Branded content 2025: Where India is ahead, and where it needs to catch up

New Delhi: If 2025 proved one thing, it is that branded content is no longer a “nice-to-have” around a media plan. It is the plan. The strongest work this year looked less like advertising output and more like a repeatable system that combines creators, communities, distribution, and measurable outcomes.

India enters 2026 with an advantage that global marketers now talk about openly: Scale. A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report this year estimated India has 2–2.5 million monetised creators influencing $350–400 billion in consumer spending, with creator-influenced consumption projected to cross $1 trillion by 2030. That one data point explains why global branded content playbooks are increasingly being tested, rebuilt, and stress-tested in India.

From one-off films to long-term platforms

The global shift that mattered most in 2025 was away from one-off “big films” and toward long-running platforms that can be refreshed, localised, and scaled without losing their core idea. Cannes Lions’ Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix, going to Apple’s “Shot on iPhone”, was not just another award headline; it was a signal that the industry is rewarding compounding value over short-term novelty.

What India can take from this is discipline. Many Indian brands still behave like every campaign needs a new universe. The global playbook is to pick a durable truth, build a format around it, and keep improving the format rather than reinventing the proposition every quarter.

What the world can take from India is frequency management. Indian marketing already runs on “chapters” around cricket, festivals, and entertainment moments. The opportunity is to turn that natural cadence into platforms that travel across regions and languages without becoming repetitive.

Creator-led, but run like a system

Creator marketing in 2025 moved from relationships to infrastructure. The point was not just “use creators”; it was “build creator supply chains.” TikTok’s Branded Mission is a clean example of the product direction: brands crowdsource creator content, identify top-performing videos, and turn them into ads at scale. 

LinkedIn pushed the same logic in a different segment. Its BrandLink expansion brought creators and publishers into a more television-like model, where brands can sponsor creator-led shows and publishers share in pre-roll revenue. 

India’s lesson here is governance. Scale is not the same as reliability. If India wants more global budgets to flow into creator-led branded content, it needs stronger operating standards: clearer usage rights, disclosure discipline, brand safety checks, and consistent measurement that marketers and finance teams can trust.

The global lesson from India is efficiency and localisation. India already knows how to build creator rosters across languages and cities, at a cost base that makes always-on possible. That operating model is now relevant for markets where creator costs have inflated, and content fatigue is rising.

Content-to-commerce becomes a real pipeline

In 2025, “shoppable content” stopped being a buzzword and started being an operating assumption. Platforms made it clear that commerce requires trust systems, not just checkout buttons. TikTok Shop’s own Safety and IPR reporting for July–December 2024 underlined how much enforcement has become part of the commerce story. 

For India, this is a major branded content opening. The rails are strong: UPI, delivery density, and comfort with digital discovery. What needs to catch up is creative design. Too much content is still briefed to “win engagement” and not briefed to “complete a journey,” where discovery, reassurance, offer framing, and conversion are built into the content architecture.

For the world, India’s learning is behavioural. Indians already move from discovery to decision through community cues, creators, and conversational recommendation loops. Brands in mature markets can borrow that logic, especially as consumers rely less on search and more on trusted voices.

Connected TV turns creators into prime time

The biggest distribution reset in 2025 was that creator content increasingly behaved like television. Nielsen’s April 2025 Media Distributor Gauge put YouTube at 12.4% of audiences’ time spent watching television, its largest share to date.

In the UK, Barb’s reporting on YouTube channel viewing showed TV sets accounted for 43% of in-home, WiFi-based YouTube viewing among people aged 16+ in Q2 2025, ahead of smartphones.

For Indian branded content teams, that changes production choices. Phone-first cuts are not enough when the living room becomes a key screen. Pacing, audio clarity, story arcs, and integration quality matter more. The brief must start with “where will this be watched” rather than “what will this look like on a feed.”

For global marketers, India offers a lesson in appointment viewing. India still produces mass simultaneous viewing around sports and entertainment. That makes it easier to build shared cultural moments if brands plan content for the moment rather than only buying reach against it.

Tentpoles as content stages, not just media buys

India’s clearest example of branded content evolving into product design is IPL packaging. JioStar’s second edition of “Brand Spotlight” in IPL 2025 framed the opening match and the first overs as a premium “marketing spotlight” window. The rollout also included a dedicated Brand Spotlight content tray in the JioHotstar app, positioned as a space where brand and creative leaders explain the campaigns.

This matters because it changes how brands should think about tentpoles. The opportunity is not only to advertise during a spike. It is to create content formats that make the advertising itself a moment, then extend it through behind-the-scenes stories, creator reactions, and follow-on edits that travel for weeks.

What India can take from global tentpole playbooks is post-event storytelling. Globally, more sports and entertainment launches are now structured as “event, then episodic afterlife,” with creator rooms, mini-series, and extended universes.

What the world can take from India is cultural synchronisation. Few markets still deliver the “everyone is watching” effect at India’s scale. That is a branded content advantage if used with format innovation and not just frequency.

Brands behaving like studios, distribution doing the heavy lifting

A repeated theme in 2025 was that brands are building internal studios, but the winners are the ones that build distribution muscle alongside production. This is where publisher studios and platform-native distribution became more important again.

The Native Advertising Institute’s Industry Report 2025 positions branded content as a growth area even as traditional advertising faces headwinds, built on what it describes as a global survey of media companies and brand studios. The practical takeaway is straightforward: a brand studio without a channel plan becomes expensive content. A brand studio with a channel plan becomes a compounding asset.

For India, the learning is to brief distribution early: CTV edits, vertical and horizontal cuts, language versions, creator partnerships, and performance spend that turns strong stories into strong reach.

For global markets, India’s learning is operational. India already builds multi-format rollouts by default, because the country’s media consumption is multi-platform by design.

Publishers return with video, events, and community packaging

One underplayed 2025 trend is the return of publisher-led branded content, especially when it bundles video, events, and communities. As cookies deprecate and attention fragments, publishers selling trust and context have regained leverage.

India’s opportunity is to professionalise publisher studios further and to package branded content around category communities: auto, gadgets, finance, health, education, start-ups, and sports fandoms. The global opportunity is to borrow India’s multilingual publishing and creator ecosystems, where distribution is not limited to one language or one platform.

Gaming and immersive experiences move from hype to utility

If 2021–23 was the era of metaverse declarations, 2025 looked like the year immersive advertising became more practical. Roblox launched Rewarded Video ads and announced partnerships designed to scale the offering through Google, while also talking up measurement and brand suitability partners. Early test results cited high completion rates, linked to the opt-in value exchange where users receive in-game benefits. 

For India, the point is not that every brand needs a Roblox activation. The point is that younger audiences respond to play, identity, and rewards. Brands can earn time in immersive environments when the experience is built like a product, not a brochure.

For global brands, India’s exportable strength is fandom. India’s sport and cinema communities are built for participation. That energy can power immersive branded content in ways that feel less forced and more culturally rooted.

Audio’s quiet comeback as high-attention branded storytelling

Audio did not dominate headlines in 2025, but it benefited from short-form saturation and the demand for “time spent.” Branded podcasts remain one of the cleanest ways to build depth without chasing daily virality.

A useful reference point is GE’s fictional podcast “The Message,” which was widely discussed as an early example of narrative-first branded audio that did not sound like an ad. The lesson still holds: audio works when the story leads, and the brand sits behind the value.

India’s opportunity is clear: audio and spoken-word series in regional languages, distributed through YouTube as well as audio apps, can become durable branded content properties.

Purpose work survives only when the product changes

In 2025, “purpose” content faced a tougher audience. Messaging alone struggled. Structural change earned attention.

AXA’s “Three Words,” which added “and domestic violence” to home insurance contract language and backed it with a support system, became one of the year’s most cited examples of branded creativity tied to business change. 

For India, the takeaway is not “do purpose.” It is “build mechanisms.” If the product, policy, or service changes, the content becomes believable. If nothing changes, the content looks like sentiment.

For global brands, India offers a lesson in cultural grounding. India’s strongest social-impact storytelling works when it is locally executed and culturally specific, not copy-pasted.

AI in workflows, humans in the storytelling

AI became more visible in 2025 production workflows, but the year’s best branded content still relied on human insight, cultural specificity, and distribution intelligence. Unilever’s Cannes-season messaging put it bluntly: relevance has to be built through ideas designed to be shared, not just seen, and through communities and local resonance. 

The practical 2026 approach is likely to look like this: use AI to speed up post-production, versioning, localisation, and testing, while keeping creative judgement central. India is well placed here because it already runs on localisation and volume.

Measurement, trust, and governance become competitive advantages

As content, commerce, and creators converge, trust systems have become part of creative strategy. Commerce platforms are publishing safety and IP reporting. Social platforms are tightening creator monetisation rules. Brands are asking harder questions about rights, disclosures, and authenticity.

TikTok Shop’s safety and IPR reporting narrative, and the way third parties summarise enforcement actions, highlight how governance has become part of the pitch to both consumers and brands. 

For India, this is a make-or-break area. The market’s creator scale is an advantage, but it also increases risk. The brands that win in 2026 will be the ones that build clean systems: contracts, disclosures, brand safety, and measurement that connect content to outcomes.

The 2026 checklist for India and for global brands

For Indian marketers, the next step is to build fewer, stronger platforms; professionalise creator programmes; and design branded content for the living room as well as the phone. 

For global marketers, the India lesson is to operate at cultural frequency without losing coherence, to treat language as growth, and to build tentpole storytelling as participation, not interruption.

2025 was the year branded content stopped being “campaign content” and started becoming brand strategy in motion. The markets that can combine platform thinking, creator-native craft, and distribution discipline will define the next cycle.