India’s advertising industry has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years, with the sector recently reaching the historical precedent benchmark of one trillion rupees. Digital advertising is the primary driver of revenue, with extremely fast growth in the sector thanks in part to Digital India, the government initiative that funds internet access for rural areas and digital literacy for all Indian citizens. Social media ads, influencer marketing and video entertainment that incorporates advertisements are all trending upward, with total ad spending for social media alone exceeding one billion USD.
Programmatic media buying, which is pervasive in the global ad industry, is still emerging in India. Within this mode of algorithmically determined ad strategy, brands purchase ad space using software automations. In India, however, traditional manual ad buying in which a media buyer makes a direct call or email to claim ad space continues to reign. As programmatic takes hold in the Indian market, there is potential for significant growth in the region. These are the companies to watch.
Advertising Companies in India
- Integral Ad Science
- Taboola
- Acquia
- MiQ Digital
- Knorex
- DeepIntent
Top Advertising Companies in India
Spinta Digital is a digital marketing and advertising agency that focuses on UI and UX design, brand storytelling and website modernization. Its branding work includes logo design, brand identity design and rebranding when appropriate. Spinta’s tech stack supports Shopify store development and well as mobile and web app builds.
ShootOrder is a digital marketing agency. Its standard operating procedure for newly onboarded accounts is defined in-house by a three-phase process: “Attract, Engage, Delight.” Within this paradigm, the company starts with earned, owned and paid media strategies, which it implements via influencers, SEO, social media, advertisements and content assets like blogs.
Integral Ad Science is an adtech company that offers analytical software products to assess the value of digital ad placements. Because the ad placement and media buying processes contain so many variables, it is difficult for teams to manually track placements for potential fraud, brand risk and viewability. Integral Ad Science software handles this by using algorithmic data, which allows teams to act on its insights.
BCC United is a marketing and advertising agency that also provides software services and staffing. Its offerings are designed to provide a full suite of services to startup and growth-phase businesses, such that BCC United fills the roles of dedicated in-house marketing and IT teams. It also offers hybrid models that split responsibilities between BCC staff and in-house teams.
NetElixir is an e-commerce marketing and ad agency that focuses on generating high-value customers. This account-based approach allows the company to tailor its ad and marketing materials to specific organizations and niche communities. The NetElixir SEO approach also pursues impactful conversions.
MiQ Digital is a programmatic digital media provider that offers marketing intelligence, programmatic campaigns, data science and advertising analytics. In offering ad optimization strategies that are drawn strictly from data, rather than incorporating speculative or subjective assessments, the company boasts improved complexity and decreased bias in ad design and placement.
Cubera is an adtech firm that uses big data analytics to offer advertising services that are attuned to ROI. The company’s flagship product, the Cubera AdTech Ecosystem, is a suite of platforms that together provide the full scope of digital ad services. The CUBE customer data platform builds audience profiles that can be used to hone messaging and appropriately target audiences.
Artificial intelligence firm DeltaX applies AI technology to marketing strategy and campaigns. It utilizes machine learning, computer vision and other emerging deep tech modalities to offer omnichannel digital advertising built around data insights. Performance marketers use DeltaX services to increase precision in ad buying and optimization.
Marketing technology company Taboola provides software for digital marketing. Its signature platform is a native content discovery platform, on which brands and agencies can browse for potential content creator collaborators. Creators use the platform as a space to preview their digital assets, and clients can commission bespoke content based on the samples they see.
MindShift Interactive offers digital marketing and branding for clients in the entertainment, hospitality, food and beverage and lifestyle spaces. The company has provided services to JW Marriott, Davines, St. Regis, Ritz-Carlton and a long list of similar clients. It’s niche offerings include influencer relationship management, media buying and startup nurturing.
Merkle is a multinational martech company that leans into emerging technology in the ad and marketing industry. It has been doing business in India since 2017, when it acquired what at the time was the top performance marketing company in the country, Sokrati. Since the acquisition, Merkle has picked up where Sokrati left off by bringing data-driven ad science to the Indian business community.
Adtech software company Knorex offers a platform for integrated advertising management and execution, or AMX. This type of software system supports businesses in ideating, planning, managing and monitoring ad campaigns that span multiple channels. The platform coheres campaigns from social media, email, out-of-home ads and other relevant modalities into a single management interface.
Fork Media Group is a content specialist in the advertising space. Its three main focuses are native advertising, contextual advertising and performance marketing. These three pillars of ad and marketing strategy form the foundation of the Fork Media approach. The company is particularly attuned to audience factors amongst Gen Z and Millennial consumers, who respond to different elements of tone and language than their predecessors.
Creative Code Productions is a media designer and producer in the advertising and marketing space. It works with clients to create custom digital assets, primarily in video format. These assets are used by clients in diverse contexts such as television commercials, product videos and branding films.
Acquia makes software for the advertising and marketing industry. It specializes in digital customer experience products that run on the Drupal platform. Acquia’s web hosting, content management, marketing automation and customer data management services integrate with the Drupal ecosystem such that existing digital assets can be optimized for customer experience outcomes.
DeepIntent provides ad and marketing services to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. It uses health data from IQVIA and Komodo Health to predict the efficacy of any given ad or channel in reaching potential patients, which it does before ads ever run. This ability to model and predict ROI allows the company to design purpose-built healthcare ad campaigns that inform both healthcare providers and patients about the client’s products or services.
The Smarketers is a B2B marketing agency that offers account-based marketing services, or ABM, which target specific customer profiles rather than broad audience categories. ABM differs from standard inbound marketing in that it designs content specifically for targeted customer organizations. The Smarketers cite an 84 percent performance increase when applying ABM strategies as compared to other marketing approaches.
PickMyAd is an advertising business that operates an influencer marketing platform. Brands use it to browse for influencers to work with and can even book ad time and space directly through the platform. Content creators are organized by algorithm such that clients receive profiles of influencers who are aligned with their brand goals.
Social media marketing company Purview Digital specializes in new media. Its main offering is social media management, in which the company entirely runs social channels for a client business. In this dynamic, the company takes responsibility for content curation and strategy on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok.
The digital marketing experts at DigiClues offer branding, web development, social media marketing and SEO services. This suite of services is built to help brands estabish and maintain a digital presence. The company offers an SEO assessment tool on its public-facing website, which can help potential clients determine the value of working with its team.
