Festive ad rush puts Amazon’s new tools to test

Indian consumers are preparing for a bumper festive season, and advertisers are lining up to catch their attention. At an on-ground event held in Mumbai, Amazon Ads positioned itself as a central player in that equation, unveiling new product features and highlighting case studies from brands that have experimented with its offerings. The focus, consistent with previous years, was on how digital tools can help businesses of all sizes navigate the highly competitive run-up to Diwali.

The backdrop is one of heightened consumer optimism. According to Amazon Ads’ annual festive survey, conducted with YouGov, nearly 60% of respondents intend to shop for gifts this Diwali, while 54% plan to buy for themselves or their homes.

Crucially, 60% expect to spend more than last year. For marketers, the survey surfaced another telling datapoint: 84% of shoppers say they will explore new brands, giving challengers as much of an opening as incumbents.

“SMBs especially can engage with consumers considering their products because of the product’s feature sets and benefits,” said Kapil Sharma, director for Amazon Ads. He pointed to another consumer shift—42% of shoppers are ready to purchase more expensive products than usual.

“A key insight is that Amazon remains the preferred choice for most consumers looking for aspirational upgrades. 66% consider Amazon to explore new products and new brands,” Sharma said.

Expanding the advertising toolkit

To match the scale of consumer demand, Amazon Ads spotlighted two significant product rollouts: Sponsored TV and Creative Studio. Launched in India in March 2025, Sponsored TV is billed as a self-service video ad solution.

Traditionally, video advertising has been dominated by large brands with the budgets to run linear TV campaigns and the resources to create assets. Sponsored TV attempts to shift that model. It enables brands—particularly small and medium businesses—to run video ads on Amazon MX Player, which the company says reaches more than 25 crore monthly viewers.

Kapil Sharma, director for Amazon Ads

“There were multiple steps required to create a video asset, and it was also difficult to measure the effectiveness of those campaigns,” Sharma said. “Sponsored TV addressed these challenges, enabling brands to reach out to consumers and increase their reach. It’s a self-service solution, with creative support, and no minimum spend required.”

The product relies on what Amazon describes as “trillions of shopping and streaming signals” to target audiences more precisely. Advertisers can place ads against genre cohorts such as comedy, fantasy, anime or drama. Brands looking at higher-intent groups can tap into Prime Video audiences, segmented into profiles like early adopters, tech enthusiasts or fashion-forward consumers.

The second tool, Creative Studio, leverages generative AI to build advertising assets. According to Sharma, it “reduces the effort to create compelling and impactful creatives that can engage with consumers in a meaningful way.”

Using text prompts, advertisers can generate and refine images, reformat them into different aspect ratios, and apply stylistic controls such as lighting, shadows and tone. Amazon pitches the tool as a way for resource-constrained brands to test, iterate and publish creatives faster.

Cutting through the clutter

The event also showcased brands that have leaned heavily on Amazon Ads in their growth journeys. For Shruti Kedia Daga, co-founder of Nasher Miles, the association is foundational. “The company exists because Amazon does,” she said.

Shruti Kedia Daga, co-founder of Nasher Miles.

Nasher Miles, which started as a direct-to-consumer luggage brand, credits Amazon’s category teams for enabling its launch. “We’ve reached where we are because we took advantage of the full funnel marketing strategy that Amazon gives to every brand on the platform,” Daga said.

The brand has deployed Amazon’s advertising stack across formats, including DSP, Sponsored Ads and retargeting. “We use a lot of insights that Amazon Ads gives to get our targeting really sharp,” she noted.

One example was during the brand’s appearance on Shark Tank India Season 3, where it secured an ‘All-Shark’ deal. Nasher Miles supplemented its national exposure with a tailored Amazon Ads campaign.

“We honestly saw growth in monthly run rate at that time thanks to the campaign,” Daga said. “The search volume increased over 7X. We were amongst the top search luggage brands on Amazon during that period. Back in 2017 when we started to where we are today, we’ve seen a CAGR of over 60% year on year, and Amazon has been a great platform to really create a brand.”

Testing Sponsored TV

Legacy players are also experimenting with Amazon’s new tools. Abhishek Pandey, ecommerce head at Bajaj Consumer Care, described the company’s attempt to reposition its flagship product, Bajaj Almond Drops Hair Oil, for younger audiences.

“Amazon has been a very distinctive partner with us with respect to transforming ourselves into the new age consumer-centric brand domain,” Pandey said, pointing to the firm’s entry into shampoos, lotions, serums and soaps.

The trigger for experimenting with Sponsored TV came from Nikita Bakshi, marketing lead at Bajaj Almond Drops, who proposed using the new format to build top-of-mind awareness. Pandey called it “a consideration improvement exercise” and said the results were “very fruitful.”

Bakshi outlined the challenge: “Many have heard of Bajaj Almond Drops and are aware of its distinctive bottle. But it was important for us to build recall and make sure that the right messaging reaches the right consumers.”

The brand tested a TVC about modern-day stress and hair health, targeting audiences through Amazon’s first-party insights. “There were two major reasons I was excited about Sponsored TV,” Bakshi said. “One was obviously the first-party signals that we’ve all heard about, and the second was the full funnel data that we get.”

She contrasted it with past video collaborations on YouTube and OTT platforms. “What happens is that when it redirects these ads to Amazon and gets limited database tags, I actually don’t know what is happening to the audience we’ve sent. There was a big gap. With Sponsored TV, I can see if my branded searches have gone up, if they’ve purchased the product, or if they’ve spent time on my product detail pages.”

The experiment generated some granular learnings. Romance genres delivered stronger results than comedy, and young professionals emerged as a more responsive audience than natural beauty seekers. “This helps us frame strategies,” Bakshi said. “We saw a 45% increase in unique visitors. My organic ranking on Amazon improved, and it overall helps my business.”

She added that the campaign had “a very high engagement rate” and that the self-service nature of Sponsored TV made it easier to analyse performance. “Now we’re actually discussing how to make Sponsored TV a part of our BAU [business-as-usual] strategy,” Bakshi said.

Balancing opportunity and risk

The Amazon Ads event painted a picture of optimism: rising consumer spending, expanding digital reach, and tools designed to democratise advertising. Yet the conversation also highlighted tensions that agency professionals will recognise.

First, as with most digital platforms, there is the question of data opacity. While products like Sponsored TV promise sharper attribution, advertisers remain dependent on Amazon’s definitions of signals and measurement. Second, the concentration of spend on platforms like Amazon raises questions of over-reliance, particularly for D2C brands whose growth is tied to a single marketplace.

Abhishek Pandey, ecommerce head at Bajaj Consumer Care.

For large incumbents like Bajaj, Amazon’s ad products offer an additional lever in a diversified marketing mix. For younger companies like Nasher Miles, however, the platform is more existential. Daga was candid. “We exist because Amazon does,” she said.

From an industry perspective, the broader trend is clear. As generative AI begins to reshape creative processes and self-service video lowers the barrier to entry, brands will increasingly test these tools not just for reach but for efficiency. Whether these experiments translate into sustainable, long-term brand equity remains to be seen.

Setting up for a busy festive season

For agencies advising brands this festive season, Amazon Ads’ pitch boils down to two words: scale and precision. The scale comes from MX Player’s 25 crore monthly reach and the high-intent audiences of Prime Video. The precision lies in the use of first-party signals, generative AI creative tools and full-funnel attribution.

Yet effectiveness depends not only on technology but also on creative and strategic choices. As Bakshi’s experience illustrates, knowing which genres or cohorts to target can shape outcomes significantly. And as Daga’s case shows, brand-building requires consistent investment beyond momentary spikes in attention.

The consumer survey findings—that shoppers are prepared to spend more, explore new brands and trade up to premium categories—set the stage for a busy festive season. Amazon Ads has positioned itself as a partner in that shift, arming marketers with tools designed to bridge awareness and conversion.

Whether the market embraces these solutions at scale will depend less on Amazon’s promises and more on how advertisers balance short-term efficiency with long-term brand resilience. For agencies and marketers navigating the Diwali surge, the message from this year’s event was unambiguous: the competition for consumer attention will be fierce, and the margins of advantage may lie in how effectively brands adapt these new tools to their own playbooks.