Ad Campaigns
Shruti Haasan enthralls netizens in new campaign for Hotstar Tamil Nadu
MUMBAI: India’s premium streaming platform, Hotstar, which provides over 85,000 hours of entertainment content in 8 languages in India, is now reaching out to connect with its strong regional language audiences in Tamil Nadu. Hotstar, says it has more than 5600 hours of Tamil content including a large collection of the latest and classic Tamil movies, and popular TV shows, has also announced the uber cool, young rock star of Tamil cinema – Shruti Haasan, as its new brand ambassador.
Expressing delight on her association with Hotstar, brand ambassador Shruti Haasan said, “I am delighted to be associated with Hotstar, the go-to place for people of my generation for entertainment. It is heartening to see that fans of Tamil entertainment too can watch their desired shows and films on Hotstar. I am proud of the fact that, because of Hotstar, India too is on-par with the global audiences in the way we watch our favourite shows, films and sports. It is also heartening to see that, through Hotstar, now my films will be able to reach a much wider audience which is digitally savvy.”
Star India MD- south K Madhavan said, “We have witnessed a tremendous surge in demand for local language content in Tamil Nadu. People here are tech-savvy and in-tune with the most developed countries in the world when it comes to their appetite for entertainment content. While large sections of the audience is already aware of Hotstar’s regional language offerings, Shruti will help us reach out to far more audiences in Tamil Nadu who will be delighted to know that their favorites are available to them at a time of their convenience, and that too absolutely free of cost.”
Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan said, “Ever since the launch in February 2015, Hotstar has established itself as the primary screen for young India. We are the only platform that showcases and curates the best of Tamil movies and TV shows, all for free to our users. We are delighted to extend our offerings to the Tamil entertainment loving audiences, not only in India, but also across the world.”
The launch will be followed by a six-week multi-media campaign featuring the young and bubbly Shruti Haasan across TV, print, outdoor and digital.
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.
