Ad Campaigns
Spotify India’s new ads are for the international music aficionados
NEW DELHI: To celebrate the growing culture of international music, Spotify had launched its ‘Listening Together’ campaign a few months ago and has now launched the campaign in India.
To kickstart the campaign globally, Spotify introduced the Listening Together microsite in May, highlighting the power of audio and how it brings us closer together in a time when many of us are feeling apart. The microsite is a visualisation of listening connections in real-time in a way that has never been done before.
The campaign in India stems from the insight on how music is synonymous with life, and listeners across the country are listening to similar tracks in similar situations of their lives. With playlists such as ‘Today’s Top Hits’ with more than 25 million followers, ‘Global Top 50’ at over 15 million followers, and ‘Rock Classics’ with over 8 million followers globally, Spotify is bringing listeners and communities together in moments, and across emotions.
“This campaign highlights a growing culture in India where our local users are streaming the very best of music that others across the world are listening to. No matter one’s age or location, Spotify’s 4 billion playlists are the ultimate destination for all kinds of music lovers to make the music a part of their daily lives. And we have seen this with the growing popularity of playlists like Global Top 50, Today’s Top Hits, and even the old school Rock Classics, all of which have millions of followers globally,” said Spotify head of marketing India Neha Ahuja.
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.
