India’s biggest shopping window is officially open. The festive sales are live, and despite economic uncertainty and rising prices, this season is expected to be bigger than the last.

Around 15.8 crore Indians are expected to shop this festive season, 14.5% more than last year. To match that demand, brands are set to spend around ₹60,000 crore on festive advertising, 15–20% more than in 2025.

Much of that money will go where it always does. Search and social took 64% of India’s digital ad revenue in 2025, and festive budgets tend to follow the same habit.

But are your shoppers still discovering brands only on those channels? A decade ago, a marketer could have said yes with confidence. Today, the answer is no.

The shopper has changed

Ten years ago, shoppers had fewer choices and fewer touchpoints, and a family of five often shared a single device. Today, each member of that family has screens of their own: smartphones, smart TVs, laptops and tablets. A shopper now moves across a dozen screens and surfaces in a single day.

Advertising has changed with them. Brands can now appear on a smartphone’s lock screen, or on the smart TV the family is watching, a screen increasingly connected to the phones in their hands. For any festive campaign, those two screens hold the biggest untapped opportunity.

Who you’re really talking to

Many festive media plans are still built around an old picture of the Indian shopper: someone in a big city, glued to one screen, who makes up their mind once the sale begins. That picture no longer holds. Before deciding where your budget should go, it’s worth taking a closer look at who you’re really trying to reach.

They’re from everywhere – Online shopping is no longer a metro story. In 2025, 60–65% of India’s festive online shoppers came from Tier 2 cities and smaller towns.

They live on multiple screens – The smartphone is a constant companion, and connected TV is now in roughly 6.2–6.5 crore Indian homes, three times as many as in 2022. Through the day, they also switch between laptops, tablets and other smart devices.

They arrive half-decided – By the time a sale opens, many shoppers already have a shortlist, sometimes the exact product in mind. That intent builds as they move between screens: a product discovered on CTV over dinner, an ad on the phone during the break, a price check the next morning on a browser, a purchase on a retail app by lunch.

The journey is no longer linear, so brands that are present across screens can shape the decision at every stage, not just at the final click.

The festive premium

When every advertiser defaults to the walled gardens at the same time, prices rise. During festive peaks, CPMs typically climb 20–40% and CPCs can rise roughly fourfold. Brands end up paying more to reach the same shopper their competitors are reaching, in the same moment, with the same format.

There’s a quieter cost too. In a feed or on a search results page, your brand has to wait for the shopper to come to it, then compete with every other ad and listing for a few seconds of their scroll. And by the time a shopper searches, their shortlist is often already made. The brands on it got there earlier.

Device-level advertising changes that. Instead of waiting to be found in a feed, brands can show up on the screens themselves: the smart TV the family watches together, and the phone’s own surfaces, such as the lock screen, the keyboard and the app store. That puts your brand in front of the shopper while their intent is still forming, not after it has settled.

Search, social and marketplaces still belong in the plan. But your next currency may work harder on screens where you don’t have to outbid everyone to be seen.

A four-step festive playbook with Affinity

Connected TV has outgrown its early days. India’s CTV audience reached 20.69 crore users in 2026, up 60% in a single year. Your shopper’s journey now runs across screens, and Affinity is built to follow it.

Affinity partners directly with leading smartphone and TV makers, browsers and premium apps. That gives brands access to device-level inventory on multiple screens through one partner: placements built into the devices themselves, not bought one platform at a time. Here’s how that comes together across a festive campaign.

1. Spark interest on the big screen – Families gather around the TV in the evening; over 80% of CTV viewing is shared, for nearly three hours a day, with two or three people watching each ad. Affinity’s CTV inventory puts your brand at the forefront while shortlists are still forming. Its immersive CTV formats go beyond the standard video spot. Benchmarked against more than 3,000 global campaigns in Kantar’s database, they have delivered over 3x higher brand favourability and purchase intent.
2. Follow up on the second screen, right away – Nearly nine in ten CTV viewers use another device while watching. Affinity connects the two screens, so households that saw your CTV ad can be retargeted on their phones the same evening through in-app placements and notifications. Shoppable formats like QR codes let viewers act in the moment.
3. Stay top of mind the next morning – Interest fades quickly unless the brand shows up again. Through its smartphone manufacturer partnerships, Affinity gives brands access to the phone’s first moments: the lock screen, the minus-1 screen and the browser start page, seen dozens of times a day before any app is opened. No single phone brand holds more than 23% of India’s market, so buying these surfaces maker by maker is slow. With Affinity, it’s one route across multiple manufacturers.
4. Be there when they start looking – Once the shopper starts exploring a category, intent shows up in small actions: words typed on the keyboard, a browse through the app store. Affinity’s native keyboard and app store placements catch that intent as it forms, before the shopper reaches a marketplace page full of competing listings.

Together, CTV and mobile make a winning festive combination. Brands such as Mahindra, LG and L’Oréal have run this combination with Affinity, recording brand-lift gains of around 9–12% across awareness, trust, recommendation and purchase intent.

Make your next festive campaign count

Whether it’s Diwali, Christmas, New Year or an end-of-season sale, the pattern holds; the purchase decision takes shape long before the final click. It starts on the TV the family gathers around and builds on the phone in the shopper’s hand, flowing through the OS itself and the browsers and apps within it. Brands that wait to be found at the end of that journey pay a premium for a seat at a crowded table. Brands that show up while intent is still forming are the ones that stand out.

Before you lock in your next festive plan, ask four questions:

Where does discovery really happen in your category?

If shoppers find products on their TV and phone days before they search, a plan built only on search and social starts too late.

Are you reaching new shoppers, or the same ones again?

Festive budgets grow every year, but incremental reach comes from screens and audiences your competitors aren’t crowding into, especially beyond the metros.

Do your screens work together?

A CTV campaign and a mobile campaign planned separately are two-line items. Connected, they become one journey that can be retargeted and measured from first view to final purchase.

Can you prove what worked?

Judge every currency on the new reach, audience quality and brand lift it delivers, not on how familiar the channel feels.

If you can answer these questions confidently, you’re ready to excel this season. You’ll spend smarter and carry that advantage into every festive moment that follows.

Sources – The Economic Times, dentsu India, via BestMediaInfo, FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment Report 2026, via Storyboard18, Redseer, MediaBrief, Storyboard18, The Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2026, Omdia