Ad Campaigns
GUEST COLUMN: Change of winds – The rise of Online Services in India
Mumbai: The Online Service industry is on a continuous upward path. This industry today contributes as much as eight per cent to the GDP of a fast-growing country like India. Online Services have always been there in the market but in the past two years, it has expanded massively to further sub-categories.
The hybrid working model and growing need to get essentials on your doorsteps drive the demand for Online Services. Some of the major categories that have proven to be a part of individuals in Tier 1 & 2 cities are- Online Education, Software, OTT & Entertainment Platforms, Food Delivery, Grocery, Cleaning Services, and many others counting under it.
Over time, various initiatives have been taken to increase the awareness of usability of these services among consumers, which is rapidly pushing this industry to become profitable and efficient. In an age of regular technological disruption, the need to upgrade and learn new technologies has become a top priority. The Online Services platform has witnessed a 70 per cent growth in 2021 – Rs 46 crore GMV on Admitad platform. The major contributing categories to this growth are Software programs, Education programs, OTT programs, and many others. It has been observed that consumers are favouring these services and including them in their daily life routine.
Let’s dive deep into the top two categories of Online Services which we have observed during this year.
Software Programs
With no surprise, Software Programs are one of the key drivers of success in the digital world. Whether you’re focused on B2B or B2C, or both, there is no denying that you’re in a lucrative playing field. 2021 saw the emergence of the Software Programs as more and more end-users started using different software and applications to assist them in their day-to-day work from home. Norton, BigRock, GoDaddy, HostGator, Namecheap, Tenorshare, Mcafee, & Easeus are some of the top online software platforms to name a few. The growing need to secure cloud platforms, amid the growing incidence of cyber-attacks and hacking, drives demand for security softwares. With more visibility in this category, publishers have witnessed their traffic getting converted into revenue with an overall growth of 12x.
E-Learning Programs
The upswing in the E-learning space has created a lot of buzz around this year. To achieve career growth and add value to their knowledge, working professionals in India are focusing on skill development. Post the pandemic, 2020 saw the rise of Online Education & E-learning as a service but it boomed in 2021. We saw an immense amount of traffic getting redirected to the Education programs. More and more loyal partners, banks, telegrammers focused their traffic on driving the Online Education programs. We saw an overall growth in the Education category by 4.5x. This category offers an opportunity for the publishers to thrive as we have seen more and more educational programs getting live by the Year-end. Brands like Edureka, Unacademy, Harappa, Udemy, Skillshare, Top rankers have been the top contenders in the E-learning segment and have offered the best for their users.
Impact of Affiliate Channel on Online Services
Looking at the demand & market trend, these brands are trying to find cost-effective channels to reach out to the end-users and to create and execute strong growth strategies in order to get ahead and rise above the competition. To leverage such marketing strategies, companies have started adapting performance-driven channels. Besides targeting a higher number of audiences, they are conscious about their ad spending, and to maximise their ROI, they are heavily spending on the cost-effective channel – ‘Affiliate’. It allows brand marketers to capture the market to the fullest and utilise the different Affiliate inventories to target all sets of audiences. Online Services Programs generated GMV worth 46 crores through Admitad platform. The major contributing partners to this growth are Cashback 43 per cent, Social Affiliate 36 per cent, Coupon five per cent Content 10 per cent Email two per cent and four per cent others in the current year.
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The Online Service market has tremendous potential now and surely in near future and with the growing use of the internet, companies are creating more unique opportunities to reach every region and every potential customer. Even in the pandemic we have seen how they have created great services and reach every person to satisfy their needs and demands.
(Neha Kulwal is country manager at Admitad India. The views expressed in this column are personal and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)
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.
