Ad Campaigns
Monster Energy welcomes Indian cricketer Hardik Pandya to the team
Mumbai: Global energy drinks brand Monster Energy has partnered with its first cricketer globally, Indian all-rounder, Hardik Pandya. Hardik will be the new face of the brand in India. He is not only known for his aggression on the cricket field, but also for his unabashed confidence and irreverent attitude off the field. With this association, Monster Energy aims to further inspire the youth of India to become fierce, powerful and self – confident. Hardik will be the first Indian athlete to be signed by the brand.
The brand has teamed up with some of the world’s most accomplished sports personalities to inspire the rising passion for action sports and motorsports across disciplines. These include Ultimate Fighting Championship Superstar, Conor McGregor, MotoGP Legend, Valentino Rossi, 6x Formula One World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, and 6x X-Games gold medalist Jackson Strong, the recent feature in a major video campaign with Monster Energy in India. The brand has also on-boarded a classic mix of sporting heroes pushing boundaries and testing limits in their chosen disciplines.
Hardik Pandya commented, “I’m delighted to be a part of the Monster Energy family. I have always believed in living my passion and following my dream, which is what motivates me to approach every day with the same zeal, energy and fearlessness.”
“I’m glad that Monster Energy also stands for the same philosophy through their collaboration with other sportspersons, which I admire. I look forward to this exciting and cool association,” added Pandya, who is managed exclusively by IMG-Reliance.
John Ludeke, Senior Director of Marketing, Asia said, “Hardik’s supercharged personality and athleticism embody the Monster Energy ethos. With his fearless attitude and aggressive style, he is pushing the boundaries of world cricket which makes him a great fit for the Monster Energy brand.”
For more information please visit https://www.monsterenergy.com/in/en
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.
