By Delphin Varghese
The period of throwing generic ads at India's digital and diverse landscape is definitively over. For brands working in a market characterized by extreme diversity - dozens of languages, different regional cultural contexts, varying income levels, different digital fluency - AI is not only a trend, it is the engine for the performance marketing future. In this future, hyper-personalization creates campaigns that speak to individuals and yields several metrics resulting in remarkably increased engagement, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI) for Indian businesses.
The inherent complexity represented in India mean traditional methods of segmentation through wider demographics - such as age or location - are much too broad. A campaign that attracts a tech-savvy millennial in Mumbai may be completely irrelevant to a value-driven homemaker in Kanpur or even a fledgling work professional in Coimbatore that wants content in Tamil. Performance marketing demands precision or reaching the right user at the right time that converts. This kind of precision is possible because aIs are able to take large, complex data sets - from browsing behaviour, purchase history, app usage, forms of socializing, and even context like local festivals or the weather - and distill them into actionable recommendations in real-time. This example illustrates to potential of aIs towards how campaigns are created and delivered.
Envision advertising in a world where ads are adaptable in real-time; an AI-enabled tech system can look at a user profile and show an ad for a saree: take for example someone in Kolkata around Durga Puja may see an advertisement promoting Baluchari silk in Bengali, while a user in Chennai around Diwali may see a promotion for Kanjeevaram silk in Tamil - all in the same ad placement. This is the scale of AI-powered Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO). Not only does AI do creative optimization but it can also do predictive audience targeting, using subtle patterns in the user's history to understand which users are most likely to convert. For example, browsing for competitive products or researching specific features, specifically given the nature of India's fragmented online behaviors. AI can hyper-optimize in suggesting bids and budget deployment across channels such as Search, Social, Display, Video, and Affiliates in real-time so that you can deliver value at the lowest cost possible during a time when most marketing budgets are stretched. AI can even predict where individuals may drop off in the funnel, and recommend a personalized intervention by triggering an appropriate product recommendation or a discount for example, enabling the user to convert, while facilitating a seamless journey for the individual. With the explosion of India's internet growth driven by non-English and voice users, AI, through Natural Language Processing (NLP), can now help understand search intent in Hinglish or regional language word combinations, optimize content, and enable experiences that are voice-driven to make performance marketing more inclusive.
The effect this creates is very real throughout India's digital economy. E-commerce giants Flipkart and Meesho leverage AI to personalize product recommendations, search recommendations, and notifications to that individual's unique behavior, which has resulted in increased conversions for events like the Big Billion Days. Fintech innovators like CRED or Paytm using AI to personally optimize interest rate suggestions on loan offers, credit card options, and investment advice based on distinct user financial footprints. FMCG and retail giants like Hindustan Unilever or Reliance Retail (JioMart) efficiently optimize digital ad spend at a regional level, and develop personalize offers in conjunction with local festival and buying patterns, and accurately predict hyper-local surges in demand during these periods. Travel companies like MakeMyTrip and OYO incorporate AI to deliver highly relevant travel and holiday packages and hotel deals based on past behavior, presumed budget preferences and spending.
An AI-driven future brings significant hurdles. Organizations must work within Indias shifting Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act and use data responsibly; real transparency and truly informed consent cannot be optional. Access to solid data infrastructure and skilled AI professionals still varies widely from city to village. Vigilance is also needed to stop models from copying deep-seated social biases, so thoughtful design and ongoing review are essential.
Marketing on the Indian subcontinent is advancing to another space, using artificial intelligence, and the transition feels more initiated than an experimentation. Algorithms are practically skimming large quantities of customer data in real time and converting major segment demographics into complete images of single shoppers. When brands utilize this sort of insight, an average banner ad could easily morph into a note from a friend who actually knows the recipient. Hyper-personalized messaging of that sort pulls eyeballs, trims wasted rupees, and eventually earns a seat at the kitchen table-common ground that most companies dream about. Many observers now claim that AIs segment-of-one approach is no longer speculative chatter; it is the lively present tense of Indian performance marketing. Professionals eager to dive in report that audiences are responding, sometimes within minutes, and almost always with consequence.
(The author is Delphin Varghese, Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer, AdCounty Media, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
