Recent surveys have found that interactive media is largely driving the growth as compared to traditional television advertising. It also found that well over 50% of the youths had cut down their TV viewing.

Of course, absorption of new digital technology will happen depending on specific factors like broadband services’ penetration, bandwidth availability and usage of devices. Though most consumers in India are keen to interact with newer media channels, surveys suggest that they would like the advertising to be more contextual. Only then they would be give more relevant information to a marketer.

Consumers sure are seeking innovation in the way they are being served and presented content. According to Saul J Berman, the global lead partner (IBM Global Business Services), a fundamental factor that is driving the change, remains technology. It allows new behavior and brings to the fore new experiences. People can pick and choose program to watch them at their discretion. They have greater control over when and how to watch it. The form and presentation will vary in the future on the basis of each consumer’s demand and desire for different innovative experiences. The usage of cell phone on the go is already a step in that direction. The wireless devices will ultimately start converging.

Brands stand to gain immensely through the migration towards digital media. The move serves as a huge opportunity for them as they can gain handsome returns across these new media platforms. The data pool generated from the future convergent devices will let them tweak their ads to suit each individual consumer. If they are able to dynamically alter the content delivered say from a man to his son and tweak it as well based on time, they will end up earning a premium on ‘contextual’ advertising. Once the capabilities are in place along with the analytics to back the same, big shifts of marketing budgets will be witnessed from offline to online or digital media.