Ad Campaigns
Hotstar launches ‘Koi Yaar Nahi Far’ this VIVO IPL 2019
MUMBAI: Hotstar is poised to elevate the experience for the upcoming VIVO IPL 2019, India’s largest sporting extravaganza. With the motto of ‘Koi Yaar Nahi Far’, the streaming giant is rolling out a first-ever social cricket-watching experience for the new season which kicks off on 23 March 2019.
This year, with ‘Koi Yaar Nahi Far’, Hotstar will bring people together irrespective of their location. Viewers will get the opportunity to invite their friends and family to Hotstar, enabling them to watch the matches and participate in the Watch N’Play game together. Fans will be able to compete and see where they stand against their friends and family through the new social leader board.
They will also be able to make their voices heard by chatting about the match or their Watch N’Play experience, not only with their friends and family, but also with experts and celebrities. In interesting product integration, winners of the Watch N’Play games will be able to redeem their points, courtesy the exclusive partnership with Amazon Pay. The campaign TVC showcasing these features rolls out on 8 March 2019.
As a global first, Hotstar is offering ad targeting for live sports at a scale like never before, making the 12th edition of VIVO IPL an exciting affair for all involved. Advertisers will be able to target 24 different cohorts during the live streaming. Additionally, through contextual branded cards showcasing offers, mini-games, and polls, brands have been provided with a unique opportunity to engage viewers at scale during a live game and be a part of their moments of joy for the entire tournament.
The streaming platform has also partnered with Swiggy to ensure that users don’t miss a single moment of the cricketing action this season. Favourites from the Swiggy Pop menu can be ordered directly from within the Hotstar app, making it extremely convenient for cricket fans across the country.
“In India, cricket is a very intrinsic part of our fabric and IPL over the years has become one of the largest sporting events globally. Last season alone, an astounding 202 mn viewers watched VIVO IPL on Hotstar, and we expect this number to grow tremendously this year,” said Hotstar chief product officer Varun Narang. “The joy of watching cricket is multiplied manifold in the company of friends and family, something that’s becoming increasingly difficult to do today. We wanted to introduce something special to protect that ethos, and added the interactive, social layer to enhance the cricket watching experience. With a strong technology backbone, and an engaging experience for the viewers coupled with disruptive marketing solutions for brands, we are extremely excited to bring VIVO IPL on Hotstar like never before.”
Furthermore, with the intent to take this experience deeper and wider into India, the matches will be streamed across 8 languages, targeting an unprecedented reach of 300 million viewers.
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.
