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Sanmarg CMD Vivek Gupta assumes INS presidency for 2025–26
MUMBAI: Vivek Gupta has turned the page, and this time, it’s for the entire Indian newspaper industry. The managing director and chief group editor of Kolkata-based Hindi daily Sanmarg has been elected president of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) for 2025–26, taking over from MV Shreyams Kumar of Mathrubhumi.
The 86th annual general meeting, held on 25 September via video conferencing, also saw Karan Rajendra Darda of Lokmat elected deputy president, Tanmay Maheshwari of Amar Ujala as vice president, and Anant Nath of Grihshobhika as honorary treasurer. Mary Paul continues as the society’s secretary-general.
INS, the apex body for newspaper, magazine, and periodical publishers in India, has been a barometer of the industry’s pulse for decades. Shreyams Kumar, in his presidential address, praised the resilience of India’s newspaper ecosystem, particularly in a rapidly digitalising world.
Gupta, a former Rajya Sabha MP and current MLA from Jorasanko, expressed his humility and pride. “It is an honour to be among the few from Bengal in INS’s 86-year history to hold this prestigious position. This recognition belongs to the entire Sanmarg family, my colleagues, and well-wishers. I look forward to strengthening the newspaper industry, fostering innovation, and upholding credible journalism,” he said.
The INS executive committee for 2025–26 reads like a who’s who of Indian publishing, including industry stalwarts like S Balasubramanian Adityan (Daily Thanthi), Vijay Kumar Chopra (Punjab Kesari), Viveck Goenka (The Indian Express), Mahendra Mohan Gupta (Dainik Jagran), and Mohit Jain (Economic Times).
With India’s print industry still brimming with potential, Gupta’s leadership comes at a crucial time to balance tradition with modernity. As the sector navigates the hybrid world of print, digital, video, and social media, industry voices like INS will be pivotal in charting the future.
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.
