Ad Campaigns
Taproot creates Airtel Challenge TVC to mark 4G launch
MUMBAI: Creating a buzz amongst Indian techies and netizens lately is the new Airtel 4G TVC. The ad features a duo competing against each other by completing different tasks assigned to them by an adjudicator. They had to use their respective mobile internet connection to complete the tasks. The scene unfolds on the rooftop of a building and the ethnic joint rooftop is filled with people cheering their favourite candidate. The joint roof top and other landscape captured by the camera clearly indicates that the scenes were shot in Delhi.
The entire star cast of the TVC was between 20 – 40 years, which is also the target audience of the TVC.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Taproot co-founder Agnello Dias says, “The video was targeted towards each and every internet user of the country, which mostly comes under 20 – 40 years age group.”
In the TVC, the first task that the two girls were given was to find out about Lucknow station. The girl using Airtel 4G does it before the other one. The next task given was to find out top 10 MBA colleges, which was yet again won by the Airtel 4G user. The last task that was given to them was to download a full movie and the 4G user does it surprisingly fast. The crowd around her is anxious to know her Internet service provider, which she then reveals to be Airtel 4G. The video ends with the 4G user throwing a challenge that if someone has a faster network than Airtel 4G, their one year phone bill will be taken care of.
Speaking on the location of the ad, Dias said, “We wanted the ad to look real and connecting, and hence we selected Delhi as the location. However, just because we shot in Delhi, doesn’t mean that it’s our target city.”
While speed was rapidly talked of, the pricing factor was totally ignored in the communicating video. The adman feels since at this stage the telco is providing 4G at the price of 3G, there was no point showcasing that. “This is the first launch of 4G operations in India and hence the product was more important than pricing,” he said.
The video uploaded a week back already fetched more than 2.5 million on YouTube. “I am amazed by the reaction that we garnered so far from the TVC and I must say that people have liked the TVC,” he says.
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.
