With Durga Puja just a week away, the festive advertising landscape looks quieter than expected. The familiar gust of big-budget campaigns, celebrity-led films and high-impact brand launches seems less visible this year. Independence Day saw a similar pattern, but marketers then suggested that brands were saving their biggest spends for the festive season. Now, with Navratri underway and Durga Puja around the corner, the question is: where are those campaigns?
Has festive advertising lost its usual fanfare, or are brands choosing to make their presence felt differently? While the apparent absence of large-scale campaigns raises questions about advertising budgets, industry voices suggest the picture is more complicated.
Girish Hingorani, Vice President – Marketing at Blue Star, points to economic pressures as a possible reason for brands holding back on large-scale campaigns. “Profitability is under pressure, commodity prices have gone through the roof, and you cannot increase prices beyond a point because it will impact demand. The only way to save some money and enhance profits is by maybe not investing as much in demand generation,” he says.
In such circumstances, advertising is often among the first areas where companies reconsider their investments. Hingorani clarifies that this is his assessment of the wider market rather than a confirmed industry-wide trend; his comments are based on the apparent decline in campaign activity.
The pressure on spending could also be compounded by uncertainty around consumer demand. Hingorani points to the possibility that a below-par monsoon could affect agricultural incomes and leave households with less disposable income to spend during the festive season. “If monsoons have been good, the overall festive season is always very buoyant and encouraging,” he notes.
The cost of media tends to rise during the season, Hingorani adds, making it harder for brands to justify large-scale brand-building campaigns. For Blue Star, this makes the economics of investing in brand-building during these weeks less attractive. “We were very clear that there is no point building a brand during the festive season. You should build your brand during other periods but convert the equity that you have built into conversions during the festive season,” he explains. This is why the brand prioritises performance marketing during the festive rush.
But does this mean performance-led advertising is taking money away from high-impact campaigns?
Shrinivas Jyoti, Head of Marketing at Hansgrohe India, believes a high-decibel campaign can generate visibility, but visibility alone does not guarantee sales when multiple brands are competing for attention with similar messages and offers. The consumer, too, is weighing aspiration against affordability. Jyoti points to the fragmentation of media, the influence of social platforms and creators, and the growth of e-commerce as factors that have changed how brands reach audiences and convert demand. “Performance marketing can capture existing demand or in-market audiences who are intending to buy in the short term and looking for great offers, freebies, discounts or cashbacks. But strong brands create preference and generate future demand rather than looking at short-term gains,” he explains.
The changing balance between immediate conversions and long-term brand-building is also changing how festive marketing plans are put together. Suraj Nedungadi, AVP – Strategy & Planning at YAAP, says brands today are moving away from the traditional idea of ‘campaigns’ towards building ‘systems’. “They are making far better use of first-party data, tapping into more innovative formats, and designing festive plans where content, creators and media work together across many touchpoints.” Performance marketing plays a significant role in this approach, he adds, as a large share of festive purchases now happens on marketplaces and quick-commerce platforms, placing performance-led formats closer to the point of purchase.
The challenge, however, is not just where brands advertise, but whether their messages can stand out in an already crowded marketplace. With sales and promotional offers running through the year. Saurabh Parmar, Fractional CMO, identifies saturation as one of the fundamental challenges facing advertisers. “Fundamental challenges: there are too many sales, too many products, and too many offers. We are in the classical attention economy right now. Sales were special when they were infrequent. When it becomes this frequent, then the surprise factor goes away.” When every occasion is treated as an opportunity for a sale, festive promotions risk losing their distinctiveness.
Yet the apparent quietness does not necessarily mean that festive advertising has lost its momentum. Saket Dandotia, Co-Founder and CEO of Onetab.ai, points to continued demand for premium inventory. “The big, attention-grabbing spots are getting booked earlier and filling up faster. Outdoor companies say their best sites are effectively sold out and expect revenues to grow 15–20% this season. TV channels say brands are moving past ordinary ad slots and asking for bigger formats and sponsorships. Online, full-screen ads have been filling almost completely during festivals.” Dandotia estimates festive spending at ₹60,000–62,000 crore this year, with more than half of festive media budgets expected to go to digital, compared with around 45% last year. Festive influencer spending is also expected to touch ₹900 crore, according to his estimates.
The figures point to a market where money is still being deployed, but the distribution of that money has been renovated. Nedungadi argues that the industry may be looking for festive advertising in the wrong places. “Marketers are simply spreading budgets more strategically across channels, instead of front-loading them into a handful of high-impact placements” With different audiences responding to different cultural contexts, a single national campaign may no longer be the only way to make a brand visible during the festive season.
Soumali Chakraborty, Marketing Consultant for Mirah Hospitality, who manages brands including Hitchki, Bayroute and Rajdhani Thali, also cautions against reading the current landscape as a straightforward slowdown. She points to campaigns that draw on local culture and nostalgia, including Myntra's use of the ‘Bengali Mishti Baksho’ tradition and Flipkart's Kolkata-specific Big Billion Days campaign. “Performance-led formats offer better measurability, but high-impact advertising continues to build aspiration and brand recall. I see brands increasingly bringing the two together,” Chakraborty adds.
Perhaps that is where the real question lies. The festive advertising market may not be short of money, but the pressures on margins, the cost of media and the demand for measurable returns are forcing brands to justify how they spend it. The familiar festive blitz may therefore look different this year, with fewer obvious campaign moments competing for public attention and more activity spread across platforms, creators and shopping journeys. Whether this reflects a temporary response to economic pressures or a lasting change in advertising strategy remains to be seen.
