The marketing and advertising landscape in India has taken a rapid shift of late. While digital marketing is slowly making its way into the tier-2 cities of the country, as far as the metros are concerned, the web is maturing at a very fast rate. Encouraging news is that according to a recently conducted research, nearly three in five businesses in India have shown a likelihood of increasing their investment into digital marketing this year. At the same time, another industry report suggests that roughly nine out of 10 marketers in India have shown an interest in deploying cross-channel marketing and advertising campaigns. 67 percent of the surveyed businesses agreed that social media plays a very important role in their organizations’ growth. On the other hand, about three-fourth of the businesses mentioned that mobile will likely be their focus in 2017.

The popularity of the Internet amongst the Indian households and businesses is growing by leaps and bounds. We found out that nearly 40 million Indians are online every day. Now let’s breakdown these Internet users in India further in terms of their demographics. 64.71 percent of the Internet users in India are from the urban areas and 35.29 percent belong to the rural parts of the country. This scenario is rapidly changing with the increasing penetration of the mobile and cellular connectivity in the rural areas. In terms of the gender profile of the net users in India, males are the dominant segment. There are 1.9 men for every woman Internet user in the country. And talking about the accessibility pattern of the Internet in India, roughly 70 percent of the web users in India are from mobile devices, based on the 2014-18 CAGR.

As the businesses are becoming increasingly aware of ways in which they can promote their products online, newer job opportunities develop

Now, let’s talk about the typical consumption habits of the average Internet user in India. As per the recent survey, an Indian active Internet user spends 40-45 hours online on an average monthly. If we talk about the social media penetration in the country, nearly 58,000 new Indian social media users get connected on to a social networking platform every day. And talking about the penetration of the web into the Indian business sector, the Internet already employs about 10-15 Lakh people in the country. As the businesses are becoming increasingly aware of the various ways in which they can promote their products and services online,

newer job opportunities such as SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing, Web design & development, Mobile application development, online game design & development, online reputation management, content creation, promotion services, and many more develop.

If we talk about the digital footprint, then Air travel seems to have the highest influence from the Internet services at 66 percent, closely followed by PC and mobile accessories sector (63 percent) and AC (61 percent). And in terms of the overall impact of the Internet, once again Air travel shows the highest impact of 42 percent, followed by PC and accessories (38 percent) and Cars (22 percent). As more and more industrial sectors are adapting to the digital marketing techniques, the Internet’s contribution to the country’s overall GDP also shows a rising trend. e-Commerce makes the highest contribution to GDP with 34 percent, followed by online content (31 percent), which is closely followed by the Internet advertising and classifieds (25 percent). The mobile devices and connectivity combined contribute about 16 percent to the national GDP. The Governments spending on digital infrastructure of the country also has a positive influence on the GDP (19 percent). Similarly, the investment made by the private sector in India towards the growth of the Internet infrastructure in the country makes about 11 percent contribution to the GDP.

Downloading music from the Internet is the most popular Internet activity in India, as shown in the infographic, based on a recent survey of 6,300 web users in the country. Listening to music online is the second most popular activity. It kind of makes sense, as people tend to use different limited as well as unlimited mobile data packages to access the online media such as songs and videos. Likewise, downloading or watching videos online seems to have a deeper penetration amongst the web users in India. Especially with online video streaming channels like Netflix and HotStar slowly making their entry into the Indian market, this trend is obviously going to pick up in 2017. Considering that the average Internet user in India represents a millennial profile from the urban parts of the country, online gaming is also gaining popularity. The males prefer watching news and checking scores online, whereas the females indulge into activities such as visiting cooking websites, watching TV shows online, others. Among the young Indian professionals, the activities such as watching sports online, doing an online research or visiting a matrimonial website are some of the most popular activities.

Home continues to be the preferred point of an online purchase and about 40 percent of the payment transactions on the Internet happen on mobile. Indian businesses spent over Rs.7,000 crore in the Internet advertising, wherein search enjoys the highest share of the pie, followed by social and mobile ads.

So, overall the digital has a very bright scope in India in 2017 and beyond!