Ad Campaigns
You may not know Bharat Connect, but you trust it with your bills
Mumbai — NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd. (NBBL), the bill payments arm of the National Payments Corporation of India, has rolled out a sharply observed campaign for its flagship platform, Bharat Connect. The line? ‘Aap Humein Jaante Nahi, Par Maante Hain’ — a nod to how millions use the system daily without ever knowing its name.
Conceptualised by DDB Mudra Group, the campaign focuses on the platform’s omnipresence in everyday digital transactions — from electricity bills and EMIs to insurance and credit card dues — while operating quietly in the background. Bharat Connect is the digital workhorse running through bank apps, fintech interfaces, websites and even assisted channels, powering both recurring and one-time payments with minimal fuss.
Featuring familiar faces such as Puneet Issar, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Sharib Hashmi, Chandan Roy and Gopal Datt, the films unfold through everyday scenarios — slice-of-life moments where the real star is seamless, secure and trustworthy digital infrastructure.
The campaign, which goes live across eleven Indian languages, will hit television, digital, print, radio and out-of-home touchpoints in a full-bodied media blitz. It’s as much about emotional connection as it is about tech prowess.
Speaking about this campaign, NBBL MD & CEO Noopur Chaturvedi said, “Bharat Connect stands as a trusted and inclusive digital infrastructure for bill payments that touches the lives of millions every single day. With this campaign, we aim to make our purpose visible and assure every Indian of ease, safety, and reliability when managing their essential payments. Through relatable instances in this campaign, we aim to reaffirm Bharat Connect’s role in enabling India’s digital future.”
“The insight driving this campaign stemmed from a simple truth: while Bharat Connect powers millions of daily bill payments, its name remains unfamiliar to most. This gap between utility and awareness became the foundation of our narrative — highlighting how a trusted service can be deeply embedded in people’s lives, yet remain invisible,” said DDB Mudra Group Group creative directors Gagandeep Bindra & Rahul Arcot.
With this move, NBBL hopes to bring Bharat Connect out of the shadows and into public consciousness — not by rebranding, but by reminding users that trust is often built silently, swipe by swipe.
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.
