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Meta Platforms is rapidly closing the gap with Google in India’s digital advertising market, driven by faster monetisation of short-form video, creator-led discovery and growing participation from small businesses — though industry leaders caution that it is still too early to declare a permanent structural shift away from search-led advertising.
In FY25, Google India reported gross advertising revenue of Rs 34,742 crore, up 11 percent year-on-year, while Meta India’s ad revenue rose 29 percent to Rs 29,392 crore. At the current pace, Meta’s India ad business — spanning Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is on track to approach parity with Google’s combined Search and YouTube revenues.
The acceleration has reignited a long-running industry debate: is India witnessing a fundamental transition from intent-led search to influence-led discovery, or is Meta benefiting from a cyclical monetisation surge driven by Reels?
Structural shift or monetisation spike
Upasna Dash, Founder and CEO of Jajabor Brand Consultancy, said Meta’s momentum should be interpreted cautiously.
“It is still too early to call this a long-term structural shift,” Dash said. “What we are seeing looks more like a monetisation spike driven by short-form video, Reels consumption and influencer ecosystems. This is meaningful, but not necessarily permanent yet.”
Dash added that India’s digital market is large and under-penetrated enough to support multiple discovery models simultaneously.
“Intent-led search, influence-led discovery and emerging conversational discovery can all grow in parallel. Declaring a winner based on a few strong quarters would be premature,” she said.
Nikhil Rangnekar, CEO of Media Circle, said Meta’s growth reflects both monetisation gains and deeper changes in consumer behaviour.
“Short-form video monetisation has contributed significantly, but there is also a real consumer shift from longer formats to Reels and influencer-led content,” Rangnekar said. “Shrinking attention spans are a major driver of this change.”
Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO of ReBid, described the moment as both cyclical and structural.
“There is a genuine shift toward discovery-led consumption in India, where creators and short-form video shape consideration before intent forms,” Dingra said. “At the same time, part of Meta’s current growth is cyclical as Reels monetisation scales and ad loads increase. The growth multiple will likely moderate as monetisation stabilises.”
Trust, attribution and the search-social divide
Even if Meta reaches ad-revenue parity with Google, industry leaders say this does not imply equal trust at the bottom of the funnel.
“Revenue parity does not mean parity in trust,” Dingra said. “Search still dominates high-intent, high-ROI moments. What has changed is advertiser comfort with funding demand creation on social, even with weaker attribution.”
Dash echoed this view, noting how quickly India has moved through different discovery phases.
“India shifted from TV-led discovery to mobile-first and now to social and conversational discovery in months rather than years,” she said. “That speed makes short-term spikes harder to read as structural change.”
Rangnekar said advertisers remain outcome-driven rather than channel-loyal.
“Advertisers chase eyeballs or conversions depending on their objectives,” he said. “As long as they get results, they will spend. However, attribution measurement in India still has a long way to go, with issues like bots and click farms continuing to distort effectiveness.”
Rishabh Mahendru, SVP, Client Success and Growth at AdLift, warned that the larger risk lies in misinterpreting attribution signals.
“Discovery-led formats are finally being taken seriously as performance channels,” Mahendru said. “But revenue parity does not mean trust parity. The real risk is over-crediting upper-funnel signals because platform attribution looks cleaner than it actually is.”
Expansion, not just budget shifts
While some short-form video budgets may be shifting from YouTube to Instagram Reels, most experts argue Meta’s growth is being driven by market expansion rather than pure budget reallocation.
“A large part of Meta’s growth is coming from small businesses, small towns and low-budget advertisers who were likely underserved by search,” Rangnekar said. “Meta could also be growing at the expense of other media, not just Google.”
Dingra said Meta’s biggest advantage lies in onboarding net-new advertisers. “Meta is bringing in SMBs, local businesses and D2C brands that were never meaningful buyers of search or YouTube,” he said. “Low entry barriers, vernacular formats and strong self-serve tools make it the default starting point for new advertisers.”
Mahendru added that Meta’s platforms are collapsing multiple stages of the funnel.
“Search works best when intent is explicit,” he said. “Meta works earlier in the journey. It has combined discovery, messaging and transactions into a single flow, which suits impulse-led and community-driven buying.”
Kartik Mehta, CBO and Head of Asia at Channel Factory, said the rise of D2C brands and MSMEs has accelerated this shift. “Short-form video has moved from being an awareness tool to a direct purchase driver,” Mehta said. “Influence-led discovery is now shaping intent itself, especially in categories where trust and relatability matter more than keywords.”
WhatsApp and Meta’s long-term ceiling
Industry leaders see WhatsApp monetisation as a potential inflection point, but not a guaranteed disruption to Google’s dominance.
“WhatsApp monetisation will be important, but this is unlikely to be a winner-takes-all market,” Dash said. “Both platforms are competing across different parts of a very large and complex ecosystem.”
Rangnekar said WhatsApp opens up new ad formats but will invite strategic responses.
“Formats like status ads and click-to-message have strong potential, but Google will have its own counter-strategy and will continue to dominate key areas,” he said.
Dingra said scaled WhatsApp monetisation could structurally expand Meta’s ad ceiling by pushing it closer to transactions and retention.
“As discovery, conversation and commerce converge, Meta starts influencing not just demand creation but parts of conversion as well,” he said. “This does not displace Google’s strength in high-intent search, but it weakens its hold in categories where discovery and conversion merge.”
For advertisers, Mahendru said the opportunity lies in integration rather than competition.
“Social and messaging shape intent upstream, while search captures it once it forms,” he said. “Brands that understand how these channels work together — rather than treating them as silos — are the ones that will win.”
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