Digital
AI shake-up hits ad quality as social media surges, says IAS report
NEW DELHI: Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS) has warned that the advertising industry is entering a new era in which artificial intelligence, social media and digital video collide to redefine what “quality” means. Releasing its annual Industry Pulse Report in New Delhi on 8 December, the media-measurement firm says marketers are bullish on AI’s speed and scale but wary of the risks that accompany a flood of synthetic content.
IAS chief executive Lisa Utzschneider, says 2026 is a fulcrum year. As channels blur and AI remakes how content is created, consumed and measured, advertisers and publishers must balance innovation with control. The aim, she says, is ensuring that every impression builds trust and performance.
The tension is evident in the numbers. Sixty-one per cent of media experts are excited by AI’s potential, particularly in unlocking new advertising opportunities within gen-AI content. Yet 83 per cent see the rise of AI-generated material on social media as a serious concern requiring constant monitoring. Eighty-four per cent want third-party verification to identify and classify AI-generated content on social media, and 86 per cent say the same for digital-video platforms.
Video remains the industry’s lodestar. Eighty-eight per cent cite digital video as a top priority for 2026, ahead of display and audio. Social media follows close behind at 84 per cent. With influencer and creator ecosystems booming, 87 per cent highlight brand safety and suitability when placing ads next to digital video, while 82 per cent say the creator’s suitability is now as crucial as adjacency risks.
Media quality remains the bedrock of performance. Eighty-six per cent insist that tagging and avoiding AI-generated content in digital video is essential. Eighty-three per cent argue that fraud, viewability and suitability metrics are critical in retail-media networks. Another 83 per cent worry that fraud and suitability risks will intensify as connected-TV inventory balloons. The biggest adjacency fears include risky content, deepfakes and AI-generated media, with influencer-creator content not far behind.
IAS research and insights vice president Jeremy Kanterman, says 2025’s surge in AI usage has left the industry juggling promise and peril. He sees marketers funnelling investment into digital video, social platforms and a fast-maturing influencer economy, while demanding sharper oversight of AI’s growing footprint.
The IAS Industry Pulse Report surveys nearly 300 US media experts across brands, agencies, publishers and ad-tech firms, tracking the trends, technologies and priorities set to shape 2026.
Digital
Google partners with Adani and Airtel to build India’s largest AI data centre
The three-campus complex, built with Adani and Airtel, is India’s largest-ever technology infrastructure investment
Visakhapatnam: Google has broken ground on what it is billing as India’s largest-ever technology infrastructure project: a gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, built in partnership with AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel. The ceremony at Tarluvada on 28th April marked the start of construction on a three-campus data centre complex that sits at the heart of a $15 billion investment Google has committed to deploying across India between 2026 and 2030.
The numbers are staggering by any measure. Nearly 1 gigawatt of compute capacity at a single location, three data centre campuses, a fibre-optic expansion under the America-India Connect initiative, and a long-term clean energy strategy designed to feed new renewable supply into the national grid. Google says the project will help India hit its target of 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030 while delivering the high-performance, low-latency infrastructure that businesses need to build and scale AI-powered services.
The groundbreaking drew a formidable gathering of political and corporate India. Union minister for information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and state IT minister Nara Lokesh attended alongside Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian, Adani Group directors Karan Adani and Jeet Adani, and Bharti Enterprises vice chairman Rakesh Mittal.
Vaishnaw framed the project in terms of national ambition. “The India AI hub and three subsea cables landing in Visakhapatnam will become very important infrastructure for the country’s journey forward,” he said, adding his thanks to Google for its “continued trust in India.” Naidu was equally bullish, describing Andhra Pradesh as “India’s premier investment destination” and the Vizag hub as a cornerstone of the state’s technology corridor. “Our vision goes beyond attracting investment,” he said. “We want local talent, startups, and enterprises to become active partners in this technology-driven growth story.”
Kurian called the groundbreaking “a powerful realization of our shared vision with the Indian government, and an inflection point for the country’s AI-native future.” Jeet Adani was characteristically direct: “When energy becomes more affordable and increasingly powered by clean sources, intelligence becomes more accessible, and that is how India will lead the next phase of digital growth.” Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, said the full stack of data centres, green power, pan-India fibre and a next-generation cable landing station would enable “large-scale, world-class AI infrastructure in Vizag.”
The project was first announced in October 2025. AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel will lead construction of the data centre buildings and connecting infrastructure, with Google deploying its AI capabilities on top.
Beyond the hardware, Google has announced a substantial package of community programmes. On water, it is partnering with Sponge Collaborative on a watershed management plan linking coastal ecosystem restoration with clean drinking water systems, including reverse osmosis plants and Water ATMs, for local residents. On livelihoods, a tie-up with the Sambhav Foundation will equip more than 1,000 fisherfolk with GPS navigation, weather-forecasting tools, cold-chain management training and UPI-based financial literacy. The Google Udaan India Fund, run through ChangeX, will provide direct grants to local schools and social enterprises for AI skilling labs and digital literacy programmes. The NARI Shakti programme, developed with the Learning Links Foundation, will support more than 10,000 women entrepreneurs from low-income backgrounds in building micro-enterprises. The Skills Trade and Readiness programme will prepare more than 1,000 local workers for construction, welding and facility operations roles, while a parallel tie-up with ICT Academy will train more than 1,200 students and educators in cloud computing and generative AI.
The groundbreaking was accompanied by the Bharat AI Shakti Conclave, a conference organised with the Andhra Pradesh government and Nara Lokesh, bringing together suppliers, industry partners and infrastructure firms to map how Google’s anchor investment can be turned into a broader economic value chain for the region. The conclave’s central theme was building an AI industrial corridor, with a local-first procurement approach and the integration of regional small and medium enterprises into Google’s global operational frameworks.
Every major technology company in the world has been courting India. What sets Vizag apart is the sheer scale of the commitment and the deliberate effort to build an industrial ecosystem around it rather than simply plant servers in a field. Google is not just betting on India’s digital future; it is trying to build the factory floor on which that future gets made. Whether the $15 billion translates into genuine local opportunity, or merely into an impressive data centre humming quietly on the Andhra Pradesh coast, will depend on whether those community programmes prove as durable as the hardware. The groundbreaking, as ever, is the easy part.
