Not too long ago, data privacy lived on the margins of marketing conversations. It was important, yes, but rarely urgent. All of that changed on November 14, when the DPDP Rules were officially notified. With a clear 18-month compliance window now in effect, India’s advertising and marketing ecosystem is stepping into one of its biggest structural resets.
This is far bigger than a paperwork exercise. It’s a redesign of how data is collected, stored, activated, measured, and woven into creative strategy. By 2025–26, consent won’t be a checkbox; it will be the anchor that determines which campaigns even make it into the market.
And for many industry leaders, this shift calls for nothing short of a new blueprint for advertising.
The most immediate disruption lies in how marketers target and measure audiences. The shift from passive, broad-spectrum tracking to explicit, purpose-tagged consent will redefine everything from audience segmentation to attribution models.
Rohit Agarwal, Founder and Director of AlphaZegus Marketing, breaks down the scale of this reset:
“The 18-month window forces the industry to rebuild its data habits from the ground up. Advertisers will have to move from passive data collection to explicit, auditable consent and from behavioral micro-targeting to cleaner, context-led planning. First-party data, consented identity, and transparent value exchange become non-negotiable. By 2025-26, brands that cannot prove lawful data flows simply won’t be able to activate campaigns at scale.”
His view is echoed in the measurement conversation, where the shift away from pervasive tracking will force brands to rethink how they map consumer journeys.
Sourabh Arya, Associate Director at Deloitte, explains:
“As they say, ‘the customer is king.’ Under the DPDP Rules, the king’s explicit consent becomes the absolute cornerstone of advertising.
The 18-month window mandates a pivot from pervasive tracking to granular, purpose-bound consents, rendering cookie syncing and implied permissions obsolete. Planning shifts to consent-segmented audiences, with modeled attribution using CDPs and clean rooms replacing user-level measurement.
Measurement strategies will pivot toward first-party data, clean rooms, and modeled attribution as user-level tracking becomes legally untenable.
Media planning must be anchored in explicit, purpose-tagged consent segments, with separate strategies for non-consented and children’s audiences.
Rebuilding consent UX, retention/erasure workflows, and audit-ready logs to meet full compliance by the 18-month deadline will be non-negotiable.”
Together, these perspectives signal a dramatic change: the industry is moving from tracking individuals to earning and maintaining their trust.
While data mechanics sit at the heart of the DPDP Rules, the ripple effects travel all the way to India’s creative and cultural canvas. In many ways, this shift will impact not only how brands target consumers, but also how they speak to them.
Dr. Kushal Sanghvi, Director at Komerz, broadens the lens to look at how content itself may evolve:
“The new rule is definitely interesting, especially because the advertising landscape has changed so dramatically over the years. Many of us have seen the evolution first-hand—from the early days of television in India, to satellite TV, to the rise of digital. Video has consistently been at the center of this journey of communication.
What stands out now is how new policies, regulations, and guardrails will shape the next phase. On one hand, brands are pushing hard to connect with people at a hyperlocal level. On the other, this shift will accelerate the importance of regional languages. In a country as diverse as ours, with so many cultures and dialects, regional content has always played a unique role, and this change could strengthen that even further.
With AI becoming a bigger part of video creation, we’ll see fresh possibilities in how content is produced. But it also raises questions about the kind of storytelling that has traditionally worked in video formats. Not every idea that succeeded earlier will fit neatly within the new rules.
Digital has transformed many times over the last three decades. Today, when we think of video, we think of reels, short-form formats, YouTube, and other digital platforms. But the journey began with television. Now, whether it’s ten seconds or fifteen seconds, the same piece can play across digital, out-of-home, and every kind of screen. That’s why we need a common framework that’s screen-agnostic, one that sets clear fundamentals for what should or shouldn’t be part of video communication in a market like India.”
His take opens the conversation beyond privacy and into the future of content itself — regional, hyperlocal, AI-enabled, and screen-agnostic.
Legally, the DPDP Rules represent a milestone many years in the making. After more than a decade of debates, drafts, committees, and constitutional milestones, India’s privacy project has entered its execution phase.
Dhruv Garg, Founding Partner, IGAP, places the moment in context:
“The DPDP Rules represent the moment India’s privacy project finally moves from a 15-year-long debate to actual implementation. What began in the late 2000s with trade-linked nudges from the EU and early government papers has now matured into a full legal regime, and the final Rules make several important departures from the draft. They introduce the idea of an authorised entity that can issue identity, age details, or virtual tokens for parental consent. The Rules split the consent provisions for children and persons with disabilities into separate rules and add a new mandatory one-year retention requirement for personal data, associated traffic data and processing logs.
With immediate activation of the Data Protection Board, a one-year window for Consent Managers and a full compliance deadline in 18 months, the burden on organisations—particularly smaller firms—will be significant. But after a decade and a half of committees, drafts and constitutional milestones, the Rules also bring long-awaited clarity, stronger user protections, and a more predictable digital governance structure. The real test now is whether India can translate this long journey into effective on-ground execution, balancing citizen rights, state capability and industry innovation at scale.”
This perspective ties the industry shift to the nation’s broader governance evolution.
The DPDP Rules don’t just tighten compliance. They reshape the foundations of marketing — how data is gathered, how stories are crafted, how audiences are reached, and how trust is built.
The next 18 months will separate brands that proactively redesign their systems from those that scramble at the last minute. And in this new world, the advantage will belong to those who treat consent not as a hurdle, but as the core of long-term consumer relationships.
India’s privacy reset is here. And it’s redefining the future of marketing for 2025–26 and beyond.
