Ad Campaigns
Irrfan Khan promotes Digital India in new Mastercard campaign
Aimed at accelerating the country’s shift from cash to digital payments, Mastercard has launched ‘KhulGayiLife’, a new marketing campaign. The campaign will further strengthen the company’s digital payments efforts in the metros with an increased focus on the tremendous opportunity that sits within the nation’s tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Commenting on the launch of #KhulGayiLife, Manasi Narasimhan Vice-President, Marketing and Communications said “Mastercard has always been at the forefront of creating a trusted payment gateway and is leading the effort to build a digitally empowered socio-economic ecosystem. We have been supporting the Indian Government’s agenda of establishing India as a cashless society through our technology solutions, partnerships and investments in the country. To further accelerate the acceptance of digital payments, we have launched #KhulGayiLife, our latest marketing campaign. Through this, we aim to reach out to consumers across metros and tier 2 and tier 3 cities over the next few months. We are confident that this campaign will bring forth the true potential of digital payments thus establishing Debit Cards as a safe and secure payment option.”
The Indian economy has traditionally been cash dependent. However, demonetisation and government incentives for adopting digital payments have triggered an all-time high awareness about various alternative payment systems and exposed various cash users to the ease of using digital systems. Mastercard is fully committed to government initiatives like Make in India, Digital India and Skill India. The #KhulGayiLife campaign showcases the convenience of using digital transactions across internet banking, mobile wallets, debit cards, mobile and QR codes etc and for everyday uses such as tolls and transits, for utility bills, grocery, fuel, among others. The publicity strategy is aimed at mass audiences across all cities.
The campaign film has been created by leading advertising agency McCann. Bollywood superstar Irrfan Khan has also been signed on as face of the campaign as he truly typifies the modern face of Tier 2 India. A creative TVC that is already on air and has the actor creating personal connections with consumers as the campaign runs its course to increase preference for debit cards across audiences in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
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.
