Shekhar Banerjee on the fragmented media ecosystem of 2025

The first half of 2025 saw Indian advertisers take a strategic pause, calculating priorities, and placing smarter bets. While global ad revenue growth forecasts were revised downward, India held its ground. Stable GDP numbers and large-scale events like the Maha Kumbh, Champions Trophy, and IPL helped buoy advertiser sentiment. But a sudden national crisis reshaped public priorities, steering consumer focus from indulgence to security, and forcing brands to recalibrate. 

Alongside this, media portfolios shifted hands, agencies underwent structural resets, and new mandates emerged across categories. 

Amid this backdrop, we caught up with Shekhar Banerjee, Chief Client Officer at Wavemaker India and a member of the WPP Media Leadership Council, to understand what’s really happening on the ground, from shifting client expectations to the agency’s evolving role. Banerjee shares how Wavemaker is responding to the moment by doubling down on closed-loop attribution and building a sharper consumer data stack. 

Edited Excerpts: 

Having worked closely with diverse brands across categories and growth stages, you’ve seen client expectations shift dramatically over time. How has your view of what clients truly need from their media agency evolved over the years? 

The answer to this question is a bit of a yes and a no. The central question that clients ask today is still the same, that hasn’t changed. It’s still very centered around “how can you help me grow my brand, and profitably?” That was the question 20 years ago, and it remains the same today. 

However, the levers of growth have changed quite a lot. Simply put, there are two levers that drive client growth profitably. One is how efficiently you deploy the media for them, and second is how effective that media is. So, efficiency and effectiveness are the two levers on which everything is built. And we, being part of WPP, efficiency is rarely questioned. Clients expect us to always be efficient, and we do deliver on that. 

So, where it has changed a lot is in how we drive effectiveness in today's time. While the central question is still about growth, the evolution lies in how we make media more effective. For example, in e-commerce, consumer data is unlocking much better outcomes. So how do we help clients build a consumer data spine? How do we deploy AI, whether in building consumer journeys and experiences, or in driving attribution? These are all elements that are exponentially improving client effectiveness. Every rupee they spend is now working harder. That’s where the change is happening.

From an industry lens, do you think media agencies are overpromising to clients? 

Agencies, at least media agencies, are very humble people. We will never overpromise because if we don’t deliver, that’s the worst place to be with our clients. Media agencies typically underpromise and overdeliver. That’s where clients see delight. So no, media agencies don’t have a habit of overpromising at all. 

Media today sits at the intersection of tech, creativity, data, and culture. How do you define the role of a media agency in this new world? 

Absolutely. Earlier, there used to be a kind of pecking order in how marketers engaged with partners, then comms strategy, then media planning closer to execution. That order has changed. Media agencies have become the pivot. 

We have access to all the fast data coming from platforms, social media, search, syndicated research, and surveys we invest in. We’re at the epicenter of data. We also work with most of the large language models (LLMs) and have access to behavioral data, real behavioral data, not claimed data from surveys. 

So today, whether it’s insighting, deployment strategy, or even the comms route, a lot of it is emerging from media agencies. So yes, the role has significantly evolved, and we’re now the pivot. 

And when it comes to the briefs themselves, with performance and brand often tugging in opposite directions, how are clients rethinking the balance? Is the 'brand vs performance' conversation evolving? 

The performance vs brand tension still exists. But today, we have more structured ways to answer it. 

We look at it through three lenses: 

Aggregated learning: Across categories, we offer clients a directional compass based on what's worked. 

Closed-loop attribution models: Especially in digital, we can track how to balance brand and performance in near real-time. 

Cross-channel attribution: Including TV, print, and digital, giving a full picture of ROI. 

We’re also seeing a problem: scaled performance clients struggle to grow further without brand investment. More importantly, when they cut performance due to budget or profitability issues, their business crashes. So performance is like a steroid, it gives a quick high but isn't sustainable long-term. Brand building is essential for longevity.

Let’s zoom into the present. What would you say were the defining themes of H1 2025 for Wavemaker India, whether in terms of business performance, the kind of conversations clients were having, or how ambitious the campaign mandates felt? 

We’re fairly structured about it, our plan doesn’t change every quarter. There are five clear focus areas for us: 

1. Helping clients build a consumer data spine: This gives them a distinct edge over relying solely on platform data. Our investment and people strategy are aligned with this. 2. Accelerating transaction media: That includes e-commerce, quick commerce, D2C, etc. We’re helping clients deliver higher double-digit growth here through unique data partnerships. 

3. Creating disruptive ideas: Ideas that acquire new consumers, break open markets, or create positive buzz, which is crucial today, especially on social media. 

4. Consulting clients beyond media: Our category experience across WPP helps us turn learnings into playbooks that clients can apply, saving time and effort. 

5. Bringing more of WPP Media to clients: With AI reshaping everything, our WPP Open platform is a gamechanger. We’ve built over 150 agentic models on it, transforming how planners work and how we engage with clients. 

From an investment lens, which categories showed resilience and which ones held back in H1? 

It’s a mixed bag. If you look at quarterly results across 2024 and 2025, you’ll notice headwinds, but also pockets of growth. It’s hard to generalise by category. 

Even within CPG, different segments behave differently. It’s not a category issue, it’s more about consumer segments and town classes. Mass-market brands might be doing well in Tier III and rural, but struggling with premiumisation. Large towns and middle-class pockets are under pressure, impacting discretionary spending. So it’s more about distribution of growth than category trends. 

H1 wasn’t without its disruptions. Several macro and media events created volatility in the ecosystem. Did the IPL mid-season disruption or rising media inflation impact how clients approached spends or campaign rollouts? Did it lead to a shift in the kind of briefs you were receiving? 

Not significantly. H1 is generally stable. Advertisers invest ahead of time, they have seasonality baked in. Campaign rollouts don’t typically get affected much. Most of the choice-making happens in H2. So unless something drastic changes in festive sentiment, H1 has been quite stable. 

Also, IPL commitments are strategic. Advertisers already plan and commit in advance, including deals with channel partners, so a one-week pause doesn’t change much. Rollouts don’t shift.

Secondly, in terms of impact, absolutely not. In fact, IPL 2025 was one of the best ever. RCB won after 18 years, social media was buzzing. That pause only built more anticipation. Final ratings were phenomenal, in some markets, better than India-Pakistan matches. So the value of IPL only went up. 

With the explosion of formats ranging from CTV and influencer integrations to retail media and AI-generated content, media planning today is no longer linear. In this increasingly fragmented environment, what is your approach to helping clients make smarter, more strategic media choices? 

We anticipated this complexity way back in 2018 when Wavemaker was formed. We built an entire toolkit to solve this. 

The heart of this toolkit is our proprietary Audience Origin panel, a massive sample of 85,000 people, probably the largest in India. It powers our cross-media planning tool, formerly called Architect, now called Strategic Planner. 

What makes it different? It doesn’t just maximise reach. It optimises based on the comms task, be it awareness, consideration, performance, or branding. It recommends the best mix across CTV, influencers, print, digital, etc., based on how each format influences a task. That’s how we manage media complexity at scale. 

What does it take today to retain trust and relevance with long-term partners? What do they expect today that they didn’t a few years ago? 

For us, trust comes from genuinely caring about each other’s business. Many of our relationships are over a decade long, some even two decades. 

The secret is simple: do what’s right for the business. Don’t overcomplicate it. Just care, and consistently deliver. The other critical piece is talent, bringing in and grooming people who can work with today’s complex media design and use it effectively for clients. So it boils down to two T’s: Trust and Talent. 

As we head into H2, what signals are you picking up from briefs, media bookings, or client conversations around the festive season? Are they leaning into it with confidence, or still approaching it with caution? 

Right now, we’re just out of the IPL and into test cricket. That said, most calendars are holding. No major surprises or shifts. Advertisers seem structured and have already anticipated how the year will pan out. 

Lastly, in a year full of flux and experimentation, what would you want Wavemaker India to be remembered for in 2025? 

We want to be known as the most wanted agency, by our clients, our partners, and our people. That’s always been our goal, and we hope to carry it forward, not just in 2025 but beyond.

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