Ad Campaigns
UFO Moviez grabs exclusive ads on 239 Miraj screens
MUMBAI: UFO Moviez is swallowing up screen space. The Mumbai-based advertising giant has struck a strategic alliance with Miraj Cinemas, India’s third-largest exhibition chain, securing exclusive advertising rights across 239 screens in 49 cities and 72 locations.
The partnership catapults UFO’s total cinema advertising network beyond 4,000 screens, cementing its dominance as India’s largest integrator of in-cinema inventory. More crucially, it pushes UFO’s multiplex screen portfolio past 2,500, reinforcing its stranglehold on the country’s most lucrative advertising real estate.
UFO Moviez executive director and group chief executive Rajesh Mishra called the deal “an important milestone” that strengthens reach across key tier-one and tier-two markets. The tie-up marries Miraj’s nationwide footprint with UFO’s advertising muscle, creating what both companies reckon will be irresistible opportunities for brands hunting impact at scale.
UFO already commands eyeballs like few others. Its network reaches 1.8 billion viewers annually across 1,346 cities, spanning 2,279 multiplex screens and 1,516 single screens as of September. The company pioneered cinema digitisation in India using satellite technology and now runs an end-to-end service for all cinema solutions. Its global network, including subsidiaries and associates, covers 3,598 screens.
Miraj Cinemas, known for state-of-the-art projection, sound technology and rapid expansion, brings a prized portfolio to the table. As part of the Miraj Group, it has built a reputation for immersive entertainment environments and customer service that keeps punters coming back.
For advertisers, the maths is simple: more screens, more seats, more viewers. For UFO, the alliance is another step towards total market control. In India’s booming cinema landscape, the biggest screen network just got bigger.
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.
