Print Media in India: Resilient, Relevant, and Redefining Its Role

A Research-Backed Analysis of Print's Enduring Strength in the World's Largest Media Democracy

By Nemi Insights Research Desk | May 2026

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Introduction: The Premature Death of Print

Every few years, a new wave of digital enthusiasm prompts familiar headlines: "Print is dead." And yet, India's newspaper vendors keep delivering bundles every morning. Dainik Jagran crosses tens of millions of readers. Malayala Manorama reports year-on-year revenue growth. In the first half of 2025, print advertising in India recorded a remarkable 26% growth in ad spend — and as of the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) data released in April 2026, total print circulation in the July–December 2025 period stood at 2.91 crore copies, with the industry adding approximately 5.6 lakh copies on a like-to-like basis, translating into a growth of roughly 2% even as global print markets contracted by 7%.

India is not just an exception to the global print decline story. India is the story.

This blog draws on peer-reviewed research, industry reports from FICCI-EY, Pitch Madison, Dentsu-e4m, WARC, Nielsen Media India, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), and IRS (Indian Readership Survey), and positions the role of platforms like Nemi Insights in helping brands and communicators navigate this complex, hybrid media world.

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Section 1: The Numbers Don't Lie — Print's Market Position in India

Advertising Expenditure

India's print advertising market crossed the Rs 20,272 crore mark in 2024, surpassing its pre-COVID high for the first time since the pandemic (Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2025). This makes India a global outlier: while WARC projects global print adex to decline by 7%, India's print sector grew at 5%.

Here is how print's share of total Indian adex (advertising expenditure) has evolved:

Source: Dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report 2024; Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2025

In absolute terms, print has recovered. In share terms, digital's meteoric rise has resized the pie, not eliminated print's slice. The second-largest traditional medium continues to command a fifth of India's total advertising spend — a position unmatched by print anywhere else in the world.

The Readership Reality: Two Consecutive Half-Years of ABC Growth

According to Statista's 2024 consumer survey of 4,030 Indian respondents, 57% reported using daily newspapers in the past 12 months. WARC's proprietary data reveals that print press consumption in India has stabilised at an average of 56 minutes per day — significantly higher than North America (39 minutes) and Europe (29 minutes).

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) data for 2025 paints an encouraging sequential picture:

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), Exchange4media Group, April 2026; Exchange4media, September 2025

Two consecutive audit periods showing growth — H1 and H2 2025 — signal that this is not a one-time bounce. Adil Kasad, Secretary General of ABC, noted that H1 2025 figures "demonstrate the strength of print in retaining and expanding its readership base in an increasingly competitive media environment." On H2 2025 data, Mohit Jain, Vice Chairperson of ABC, underlined print's enduring relevance as a trusted medium, adding that "at a time when concerns around misinformation are rising, the industry's focus on credible and responsible journalism is being recognised by readers."

The key language growth drivers in H2 2025 were English, Hindi, Kannada, and Punjabi, collectively posting an increase of around 3% (~6.18 lakh copies). The leading sectoral advertisers in print for H1 2025 by ad volume included education (20%), services (15%), auto (15%), banking/finance (9%), and retail (7%) — with Maruti Suzuki India, Reliance Retail, Honda, Hero MotoCorp, and Bajaj Auto leading the list of top print spenders (TAM AdEx, 2025).

The Indian Readership Survey (IRS), conducted by MRUC India, remains the world's largest continuous readership study with an annual sample size exceeding 256,000 respondents. Nearly 45% of Indian readers report reading a printed newspaper every day or most days, according to WARC's GWI data.

Over 155,000 publications are currently registered in India as of 2025 — one of the largest print ecosystems on Earth.

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Section 2: Why India Bucks the Global Trend — Key Factors

2.1 The Vernacular Advantage

Unlike Western markets where English-language print is the bedrock, India's print growth engine is firmly regional. According to KPMG-FICCI data, while the overall print market grew 7.6% between 2014 and 2015, the Hindi press grew 9.6% and other vernacular languages grew 9.9% — far outpacing English.

Titles like Dainik Jagran (Hindi), Anandabazar Patrika (Bengali), Malayala Manorama (Malayalam), Daily Thanthi (Tamil), and Eenadu (Telugu) dominate regional readerships with fiercely loyal audiences. As I Venkat, Director of Eenadu, notes: "The regional press is scripting a new high for the print media industry."

The real growth, analysts agree, is in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and semi-urban India — markets where new literates are entering the reading population, people maintain slower morning routines, and newspapers also serve social functions like matrimonial classifieds and local government notices (Indo-Pacific Defense Forum; JMC Study Hub, 2025).

2.2 Rising Literacy and Urbanisation

India's literacy rates have risen substantially from ~52% in 1991 to over 77% by 2023. Each new literate adult is a potential new print reader — a dynamic that has no parallel in mature, already-literate Western markets. Print media, the International Journal of Research argues, "can thrive in the future due to rising literacy and urbanisation and favorable factors provided in India."

2.3 The Morning Habit — A Cultural Lock-In

Malcolm Raphael of The Times Group (Bennett Coleman) observes that reading a newspaper is still deeply ingrained as a healthy morning habit in Indian households. This cultural dimension creates a habitual, ritual consumption pattern that digital news apps — despite their convenience — have not fully displaced. WARC's India consumer data corroborates this: the top reason Indian readers choose newspapers is "detailed news about a lot of topics" (cited by 62% of respondents), followed by the absence of intrusive advertising and trustworthiness of the source (Nielsen Media India, INMA Summit).

2.4 The Fake News Dividend

In an era of rampant misinformation, print's editorial gatekeeping has become a competitive advantage. A 2022 peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews found that, among 50 respondents, 70% preferred print over social media for credibility, with most agreeing that while anyone can spread misinformation on digital platforms, print's editorial processes make this significantly harder. Similarly, a 2025 study from IJRTI on news consumption patterns among Indian college students found that "traditional media (print, TV, radio) remain the most trusted sources of news, far outranking social media, which was widely viewed as the least credible source."

Basant Rathore of Jagran Prakashan, India's largest print media group, articulates this well: "In an era where content democratisation is the order of the day, citizens naturally gravitate towards mediums that deliver credibility."

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Section 3: Evaluating Print Media Across Key Parameters

3.1 Credibility and Trust

Rating: ★★★★★ (Highest among all media channels)

Multiple research bodies converge on this finding. A 2024 WARC consumer survey finds that over 60% of Indian consumers trust print and TV more than digital news platforms. The NIH's review of global media trust studies consistently finds that "people rate traditional media as the most trustworthy" (Flanagin and Metzger; Apejoye et al.). Marketing Sherpa data suggests 82% of consumers trust print advertisements when making purchasing decisions — the highest trust level of any channel.

This trust differential is particularly potent in India, where concerns around fake news and digital fraud are not abstract but lived realities for millions of voters and consumers.

3.2 Brand Recall

Rating: ★★★★★

Print media achieves a 78% recall rate compared to 46% for digital ads (Newsworks). Research from neuroscience supports this: content read in print has 70% higher recall than content read on digital media, attributed to print's tangibility and the deeper cognitive processing triggered by physical reading. Print ads also generate a 20% higher motivation response than digital equivalents (R.C. Brayshaw, 2020; Persuasion Nation, 2025).

The reason is neurological: reading from paper engages spatial memory — readers recall where on a page they read something — creating a richer encoding experience that screens cannot replicate.

3.3 Advertising Effectiveness and ROI

Rating: ★★★★☆

Print advertising delivers strong ROI, particularly when combined with other channels. Key benchmarks:

• Print ads receive an average response rate of 9%, versus approximately 1% for email, paid search, and social media (Persuasion Nation, 2025)
• 84% of marketers in 2024 agreed that direct mail/print provides the highest ROI of any channel they use (Resimpli)
• Newspapers have been shown to increase the effectiveness of TV ads by 64% (ElectroIQ, 2025)
• Print fosters 20% higher trust in brand decisions compared to digital counterparts (News by Wire Consumer Study)

For India specifically, the Dainik Bhaskar Group reported ad revenue CAGR of 20% over the three-year period FY2021–FY2024, from Rs 1,008 crore to Rs 1,752 crore — a real-world testament to print's commercial vitality (Indian Printer & Publisher, 2025).

3.4 Audience Depth and Engagement

Rating: ★★★★☆

Unlike social media's scroll-and-forget dynamics, print readers spend 20 minutes or more with a newspaper or magazine on average (Chilliprinting, 2026). WARC's India data shows 56 minutes of daily print consumption — a captive audience that is actively engaged, not passively scrolling.

Approximately 70% of newspaper revenue in India comes from advertising, and readership depth translates directly into advertising value: the Indian Readership Survey is the currency on which newspaper advertising rates are negotiated (Scroll.in, May 2025).

3.5 Reach — Geographic and Demographic

Rating: ★★★★☆ in rural/semi-urban; ★★★☆☆ in urban metros

Print's geographic strength lies in its deep penetration of Tier-2, Tier-3, and rural India — markets where internet connectivity remains unreliable or internet literacy incomplete. As Eenadu's Venkat notes, "Regional newspapers are undoubtedly driving the growth story for print." Vernacular papers cover local governance, agriculture, health, and civic issues in languages that millions of Indians exclusively consume.

In urban India, print has ceded some ground to digital among younger consumers; however, it retains an affluent, educated readership that is highly valuable to premium advertisers. The FICCI-EY 2024 report notes that "print remained a preferred medium for affluent metro and non-metro audiences" for premium ad formats.

3.6 Shelf Life and Physical Permanence

Rating: ★★★★★ (Uniquely advantageous)

A newspaper ad can be cut out, saved, shared, and referenced days or weeks after publication. 48% of people keep direct mail for later reference (ElectroIQ, 2025). Digital ads vanish from feeds within seconds or are blocked by ad-blockers (installed by an estimated 42% of Indian internet users). Print ads have zero ad-blockers. 90% of print ads are opened, while only 20–30% of emails are.

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Section 4: Print vs. Other Verticals — A Comparative Matrix

Composite rating based on WARC, Pitch Madison, Nielsen Media India, Marketing Sherpa, Newsworks, ElectroIQ, and Chilliprinting research.

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Section 5: The Digital Fatigue Tailwind

A critical but often underreported development is the growing consumer fatigue with digital advertising. WARC data shows that 72% of Indian consumers say they frequently feel overwhelmed by the volume of digital advertising — a sentiment that is actively driving renewed interest in print among both readers and advertisers (The Current, October 2025).

Globally, 81% of Gen Z report wishing they could disconnect from digital devices more easily (Harris Poll / Quad, 2025), and 71% of consumers say print catalogs or magazines feel more personal than digital equivalents (eMarketer, 2025). India's print advertising's 26% growth in H1 2025 — occurring simultaneously with digital ad spend exceeding TV for the first time — is not a contradiction. It is a market signal: advertisers are learning that digital alone is not enough.

Kantar's Media Reactions 2025 report confirms this, finding a trust gap between marketers and consumers on digital channels and showing that brands are increasingly adopting hybrid strategies that pair digital's reach with print's depth and credibility (WebProNews, October 2025).

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Section 6: The Challenges Print Cannot Ignore

A balanced analysis demands honesty. Print in India faces real structural headwinds — and the latest ABC data, while broadly positive, contains its own cautionary notes.

Declining share, even with revenue growth. Even with absolute revenue growth, print's share of total adex has declined from 35% in 2016 to a projected 13–18% by 2026 (varying by Dentsu-e4m, Pitch Madison, and GroupM projections). Digital's 42–55% share is a structural reality.

The regional circulation paradox. While aggregate H1 2025 ABC numbers showed a 2.77% rise, the detailed edition-level data tells a more uneven story. Exchange4media's October 2025 analysis found that "outside a handful of outliers, most major titles did not post individual gains, and several markets saw single-digit declines." In Hindi markets, Amar Ujala Kanpur fell 12.1% and Dainik Jagran Haldwani declined 12.5%. Southern markets saw similar softening — Malayala Manorama's Kottayam edition declined 3.9% and Mathrubhumi in Alappuzha fell 4%. English dailies saw an even sharper drop of over 10% in smaller towns. The H2 2025 like-to-like growth of ~2% (total 2.91 crore copies) is genuine but best read alongside this edition-level nuance.

Shreyams Kumar, MD of Mathrubhumi Group and President of the Indian Newspaper Society, offers an honest assessment: "The internet is becoming embedded in rural life from education to e-commerce to entertainment" — with over 407 million of India's 969 million internet subscribers now coming from rural regions.

Digital monetisation gap. India has 456 million digital news consumers, but newspaper companies' digital platforms generate less than Rs 1,000 crore in ad revenue collectively — less than 5% of their revenue (FICCI-EY 2024). The transition to digital monetisation remains unsolved.

Youth readership. Nielsen Media India's data shows that younger readers (under 36) gravitate strongly toward social media and apps for news. The habitual print reader is skewing older.

Opaque data and the IRS gap. Industry observers note that cost-cutting on pagination and circulation, and the temporary suspension of IRS (with a pilot only restarting in select markets in late 2025), mean that detailed independent readership benchmarks are harder to access, potentially understating both the upside and downside of print's position.

Post-COVID recovery incomplete. Despite 2024's milestone crossing of Rs 20,000 crore, print adex had stood at Rs 20,045 crore in 2019. In real terms — adjusted for inflation — print has not yet regained 2019 purchasing power.

The nuanced verdict from ABC's own data: "There's durable demand where credibility and local depth are strongest" (Exchange4media, October 2025) — but that demand is not uniformly spread. Publishers who invest in local relevance, accessibility, and habit-forming content will hold their ground; those that don't may cede further territory to digital.

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Section 7: Where Nemi Insights Fits — Decoding the Print Universe for Modern Brands

In this complex, multilingual, multi-platform Indian media landscape, brands face a fundamental challenge: they cannot manage what they cannot measure.

This is precisely where Nemi Business Insights — a New Delhi-based, ISO 9001:2015 certified media monitoring and intelligence firm founded in 2016 — plays a decisive role.

What Nemi Insights Brings to the Print Media Equation

1. Pan-India Print Monitoring Across Languages
Nemi Insights tracks media coverage across print, broadcast, online, and social media in over 25 languages, with reach spanning all major Indian cities and regional publications. In a country where the most-read newspapers are often not English — where Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, and Malayala Manorama collectively command readerships in the tens of millions — Hindi and vernacular print monitoring is not optional for any serious brand strategy. It is essential.

2. The Media Score — A Holistic Print Measurement Tool
Nemi's proprietary Media Score provides a comprehensive snapshot of a brand's media presence, measuring:

• Volume of coverage — how often a brand appears in print
• Share of voice — how the brand compares to competitors across publications
• Sentiment classification — positive, neutral, or negative, powered by Nemi AI
• Topic mapping — what narratives surround the brand in print

This allows PR and marketing teams to benchmark print performance over time and against industry peers — converting the traditionally "soft" value of print coverage into quantifiable, boardroom-ready intelligence.

3. Reporter and Publication Intelligence
Nemi's enhanced reporter and publication analysis allows PR teams to identify which journalists and which print outlets are most engaged with their brand or sector — enabling precision outreach rather than blanket press releases. In print, relationships with specific reporters and desks matter enormously; Nemi's data turns these relationships into trackable assets.

4. Real-Time Crisis Intelligence from Print
Print media's editorial credibility means that a negative story in a leading newspaper can have outsized reputational consequences compared to a social media post. Nemi Insights' real-time monitoring of print, cross-referenced with online and broadcast, ensures that brands are never caught off-guard by a story that has moved from print to viral digital amplification.

5. Customised Print Reports
Rather than generic clipping services, Nemi delivers hand-crafted, customised media management reports that suit the end user — whether a corporate communications head, a government affairs team, or an agency managing multiple clients. As CEO Renuka Bhashkar notes: "Our new capabilities provide an even more robust understanding of how brands are positioned in the media, allowing them to refine their PR strategies and better engage key stakeholders."

6. Regional Reach as a Strategic Edge
Nemi explicitly positions its regional reach for news monitoring as a key differentiator. Given that regional language print media is the primary growth engine of India's print sector — and the primary vehicle for reaching non-metro consumers who form the core of India's emerging middle class — this capability is a significant strategic advantage for brands planning Tier-2 and Tier-3 expansions.

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Section 8: The Road Ahead — Print's Evolving Role

Print in India is not dying. It is transforming. The evidence suggests a future where print occupies a more focused, premium, and trusted position rather than a mass-market one.

Key trajectories:

• Premium positioning. As weaker publications exit, surviving print brands will serve quality-conscious, affluent audiences. FICCI-EY projects a 25% increase in average newspaper cover prices by 2025, reflecting this premiumisation.
• Integrated print+digital ("phygital"). QR codes in print ads, AR-enabled magazine pages, and print-to-digital audience journey tracking are creating measurable hybrid funnels. Newspapers are no longer just news sources but deep-dive analysis platforms that complement digital headline consumption.
• SME advertiser growth. Print companies are actively targeting SME advertisers, whose digital spends in 2024 were estimated at Rs 25,800 crore — a market increasingly aware of print's local credibility and cost-effectiveness (Indian Printer & Publisher, April 2025).
• Regional language rate correction. Ad rates in regional papers will see upward correction as consumption in those markets grows faster than metros, reversing years of underpricing (Indian Printer & Publisher, April 2025).

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Conclusion: The Ink is Not Dry

India's print media story is one of remarkable resilience against global headwinds, powered by linguistic diversity, rising literacy, cultural reading habits, deep regional penetration, and an irreplaceable credibility premium that no algorithm has yet replicated.

For brands, advertisers, and communicators, the lesson is not to choose between print and digital — it is to understand each medium's distinct superpower and deploy them in concert. Print builds trust, depth, and lasting brand perception. Digital delivers speed, scale, and interactivity.

But navigating this landscape without intelligence is navigating blind. India's 155,000+ registered publications, published in 22+ languages, across geographies ranging from megacities to semi-rural mandals, represent both an enormous opportunity and an enormous complexity.

This is where platforms like Nemi Insights — with their pan-India, multilingual, cross-platform monitoring capabilities, AI-powered sentiment analysis, and customised media intelligence — help brands turn the complexity of Indian print into strategic clarity.

In the story of Indian media, print hasn't written its last chapter. It may, in fact, be in the middle of one of its most interesting ones.

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Sources & References

1. Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2025 — Print adex crossing Rs 20,272 crore; 5% growth in 2024; India's print share at 19%; 7% projected growth for 2025 reaching ~Rs 22,000 crore
2. Dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report 2024 — Historical print adex share data (2016–2024); digital surpassing TV
3. FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment Report 2024 — Print revenue growing 4% in 2023 against global degrowth; premium ad format growth; digital monetisation gap
4. WARC Media Report: The Big Picture — Print — Indian print press consumption at 56 minutes/day; 45% daily readership; 72% digital fatigue among Indian consumers
5. Nielsen Media India / INMA South Asia News Media Summit 2022 — Consumer trust in print; top reasons for reading newspapers (62% cite "detailed news")
6. TAM AdEx / RCS India / Excellent Publicity, H1 2025 — 26% growth in print ad spend; sectoral mix: education 20%, services 15%, auto 15%; top advertisers led by Maruti Suzuki, Reliance Retail
7. Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) / Exchange4media — H1 2025 (September 2025) — Circulation rose 2.77% to 29.74 million copies; Adil Kasad, ABC Secretary General
8. Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) / Exchange4media — H2 2025 (April 2026, Pitch Magazine) — Total circulation 2.91 crore; ~5.6 lakh copy addition like-to-like; ~2% growth; English, Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi as growth drivers; Mohit Jain, Vice Chairperson ABC
9. Exchange4media / ABC Regional Analysis — October 2025 — Edition-level declines across Hindi and southern markets; Tier-2/Tier-3 recalibration; Shreyams Kumar (Mathrubhumi MD) quotes
10. Statista Consumer Insights Survey 2024 (4,030 respondents, India) — 57% daily newspaper usage
11. Indian Readership Survey (IRS) / MRUC India — World's largest readership study; 256,000+ respondents annually; 70% newspaper revenue from advertising; IRS pilot restarting 2025
12. International Journal of Research (IJR), 2020 — "Print Media: Its Credibility and Future in India"
13. International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews, Vol 3, No 12, 2022 — Comparative credibility: print vs. social media
14. IJRTI Study 2025 (West Bengal college students) — Trust hierarchy: print/TV/radio > digital > social media
15. WARC/GWI India Consumer Data — 45% daily print readership; 56 min/day average consumption
16. Chilliprinting / ElectroIQ / Persuasion Nation — Print Marketing Statistics 2025–2026 — 78% recall rate; 9% response rate; 90% ad open rate; 20-min+ engagement
17. Harris Poll / Quad Report: "The Return of Touch" 2025 — 81% of Gen Z want to unplug; 71% say print feels more personal
18. Kantar Media Reactions 2025 — Trust gap between digital and print; hybrid strategy adoption
19. Newsworks (UK) — Print achieves 78% recall vs 46% for digital
20. Marketing Sherpa — 82% consumer trust in print ads for purchasing decisions
21. Indian Printer & Publisher (2024–2025) — Industry analysis, Jagran Prakashan, Malayala Manorama, DB Group financial data; FICCI-EY stagnation risk warning
22. Scroll.in (May 2025) — IRS as currency for newspaper advertising rates
23. The Current (October 2025) — 26% H1 2025 print adex growth; WARC digital fatigue data
24. Nemi Insights / PR.com Press Release (September 2024) — Media Score, Nemi AI sentiment, reporter analysis, 25+ language tracking
25. Nemi Insights (nemiinsights.in / indiamart) — Pan-India reach; 10 years' experience; 2,400+ sources; 14+ languages; ISO 9001:2015 certification

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This blog has been compiled using authenticated industry reports, peer-reviewed research, and publicly available data. All figures are in Indian Rupees unless stated otherwise. Exchange rate reference: 1 USD ≈ INR 82–84 (2023–24 averages).

For customised media intelligence on print and cross-platform coverage for your brand, contact Nemi Business Insights Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.