The growth in digital advertising has been steady, at 25-30 per cent year-on-year, barring 2020.

Online video is a dominant part of digital advertising. There are long-form videos on OTT channels to short-format video on social media. In fact, short-format video is highly popular in non-metro markets. Video has traditionally been used for brand building. We are witnessing the rise of video-led commerce that is driving everything from awareness to purchase. One can now include shoppable features on videos social commerce too is exploding in India.

By 2023, ad spend on digitalis expected to match that of TV. Digital ad buying system must have transparency. There are so many middlemen between the publishers and marketers (advertisers). We must bring a lot more efficiency into digital advertising. We can do so by introducing decentralised blockchain technology. There is no uniform measurement metric in the industry. Still brands do invest in digital advertising because it benefits not only in terms of brand awareness, but also in brand sales.

Ad spends on e-commerce platforms are zooming ahead. Brands are able to draw a lot of insights from market-places like Amazon to target consumers. YouTube mainly provides entertainment. It may not generate a lot of data on the purchase behaviour of a user. Of course, Amazon has to work on video advertising inventory. In this area, OTT platforms and YouTube are ahead of Amazon.