“The person added that while newsprint prices remain elevated due to global supply pressures, print circulation has not witnessed corresponding growth. That weakens the case for an industry-wide rate increase unless publishers can clearly demonstrate stronger value to advertisers,’ said a CMO of an FMCG major. 

Publishers, however, argue that the discussion should not be reduced to circulation alone. According to two publishers, “Trusted news environments continue to offer brand safety, editorial credibility and influence among decision-makers—qualities that have become even more valuable as brands navigate misinformation, AI-generated content and increasingly fragmented digital platforms.”

The challenge, they argue, is that these attributes are often undervalued in media planning models that prioritise scale, efficiency and short-term performance metrics.

The pressure on publisher economics has also been compounded by changes in print consumption since the pandemic. While newspaper readership has gradually recovered in several markets, circulation has not returned to pre-Covid levels for many publishers. Hybrid work, changing commuting patterns and the rapid adoption of digital news accelerated a behavioural shift that was already underway. 

Younger, digital-native audiences increasingly consume news through smartphones, social platforms, newsletters and video, reducing the habit of subscribing to or purchasing physical newspapers. As a result, publishers face the dual challenge of maintaining loyal print readers while investing heavily in digital products that are yet to generate equivalent advertising yields.

Challenges in measurement 

 The industry's measurement challenges have only added to the problem. The absence of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) since 2019 has left advertisers and media planners without a common currency to assess newspaper readership and compare publications. 

While publishers rely on circulation figures, proprietary audience studies and first-party data, advertisers argue that the lack of an independent, industry-wide readership benchmark makes it harder to evaluate the true reach and influence of news brands. 

At a time when digital platforms offer real-time performance metrics and granular audience targeting, newspapers are finding it increasingly difficult to demonstrate their full value through a universally accepted measurement framework, weakening their hand in advertising negotiations.

“It’s not just that print has fewer readers; it's that publishers have lost the industry's common measurement currency, making it harder to defend pricing even where readership remains influential. That makes the economics problem much deeper than simply declining circulation,” an advertiser noted. 

Fragmentation creates roadblock 

Publishers believe another factor is preventing meaningful pricing corrections: fragmentation across media.

Several media executives argue that isolated attempts by newspaper publishers to increase advertising rates are unlikely to succeed because advertisers can simply redirect budgets to television, digital or out-of-home media where rates remain unchanged.

"If key stakeholders—including television, digital and out-of-home platforms—align on the need for pricing corrections and present a consistent market stance, advertisers will have fewer opportunities to shift budgets in search of lower-cost alternatives," said a senior publishing executive.

"A coordinated approach across media can help establish industry-wide value benchmarks while ensuring sustainable growth for all stakeholders."

Whether such coordination is realistic remains an open question. Media platforms compete as much with one another as they compete for advertiser budgets, making collective pricing action difficult to achieve.

Yet publishers insist the debate is no longer about recovering higher newsprint costs. It is about correcting a deeper imbalance. The advertising market is growing. Print advertising itself continues to grow in absolute terms but it is capturing a shrinking share of an expanding industry.

As AI reshapes content discovery and commerce increasingly drives media investment, publishers find themselves competing not just for advertising budgets but for recognition of the economic value that original journalism creates. 

Unless that value is reflected in pricing, even a record-breaking advertising market may continue to leave publisher economics under strain.