Ad Campaigns
Star Sports campaign for ICC Women’s T20 WC 2020 featuring Shafali Verma
MUMBAI: Star Sports has launched a new campaign #TakeOnTheWorld featuring sixteen-year-old Shafali Verma, ahead of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup set to begin Friday on 21 February 2020.
#TakeOnTheWorld uses glimpses of Shafali’s childhood to bring alive her single minded-focus and passion to play the game she loved. The film captures one such moment of her life when she played for her local team with a bunch of boys; standing in for her sick brother.
Shafali’s journey wasn’t easy, but when she came through the ranks, it was well worth it. At 15, she went on to break her idol, Sachin Tendulkar’s 30-year-old record by becoming the youngest Indian to ever score a half-century in international cricket.
Shafali Verma said, “My father has been a strong pillar of support, he is a great player and he trained and coached me too – I am what I am because of my father. My dream was to open for India and make my father proud, the dream that we both had seen together. I am extremely excited to represent India at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, which is led by Harmanpreet Kaur, who I believe, is a strong and aggressive player, who keeps the team motivated.”
“I believe in any T20 match, the openers play a very crucial role – if they give a good start, the team can build on a total that is challenging enough for the opponent,” Verma added.
Meanwhile, her father Sanjeev Verma said, “When she was about 8 years old, she used to play cricket with a tennis ball. She was amazed at how the crowd cheered for Sachin Tendulkar while he played for Ranji at Lahli – she wanted to be like him since then. Shafali used to travel 15-20 kilometres every day by cycle for her practice. I only wish and pray she wins the World Cup for the country.”
Team India’s opening batsman Rohit Sharma launched the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup campaign #TakeOnTheWorld on his Twitter handle, he tweeted: “It’s time for ICC Women’s #T20WorldCup and there’s no stopping the Women in Blue, as they #TakeOnTheWorld. Kyunki naam wahi karte hain jo koi mauka nahi chhodte! Cheer for Team India, and watch them LIVE starting 21 February, on Star Sports.”
The world will witness the #WomenInBlue fight for glory on cricket’s biggest stage, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 from 21 February. Team India is already in Australia as it played a T20 tri-series with Australia and England. The women’s team will play against Australia on 21 February at 1.30 PM IST.
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup will be broadcast exclusively on the Star Sports Network and Hotstar.
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.
