Digital media which has steadily climbed the ladder in the media & entertainment industry over the past two decades in India has now finally reached where it belongs- the top slot. In terms of ad revenues, this sector has seen the maximum growth and in calendar year 2024, the digital media’s advertisement revenues reached a whopping figure of Rs 700 crore.

Search and social media and e-commerce advertising, in that order, were the significant growth drivers. Mukesh Ambani, while speaking at the inaugural sesasion of the WAVES-2025, touched upon this aspect and was optimistic that the industry would reach a turnover of Rs 100 billion from the existing Rs 28 billion presently. Blending storytelling and digital technology has obviously unlocked a hitherto unexplored strategic and economic opportunity is his surmise.

With content consumption hugely concentrated among the young audience, who make up more than two-thirds of the country’s 1.4 billion population, it may be scary and exciting at the same time. Very quick to adapt to the blinding pace of technological changes, the youth of India is on par with many of his ilk in the world for using the medium as the message.

Here is where the dangers lurk. In the public sphere, the pace at which fake news and information is peddled and pushed around is alarming, a trend which has been around for nearly five years now. Added to that is the rapidity with which it is consumed and re-circulated to keep its lifeline alive for longer time than expected.

In the entertainment sphere, with piracy, explicit content on OTT platforms and a glorifying take on bloodshed and violence assuming a high percentage of feeds being watched vociferously, the flipside of digital technology is evident.

While self-censorship is an ambiguous zone which has not seen any clear reform moves by the entertainment badshahs, the liberal attitude of the present Censor Board with regard to the themes being approved for universal exhibition too has enough reasons to worry the civil society activists.

Commercial cinema has very efficiently piggy backed itself on multiple digital platforms and seems to be a great survivor, despite its very poor effort to initiate changes in the manner in which feature films are made and exhibited.

Since it is the gravy train, which is a win-win for all the advertising and marketing professionals, cinema is constantly in demand and it is tagged along with yet another popular entertainment – watching cricket. One has seen how the recent IPL tournament has enabled the OTT channel to revive and publicise many of its offerings for a huge audience watching the willow game.

The influx of AI tools has also added to the fascinating spread of this technology and the conservatives who have opposed the entry of the machine and metal into the world of men and mettle are being browbeaten into accepting it as it has infiltrated efficiently into various spheres of our lives.

While the old media channels like print seem to staring at the end of the road, as its growth and revenue generation has retreated into a negative zone, the unbridled speed of the digital media is now a ride which the world seems enjoying, including the

Indian working sector. One wishes that there is a course correction for the better soon, given that our society is still the same in many ways – hyper, opinionated and sharply polarised.