Ad Campaigns
Zee5’s Hisaab Barabar gets a fresh twist with Paytm’s Soundbox-powered campaign
MUMBAI : Home-grown streaming platform Zee5 has teamed up with Paytm, the trailblazer in mobile payments and Soundbox techy, to launch a groundbreaking promotional campaign for its latest original film, Hisaab Barabar, featuring R. Madhavan.
The campaign, which took place across 100+ cities, including key metro and Hindi-speaking regions, greeted Paytm Soundbox users with personalised audio messages from Madhavan when making payments. The initiative transformed everyday transactions into an engaging film promotion, resonating deeply with audiences and bringing the film’s themes of financial transparency and trust to life.
Hisaab Barabar is a gripping drama focused on the consequences of financial fraud, aligning closely with Paytm’s ethos of promoting accountability in financial transactions. The collaboration showcases how modern technology can blend entertainment with everyday experiences, creating memorable moments for users.
Zee5 vice president of Marketing Shresth Gupta commented, ‘This campaign seamlessly integrates entertainment with daily life, demonstrating how tech innovations can connect brands and consumers in a meaningful way.’
A Paytm spokesperson added: ‘We are excited to see the Soundbox being utilised as a creative marketing tool, proving that technology can transform everyday interactions into impactful experiences.’
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.
