Ad Campaigns
Punit Thakkar brushes off the sugar for colgate’s digital strategy
MUMBAI: Talk about brushing up your portfolio, literally. After over three years of crafting digital strategies for chocolates, biscuits and beverages at Mondelez, Punit Thakkar has made a minty-fresh move. He now steps into the role of business director for Digital (Colgate-Palmolive) at Wavemaker India, leading full-funnel digital media planning for one of the country’s most iconic personal care brands.
Having officially taken the reins in November 2024, Thakkar is now going public with the news classic digital marketer style, a few months fashionably late. “From chocolates to toothpaste, same performance mindset, just fewer cavities,” he quipped in his announcement.
In this role, Thakkar oversees the digital planning team handling brand and commerce campaigns across Colgate verticals. His key focus? Using first-party data from CRM, sampling, and website engagement to build precise audience frameworks and drive sharper ROI. With strategies including lookalike modelling, exclusions, and sequencing, the goal is to optimise both awareness and performance campaigns through smarter targeting and media mix alignment.
Before this, Thakkar led digital for Mondelez India, managing a glittering portfolio that included Cadbury Dairy Milk, Oreo, 5 Star, Silk, and Bournvita. He championed 1P data integration into festive, IPL, and seasonal campaigns, setting benchmarks for eCommerce alignment and funnel mapping across consumer journeys. Prior stints include leading digital for Vodafone Idea and driving performance marketing during his early years at Wavemaker.
With a decade-long track record, Thakkar brings sharp thinking and full-funnel finesse to the oral care giant’s digital playbook now armed with the morning routine of an entire nation. Whether it’s a 7am swish or a late-night scroll, you can bet Punit Thakkar’s campaigns are ready to pop up on your screen, toothbrush in hand.
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.
