Ad Campaigns
Zomato pays tribute to Kolkata’s street food vendors during Durga Puja
Mumbai: To celebrate India’s vibrant food tradition during the auspicious occasion of Durga Puja, Zomato has launched a campaign to pay homage to Kolkata’s street food vendors. This campaign aims to honor the unsung culinary heroes behind Kolkata’s beloved street food, especially during Durga Puja, when the city streets come alive with flavors that embody the spirit of community and celebration.
Recognising that many beloved local food vendors remain undiscovered on delivery platforms like Zomato, the brand has taken a creative approach to spotlight them. At Street Number 104, Action Area 1B, Newtown, Kolkata (700156), Zomato has unveiled a 300-meter-long Alpana—a traditional Bengali folk art form. This grand artwork reflects the region’s cultural identity and highlights the importance of celebrating the city’s cherished culinary delights, even those not yet on delivery platforms. Co-created with local artisans, the meticulously and thoughtfully crafted artwork showcases the names and locations of some of the city’s most iconic street food vendors, making it easier than ever for food enthusiasts to seek out and savor their delectable offerings.
“This campaign is our tribute to Kolkata’s iconic street vendors who are not necessarily on Zomato platform at the moment but are a key part of the city’s cultural fabric.” said Zomato marketing head Sahibjeet Singh.
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
