MAM
SBI Life Insurance, WATConsult launch India’s first-ever programmatic digital OOH campaign
MUMBAI: SBI Life Insurance, for its ‘Main Se Hum Campaign’, has launched the first-ever programmatic digital out-of-home (OOH) campaign in India. Planned by WATConsult, the digital and social media agency from Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) along with DAN’s Programmatic Arm – Amnet, this innovation aims to help the brand in reaching out to newer audiences & build a programmatic connect thereafter.
Exploring New Year as a topic, the campaign is being executed across major establishments in Maharashtra and Delhi-NCR. Google’s marketing platform in partnership with Lemma Technologies, has helped the brand serve this digital inventory across OOH touch points and also plans to re-target audiences on mobile through the beacons installed at each location.
WATConsult founder and CEO Rajiv Dingra said, “With this activity, SBI Life adds another innovation with us with the key objective of testing Digital OOH, extend further reach for their "Main Se Hum" campaign exploring New Year as a topic to leverage and programmatically retarget with relevant brand messages. Well, this is the first-of-its-kind initiative in India and will surely open more dynamic avenues for the brand in the coming future.”
SBI Life Insurance chief of brand and corporate communications Ravindra Sharma said, “For a long time marketers have been trying to bridge the gap between offline and online audience, to holistically target consumers. Using the existing advertising ecosystem, the programmatic digital out of home campaign (DOOH) successfully bridges the offline to online audience gap, by simple yet intelligent application of technology.” He further added, “At SBI Life we take great pride in being the early adopters of upcoming technologies and are extremely thrilled to start 2019 on an innovative note. We believe this will mark a transformation in the evolution of digital marketing.”
AMNET in association with Lemma Technologies ran this DOOH campaign as a RTB (Real-Time Bidding) campaign on Lemma’s platform which had Google DV360 participating as demand partner. “It’s an innovation in the outdoor industry to connect outdoor media to a centralised platform based on advertisement standard & protocols. Such standardisation gives DOOH inventory more visibility to direct and programmatic demand,” says Lemma Technologies founder and CEO Gulab Patil.
AMNET vice president Salil Shanker said, “This is a revolution in outdoor industry to connect DOOH screens to a digital advertisement ecosystem. At AMNET, we believe in driving innovations to our partners and with success of launching programmatic radio in India, now we are thriving to launch DOOH inventory through programmatic. The new platform offers advertisers with innovative solutions to connect with the right audience with right messages at the right time along the consumer journey. While the lines are slowly blurring between digital and offline, in the short term this step will surely help SBI Life in getting that extended reach through offline impressions and a possibility to re-connect audiences in digital world to help close the loop. The standardisation gives more simplicity to manage all media channels through a single lens.”
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.
