Digital
Meta serves up AI sauce for better creator and influencer marketing
MUMBAI: Meta has dropped digital innovations, unveiling AI-powered creator marketing solutions that promise to turn brand partnerships into growth rockets.
Meta director and head of ads business in India Arun Srinivas couldn’t contain his excitement: “The world’s largest community of Instagram creators is right here in India, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing strong momentum around brands partnering with them to drive sales and ROAS. Meta’s creator marketing solutions such as partnership ads and Instagram creator marketplace can help brands easily discover, connect, and drive performance with creators to get the most out of the partnerships. The new tools we’re launching today harness the power of AI to make creator discovery even more seamless for brands, in turn boosting growth potential for both brands and creators.”
Case in point: Snitch, a fashion brand, saw a awesome 53 per cent increase in return on ad spend by leveraging Reels and creator content., according to its chief business officer Aniket Singh.
The new toolkit is a creator’s dream and a marketer’s secret weapon:
* AI-powered creator content recommendations that predict partnership magic within the partnership ads hub in ads manager
* Keyword search in Instagram’s creator marketplace letting brands hunt for the perfect content creators. Previously, brands needed to leverage a variety of filters to find their ideal creator set. Granular filters spanning everything from “Bollywood dance steps” to “gadget unboxing.”
To help businesses better discover and evaluate creator fit, Meta has also added a variety of features to Instagram’s creator marketplace
* Playable creator reels
* Direct email contacts for seamless collaboration
* Badges showing creators’ partnership experience
* Active Partnership Ads: Meta will now show a creator’s current partnership ads on their creator profile.
* Marketing API expansions for partnership ads
Advertisers can also now use existing Instagram posts for partnerships ads in both placement asset customisation and Advantage+ Creative when creating ads via API. In addition, partnership ads can now be used for click-to-message destinations.
Meta’s data suggests partnership ads outperform traditional creatives by a whopping 96 per cent confidence interval – proving that human creativity, turbocharged by AI, is the new marketing holy grail.
With India leading global Reels production and hosting the largest Instagram creator community, brands are in for a wild ride.
Bottoms up to the creator economy!
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
