As 2025 winds down, the noise around new tech, shifting consumer expectations, and evolving media habits can feel overwhelming. Yet underneath all of it, a clear pattern is taking shape. Brands are beginning to rethink how they operate, how they speak to audiences, and how they build trust in a world where attention is scattered and loyalty is fragile.
This year’s landscape made one thing obvious: growth is coming from unexpected places. Whether it’s regional-language users reshaping the funnel, AI tightening internal workflows, or formats like CTV quietly maturing in the background, the next wave of opportunity looks less like a trend and more like a structural shift in how marketing gets done.
To understand what will truly matter in 2026, we asked industry leaders to call out the one opportunity they believe will play a far bigger role in shaping the future. Their answers map a clear view of what’s rising and what’s worth preparing for now.
The rise of vernacular-first, AI-driven localisation
One of the most urgent shifts is happening in language. With India’s next wave of internet users coming from non-English-speaking regions, localisation has moved from an option to an essential growth lever.
Abhinav Iyer, Senior General Manager – Marketing & Strategy at Muthoot Finance, sees this as one of the decade’s most defining opportunities.
“I think the one big defining opportunity in coming times would be vernacular plus regional-first marketing powered by AI localisation.
India has approximately 1 billion internet users presently with rural areas driving growth. The next 200–300 million internet users are going to be regional-language first. These users will consume content, search, shop, and trust brands in their native languages. Brands that localize deeply — not just translate — will tap into the biggest growth segment of the decade.”
His point hints at a larger transformation. Growth will belong to brands that treat language not as a translation problem, but as a cultural one.
In-housing as a new model of partnership
On the advertising side, another structural shift is gaining speed.
Rohan Mehta at Omnicom Advertising India sees 2026 as a pivotal year for in-house capability building.
“Brands are producing more content than ever, and the pace has outgrown traditional briefing and approval cycles. With AI, better data access, and sharper internal workflows, many clients are ready to bring certain capabilities closer to their core teams.
This shift creates a powerful role for agencies willing to evolve. The opportunity is not in resisting in-housing, but in shaping it. Clients need partners who can consult, build systems, operate them through the transition period, and eventually hand over mature capabilities. A consult–build–operate–transfer model strengthens the partnership and places the agency at the heart of the client’s transformation.
The value we bring is experience. We understand creative quality, organisational design, platform dynamics, and the tools that actually work at scale. Our role is to help clients define their needs, evaluate the right tech and AI tools, define the workflows, build internal capability, and train teams to run these systems confidently. It blends the speed of in-house execution with the strategic depth of an external partner.
Every structural shift creates space for a stronger partnership. When clients rethink how they work, it opens a powerful opportunity for us to deepen our influence by helping build what comes next.”
His point is clear: in-housing won’t weaken agency relationships; it will redefine them.
Behaviour-tech will redefine how people invest
If regionalisation is rewriting the way India consumes, the financial sector is undergoing its own reset.
Abhik Sanyal, Head of Marketing at DSP Mutual Fund, says the real breakthrough isn’t product innovation or market prediction, it’s the human mind.
“I’ve realised over the years that it’s not the making of money that trips us up, our own habits do. That’s why I think the real breakthrough in investing will be institutionalising behaviour-tech. Not predicting markets, but helping people understand themselves. Imagine being able to discover and learn from your own pattern – not what you said, but what you did. The moments you acted out of fear, or greed, or impatience, or confusion, despite always claiming you were long-term! When you see yourself clearly, you make gentler, wiser decisions. Your discipline improves without anyone lecturing you. Wealth grows almost as a by-product. It’s basically emotional awareness, but for your finances – and that’s the future we’re moving toward.”
His view captures a larger trend: data is becoming more introspective. As financial literacy grows, emotional literacy may become just as important.
Connected TV and Short-Form Video Drive Next-Level Advertising
While structural shifts unfold on the brand side, the media ecosystem is going through its own evolution.
Mete Bargmann, Senior Director, Business Development, International at Magnite believes 2026 will be a defining year for premium video and connected TV.
“Looking ahead to 2026, I believe India’s digital advertising landscape will be shaped by three key forces: the growing maturity of CTV infrastructure, the rise of micro-drama and short-form premium video, and the shift toward unified ad-serving and programmatic mediation. As smart TV adoption and broadband access expand, CTV is positioned to become a performance-driven, scalable channel, aided by the growth of engaging formats like Home Screen and Pause ads that capture viewer attention at key moments. At the same time, India’s mobile-first audiences are driving demand for short-form formats, which is likely to give rise to greater investment in creative strategies and contextual tools. As each of these grow in scale, unified ad-serving will play a pivotal role in simplifying fragmented publisher tech stacks, streamlining monetization across channels, and unlocking new efficiencies for advertisers.”
His views highlight that the combination of CTV, short-form video, and unified ad-serving marks a turning point, as India’s video consumption matures into a premium, performance-driven ecosystem, creating new opportunities for advertisers to engage audiences effectively.
AI grows from experimentation to enterprise-scale impact
While most 2026 discussions centre on media formats and platform shifts, there’s another force reshaping the industry from within: the growing maturity of AI.
Dipika Parulekar, Global Head of Field & Partner Marketing at Tredence frames this evolution in a way that brings together both the technology and the people it’s meant to elevate.
“By 2026, the most powerful opportunity will be the rise of AI becoming a strategic growth driver that truly works with people, amplifying judgment, accelerating insight, and freeing teams to focus on what matters most. We’re moving from experimentation to thoughtful, scaled adoption where trustworthy data, governance, and responsible design become differentiators. As organizations modernize their data foundations and governance, they will be able to deploy AI at scale and have AI agents collaborate with humans across the value chain – acting as strategic co-pilots driving stronger decisions, better customer outcomes, and more agile, resilient businesses.”
Dipika’s view suggests that the biggest unlock may come from how well organisations prepare their data, teams, and systems to support scaled AI. In essence, the industry isn’t just changing what it does, it’s changing how it thinks and how decisions will be made in the years ahead.
A closing outlook for 2026
As different as these viewpoints are, they all circle back to the same larger truth: the next phase of growth won’t come from familiar playbooks. It will come from deeper cultural understanding, sharper self-awareness, more adaptive structures, and technology that amplifies and does not replace human judgment.
