Ad Campaigns
Ola makes case for itself using Diwali’s pollution concern
MUMBAI: In order to encourage people to curb noise and air pollution, not only during Diwali but all the year round, Ola rolled out its digital campaign ‘Big Festival Small Step’. With more and more people taking cognisance of pollution around Diwali, Ola’s latest campaign seeks to keep the conversation around rising pollution and decreasing air quality alive throughout the year. The company puts forth the ideas of sharing rides and greener commuting as small steps towards making a big difference.
Ola also flagged off a year-long campaign titled #FarakPadtaHai on World Environment Day, 5th June 2017 to create awareness around shared mobility in the country. The company recently launched a much-acclaimed TVC on the same during Independence Day.
Ola senior director of marketing Mudit Shekhawat says, “The campaign asks people to take a small step on this big festival. Designed in the typography style, the video questions the rise in concern over pollution during Diwali and urges people to keep the concern all 365 days of the year. Bursting firecrackers or not is a matter of choice and the video uses the same power of choice to encourage people to choose to take a step against pollution all year around.”
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.
