India’s festive opportunity is growing but so is the competition for the same consumer attention.

India’s festive shopping season is already gathering pace. Retailers are stocking up, media plans are moving into execution, and consumers are beginning to build their wish lists.

The stakes are significant. Despite inflationary pressures and global geopolitical uncertainties, India’s festive e-commerce sales are projected to reach ₹1.50–1.55 lakh crore in GMV this year, around 25–29% higher than in 2025.

For marketers, that makes the festive season one of the biggest commercial opportunities of the year, but also one of the most competitive.

As consumer intent rises, brands increase investment across search, social and retail platforms. These channels remain essential because they offer familiarity and the scale, targeting and measurement needed to anchor a festive media plan. But when thousands of brands increase budgets in the same environments at the same time, incremental reach and attention can become harder, and more expensive, to find.

The real challenge is incremental attention

Peak demand does not automatically translate into media efficiency. During festive season, brands are often trying to reach the same consumers using similar signals, formats and inventory. As competition intensifies, the strategic question becomes not only how much to spend, but where additional consumer attention can still be found.

That opportunity often sits outside the most crowded parts of the media plan, particularly before a shopper has opened a marketplace, searched for a product or started scrolling through a social feed.

For brands, reaching consumers at these earlier moments can create new opportunities for discovery and consideration, rather than waiting for intent to surface inside an already competitive auction, closing the gap between intent and purchase.

Reaching consumers before they search

The Indian consumer journey now extends across a wider range of digital environments. Device interfaces, browsers, operating systems, CTVs and other native digital touchpoints all play a role in how people discover content, products and services throughout the day.

These environments give brands another way to build incremental reach around the channels that already work. They can create discovery moments before a consumer actively enters a marketplace, search engine or social platform, helping brands show up earlier in the path to purchase.

Introducing enterprise-native advertising

Affinity describes this opportunity as enterprise-native advertising: advertising experiences integrated into digital products and infrastructure owned by large technology and companies, including devices, browsers, OS and TV platforms.

Advertising is typically not the primary business of these companies; this inventory can sit outside both major walled gardens and the traditional open programmatic ecosystem. For advertisers, that creates an additional route to consumers across digital experiences they already use every day.

During festive season, when demand is high and attention is expensive, those additional moments can become particularly valuable.

What this can look like in practice

The impact of the festive season is already visible across past Affinity campaigns for quick-commerce and retail brands in India.

Compared with business-as-usual periods, festive campaigns delivered a 66% increase in install-to-purchase rates, while overall revenue increased by 76.2% and revenue per user rose by 122%.* These results were observed across Affinity campaigns using placements across CTVs, smartphones, keyboard apps and browsers, extending reach beyond standard walled garden channels.

The implication for marketers is straightforward. The festive edge may not come from abandoning the channels that already work or spending incessantly on those channels. It may come from finding the consumer moments that’s outside the traditional channel. When every brand is competing for the same festive shopper, incremental attention can become an advantage in itself.

Learn more about how Affinity helps brands reach consumers across enterprise-native digital environments - https://www.affinity.com/

*numbers taken from AdOps

- Neha Saxena, VP of Global Marketing at Affinity Global