Digital industry policies are an important factor in achieving regional industrial structure optimization and upgrading. This article uses web crawlers and text analysis tools to organize the empowerment data of digital industry policies in various prefecture level cities (states, regions) in China from 2013 to 2023, and uses instrumental variables to test the impact and logic of digital policy empowerment on regional structure optimization and upgrading. Research has found that digital policy empowerment has a significant driving effect on optimizing regional industrial structure. Mechanism analysis shows that digital policies have a positive impact on optimizing regional industrial structure through digital infrastructure ecology and digital application ecology. The role of facility ecology and digital application ecology is more prominent compared to digital innovation ecology, and the heterogeneity of digital ecology can produce vastly different results. In areas where the construction of digital ecology is relatively backward, the marginal effect of digital policy empowerment on optimizing regional industrial structure is more obvious. The scarcity of digital elements gradually weakens with the improvement of digital ecology, reducing its marginal effect on optimizing and upgrading industrial structure. Based on this, propose strategies and mechanisms for local governments to choose digital industry policies and improve the effectiveness of optimizing regional industrial structure.