Ad Campaigns
Shane Warne, Greg Matthews in new TV commercial for Advanced Hair Studio, even as Carl Howard throws a challenge
New Delhi, 9 April: Famous cricketer and Advanced Hair Studio’s 12-years brand ambassador Shane Warne and his Australian cricketing spin partner Greg Matthews have starred in a new television commercial for AHS.
The TV commercial was unveiled for the first time at a news conference in East Melbourne.
Though Matthews has been with AHS since 1993 and Warne since 2005, this is the first time they have appeared together in an AHS commercial promoting AHS not just for men but also women.
Meanwhile Carl Howell is also challenging any corporation or cricketing body to play the AHS international cricket team in a charity match. “We’ve a great association with the host of international cricketing stars and I’ve have always wanted to put the whole team together for a good cause. Perhaps in the English or Australian summer 2016/2017 we can make it happen as a charity fundraising initiative” says Howell.
Apart from Sourav Ganguly and Gautam Gambhir from India, cricketing stars who have had their hair replaced or restored with AHS and who are part of the AHS team include Shane Warne (Australia), Darren Gough (England), Jacques Kallis (South Africa), AB De Villiers (South Africa), Graham Gooch (England), Doug Bollinger (Australia), Ravi Bopara (England), Fahaard Behardien (South Africa), Brett Lee (Australia), and Greg Matthews (Australia).
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.
