BENGALURU/MUMBAI: As digital ad budgets become more contested, Amazon is using its 10-year anniversary in India to push a pitch focused on measurable outcomes across platforms.
“The concept of a dominant channel has disappeared,” Girish Prabhu, vice president and head of Amazon Ads India, told Mint in an interview, pointing to how consumer attention is now split across streaming, social, short-form video, and commerce platforms.
For Amazon Ads, this shift has transformed a marketplace-focused product into a broader ecosystem spanning shopping, streaming, and third-party publishers—helping it emerge as a third major player after Google and Meta.
Amazon stood in the third place in terms of monthly active user base of 325 million in December 2025, following Google in the first position at 501 million and (Meta) at 447 million, according to a Ficci-EY report released Tuesday.
Over the past decade, Amazon Ads has linked advertising more closely to shopping behaviour, a strategy it is now doubling down on amid intensifying competition. On Wednesday, the firm rolled out two agentic AI tools: Creative Agent, to help advertisers easily create professional-quality ads, and Ads Agent, to assist sellers in planning, launching, and optimising campaigns.
India’s advertising market continues to grow alongside the media and entertainment sector. Revenues rose 13.5% to about ₹1.5 trillion in 2025, with digital accounting for nearly two-thirds of total ad spend, the report noted.
and point-of-sale advertising grew 50% to ₹220 billion, garnering 23% of total digital advertising as marketers invested in the digital point-of-sale channels such as Amazon, paying premium rates for proximity to buying decisions, the report added.
Full-funnel play
Amazon Ads began by helping sellers get discovered on its platform. “When we started the business, our idea was very simple. There’s millions of products… how do you help get the right product for the right customers at all times on a small screen, like a mobile phone?” Prabhu said.
Since then, the business has expanded to brands outside Amazon, including automotive and financial services. Central to this is a “full-funnel” approach linking awareness and purchase within a single system.
The company combines high-intent shopping signals with reach across Prime Video, , and external publishers, and promotes performance and brand advertising as a unified growth strategy, according to Prabhu.
India as an experimentation ground
India has become a testing ground for mobile-first formats. Amazon MX Player, its free ad-supported streaming service, has around 250 million monthly users. Prabhu said the aim is to convert fragmented content consumption into a structured entertainment environment.
These formats, where video, product discovery, and purchase are combined, have gained traction locally. Other approaches, such as live commerce, are being used more selectively, particularly for product launches and categories where demonstrations matter, he said.
Amazon is also experimenting with integrating brands into content rather than relying solely on traditional ad breaks. This is part of a broader attempt to make advertising less interruptive and more embedded in the user experience. “We are trying to make the entertainment experience better by integrating it together rather than this feeling like an offsite exercise,” Prabhu said.
Many of these experiments are shaped by local behaviour, including mobile-heavy usage and vertical video viewing, which may not directly translate to other markets but are informing Amazon’s global product development, Prabhu added.
Competing on outcomes
Competition for ad budgets is intensifying. Alongside Google and Meta, telecom- and retail-led platforms such as Reliance Jio are building their own offerings. “It’s a highly competitive environment. Things are getting so much more complex. Everyone wants marketers’ budgets,” Prabhu said.
Amazon’s response is to focus less on channels and more on results. “We are less about channel strategies and more about how to drive growth,” he said.
“Digital platforms are driving exponential growth, transforming revenue models and intensifying competition for advertising spends across the sector,” the Ey-Ficci report stated.
“The sector is expected to cross ₹3 trillion in the next couple of years, signalling significant opportunities for growth and value creation,” the report added.
Soumya Gupta contributed to the story.