India’s marketing leadership gathered in Gurugram on September 25, 2026, for ET BrandEquity’s DigiPlus Fest, a one-day summit that has become one of the country’s key barometers for where brand and advertising budgets are heading next. This year’s edition, held at The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel & Residences, put artificial intelligence, connected TV and unified measurement at the centre of the conversation.
Who Showed Up
The summit drew marketing leaders from some of India’s most recognisable consumer brands, including ITC, Dabur, Mamaearth and Relaxo, alongside participation tied to companies like Axis Bank, Motorola, Pernod Ricard India, Scapia and Coca-Cola.
AI-Led Discovery Takes Centre Stage
A major theme running through this year’s sessions was how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way consumers discover products and brands, moving beyond traditional search and social feeds toward AI-driven recommendation and conversational discovery. For marketers, this shift means rethinking not just where ads appear, but how brand content gets surfaced by AI systems in the first place, a challenge several speakers framed as the next major battleground for consumer attention.
Connected TV’s Rapid Rise
Connected TV (CTV), television content streamed over the internet rather than through traditional cable or satellite, emerged as another key focus area. India now counts around 40 million connected-TV users, a number that continues to climb as streaming adoption grows across urban and semi-urban households.
The Push Toward Unified Measurement
With advertising now spread across search, social, connected TV, retail media and the creator economy, marketers at the summit repeatedly returned to a familiar pain point: measurement remains fragmented. Sessions on omnichannel measurement explored how brands are working to build a single, unified view of campaign performance across channels, rather than relying on disconnected metrics from each platform separately.
The Numbers Behind The Conversation
The scale of what’s at stake was reflected in the numbers discussed at the summit, including a reported ₹56,400 crore figure tied to India’s digital advertising economy for FY2026, alongside a 15 per cent growth marker underscoring the pace at which digital budgets continue to expand.
