Indian D2C brands are heading into a festive season projected to unlock ₹1.2 lakh crore in consumer demand, building on a 27% increase last year. At the e4m D2C Summit 5.0, Google India’s Ila Wadhwa, Head of Mid Market Sales, said the bigger shift is not only the size of the opportunity but how consumers are reaching it.
Google data shows that AI-assisted shoppers now take a longer, more involved route. Non-AI users average 5.5 touchpoints before a purchase, while AI users average 13. That runs counter to last year’s assumption that AI would compress buying into a single click. Instead, research is becoming conversational, comprehensive and unpredictable.
The 4 S’s of festive behaviour
Wadhwa distilled the new behaviour into “4 S’s”: Searching, Streaming, Scrolling and Shopping. Google and YouTube, she said, are the only platforms that intersect all four, across metros and smaller towns.
- Searching: AI Overviews has crossed a billion users, and 87% of users say it makes them more confident in decisions.
- Streaming: YouTube reaches 75 million adults in India on connected TV. Around 88% of Indian viewers say YouTube has the creators they trust most.
- Scrolling: 45% of YouTube Shorts users are not present on any other platform, so ignoring Shorts can make a brand invisible to that audience.
- Shopping: “Shoptainment” is growing, with shopping-related watch time up over 55% year-on-year and a Shopping Graph of more than 60 billion real-time listings.
A three-part festive playbook
The playbook starts with inspiration. Around 89% of consumers look to online creators for festive ideas. Formats such as YouTube AI Spotlight, Mastheads and First Position Moments can place brands into the content people are already watching, using creator trust rather than celebrity distance.
Wadhwa argued that creator accountability sets them apart from celebrity endorsers: “their consumer knows exactly where they live.”
Next, localise creative at scale. Google’s Asset Studio can take a brand’s visual DNA and generate brand-compliant, hyper-localised image and video variations for regional celebrations such as Onam, Durga Puja or Diwali in seconds.
Finally, meet consumers where they transact. That can mean AI Max for Shopping on D2C websites, commerce media networks for quick commerce, or Performance Max for Store Goals to drive offline store visits.
What D2C teams should do next
For marketers, the playbook is a reminder that festive success depends on connecting inspiration to transaction. A practical first step is to map current activity against the 4 S’s. Many brands over-index on shopping and performance, while under-investing in the streaming and scrolling moments where modern purchase journeys begin.
For example, a D2C brand planning for Diwali can use creator videos on YouTube to build desire, run hyper-local language variants through Asset Studio, and convert demand through shopping ads and quick-commerce placements. The goal is not more channels, but fewer leaks between discovery and checkout.
Wadhwa also said brands using Google and YouTube together see 1.6x higher ROI than paid social benchmarks. That makes a unified approach to search, video, short-form and shopping a planning priority—not just a platform pitch.
The core takeaway for D2C teams: build creator-led trust, produce localised creative quickly, and be present at every transaction point if you want a meaningful share of India’s festive consumption.
Source: Indian Advertising Media & Marketing News – exchange4media
