The New Year is well underway, offering a moment to reflect on the shifts that defined the past year while considering what lies ahead.
As part of our annual Three Trends series, we asked industry leaders to share the trends they see shaping 2026.
Next, we speak with Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO of ReBid.
Rajiv reflects on the year just passed, highlights a standout trend, and looks ahead to the forces set to shape the year ahead, alongside his favorite campaign of 2025.
Looking Ahead:
What are three trends to look for in the coming year?
1. Attention-Led Branding in a Scroll-First India
In India’s mobile-first, short-form video economy, branding in 2026 will be driven by attention, not just impressions. With Reels, Shorts, CTV, and vernacular creator ecosystems exploding, brands will move beyond reach metrics to optimise for attention quality dwell time, creative resonance, and assisted conversion impact. The winners will be brands that treat branding as a performance input, not a soft, upper-funnel vanity exercise.
2. Agentic AI Moves from Insights to Execution
2026 will be the year Indian marketing teams shift from “AI dashboards” to AI agents that actually operate campaigns. Instead of humans manually interpreting reports, agentic AI systems will continuously analyse creative performance, detect fatigue, spot anomalies, and take actions on bids, budgets, keywords, and creatives in real time. This will fundamentally compress decision cycles in high-velocity categories like BFSI, e-commerce, fintech, and D2C where market conditions change weekly, not quarterly.
3. Connected Data Becomes the Backbone of Brand Building
As DPDP reshapes data usage in India, the brands that win in 2026 will be those that build consent-first, connected data foundations linking media exposure, engagement, offline outcomes, and revenue into a single decision layer. Branding will no longer be evaluated in isolation; it will be optimised alongside demand outcomes. This shift will push Indian brands to unify their media, CRM, CDP, and measurement stacks to finally answer: Which brand investments are actually moving business metrics?
Looking Back:
Your favorite or least favorite trend of 2025?
Favorite: The growing adoption of MMM in India. It nudged marketers to look beyond platform-reported attribution and think in terms of true incrementality.
Least Favorite: Spray-and-pray influencer marketing without performance accountability lots of noise, limited signal.
If you could sum up 2025 in one emoji:
📊
One of your favorite campaigns of 2025:
Swiggy Instamart’s hyperlocal, meme-driven rapid-response campaigns stood out for blending culture, speed, and performance thinking.
Closing thoughts
2026 will belong to brands that combine connected data foundations with agentic AI execution turning digital advertising into a measurable growth engine.
