The India DigiPlus Awards 2026, hosted by ETBrandEquity.com, offered a clear picture of where Indian digital marketing is heading. This year’s winners included a mix of real estate, beverage, auto and entertainment brands, but the deeper story was in the trends the jury flagged.
Top honours at a glance
The House of Abhinandan Lodha won Brand of the Year. Wavemaker India was named Network Agency of the Year, while Infidigit took Independent Digital Agency of the Year.
Individual honours went to Greishma Singh, vice president of marketing at Coca-Cola India & Southwest Asia, as Digital Marketer of the Year; Schbang’s Chirag Shah as Digital Person of the Year; and HOCCO CMO Roli Shrivastava as the Next Generation Award (Under 40) bronze winner.
Campaign winners
Kingfisher and JioStar took Gold for the Kingfisher Good Times Hangout on IPL’26 campaign. Hero MotoCorp and Essencemediacom (WPP Media) also won Gold for Hero Destini: Engineering the “New Hero” Narrative.
Shemaroo Entertainment won a Silver for #HarRoleIsHerRole, and R for Rabbit with Twelv Productions won a Silver for the Mother’s Day campaign Tough Moms Need Strong Support.
What the jury noticed
Beyond the trophies, the jury’s observations are a useful benchmark for the industry. The standout shifts included:
- AI in action: brands are using AI in meaningful campaign roles, not just experiments.
- Social-first and creator-first: more campaigns are being designed specifically for social platforms and creators.
- Performance beyond big tech: e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms are becoming serious performance marketing channels.
- Human and humorous storytelling: relatable, culturally relevant work is making a comeback alongside festive, celebrity-led and SEO-driven formats.
Why this matters
The results suggest that AI is no longer a novelty in Indian digital campaigns; it is becoming an execution tool. Social-first planning is also moving from a specialist approach to a default starting point, and performance media is now expected to work across quick-commerce, not just the major tech platforms.
At the same time, the judges valued measurement and delivery. The entries that stood out set clear objectives and, in some cases, exceeded them. For marketing teams, that makes a simple checklist worth applying: build for social, use AI where it adds value, and tie every idea to a measurable result.
For marketers reviewing their next quarter, these shifts are actionable. If your brief still treats social as a distribution afterthought, the jury’s read suggests you may be out of step with the most awarded work. If AI is only on the roadmap, competitors are already using it to strengthen creative or targeting. And if measurement ends at a vanity metric, the emphasis on tangible outcomes means you need a clearer line from campaign to business result.
Source: ETBrandEquity.com
