Ad Campaigns
upGrad celebrates unconventional teachers in new campaign
Mumbai: EdTech player upGrad has launched three-film digital campaign to celebrate the role of different kinds of teachers in one’s life. Conceptualised by the brand’s in-house team, the films touch upon the basic realisation that beyond the college faculty and professors, upGrad’s career coaches, mentors, support teams, and even learners themselves play the role of a teacher, and it is their unending guidance that helps one forge the path to success.
The videos have been directed by Pranjal Vaid and produced by Mantavya. Aligned with the message of ‘Life Long Learning’, the campaign takes an emotional approach to depict how peer-to-peer learning and students’ support are critical for learners to drive successful career transitions.
Commenting on the campaign launch, upGrad CEO, Arjun Mohan said, “This is the brainchild of an internal discussion around people who are tasked with guiding and supporting our learners to understand their career aspirations. The team goes that extra mile for our learners to instill confidence and push them to drive positive transitions for themselves. We have also set up the courses in such a way that peer-to-peer discussion accounts for a significant percentage of the scores. This further fosters the habit of discussion and problem-solving. Therefore, at upGrad, we believe that the definition of a teacher is no longer limited to the industry experts teaching the concepts, but it also encompasses peers and student mentors who accompany the learners through their upskilling journey.”
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.
