Ad Campaigns
Patanjali Ayurved apologises to SC over misleading ads
MUMBAI: So, finally, India’s leading Ayurveda flagbearer has Patanjali Ayurved has bent its knees. The firm has issued an “unqualified apology” to India’s supreme court about its stance of issuing misleading advertisements and criticism modern medicines. It has assured the court that it will put a full stop to issuing such ads.
The apex court had on 19 March ordered the Swami Ramdevi Acharya Balkrishna owned Patanjali Ayurved to appear before it to clarify the failure to respond to the contempt notice, and misleading advertisements about medicinal cures.
The supreme court had earlier reprimanded the company from issuing false ads and the counsel for the company had on 21 November 2023 assured it that “henceforth there shall not be any violation of any law(s), especially relating to advertising or branding of products manufactured and marketed by it and, further, that no casual statements claiming medicinal efficacy or against any system of medicine will be released to the media in any form.”
But Patanjali Ayurved had continued to do so unafraid which led to the court rapping it hard on its knuckles on 27 February banning it from issuing ads for medicines with misleading claims. It had also slapped the central government on its wrists for “sitting with eyes closed” while the entire country was “taken for a ride.”
The apex court had issued contempt of court notices against both Swami Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna citing flouting of previous court orders by continuing to peddle misleading claims.
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.
