Why commerce, answers and consent will decide brand wins in 2026

New Delhi: 2026 media planning narrative for advertisers is narrowing to three operating priorities: earning visibility in AI-led “answer” discovery, treating commerce surfaces as a media layer, and building consent-first data systems as privacy moves from policy to day-to-day execution. 

At the WPP Media TYNY report launch for 2026, the agency leaders emphasised that “micro-trust” will be the common denominator across all three, with credibility deciding what gets recommended, what converts and what survives under tighter regulation.

Why micro-dramas are still a “trend”, not a scaled buy

Micro-dramas are shifting the landscape from passive long-form consumption to transaction-linked, habit-driven storytelling. For marketers, the rise of micro-dramas signals a shift from buying attention to owning the narrative loop.

But with audiences already present, the question at the TYNY 2026 launch was why large, legacy advertisers are still cautious about micro-drama platforms.

Ashwin Padmanabhan, COO South Asia, WPP Media, said audience growth alone will not unlock budgets. “We all know it’s not enough to get audience,” he said, arguing that platforms must “empower those audiences with enough technology” and “build those connectors” so brands can run meaningful trials and measure outcomes.

He said the immediate task is to make the value clear for advertisers. “We want to showcase value in micro dramas and create ideas based on what advertisers can do with that format,” Padmanabhan said, signalling that creative potential will not translate into spend without a sharper performance and measurement layer.

For WPP Media, micro-dramas are therefore a test case for 2026 planning: new formats will keep emerging, but adoption will depend on whether they can be bought, measured and audited with the confidence brands expect from mature media channels.

Live commerce: India’s story is “community commerce”, not event-led spikes

The panel was also pressed on live commerce, a format that has been widely discussed in India but has not scaled like China.

Sairam Ranganathan, Head of Commerce India, WPP Media, split the conversation into two. He referenced platform-led live formats such as Amazon Live and Myntra’s live content experiences, but said the segment remains relatively small. It is “sub 10 percent” of the overall commerce opportunity, he said, contrasting the India trajectory with China’s more mature market.

However, the panel argued that focusing only on the “live” label misses the larger shift. The bigger growth in India, it said, is coming from creators operating as affiliates and performance drivers for platforms.

“Creator-driven commerce is growing substantially,” Ranganathan said. “Creators have become the new affiliates for these platforms,” working on “performance-driven models.”

Padmanabhan explained why the India arc looks different. China’s playbook is “event-led”, with large moments pulling sales into spikes. “That’s not how it’s playing out in India,” the executive said. “We are more community commerce-led rather than live commerce-led.”

The distinction matters for brands because it changes how budgets should be allocated. If commerce momentum is community-led, it relies on continuity, frequency and creator governance. It also makes measurement non-negotiable, because performance-led models demand clearer attribution than one-off branded live shows.

This framing also aligns with what WPP Media is putting into its trends thinking around commerce surfaces becoming media choices, and marketing becoming inseparable from conversion pathways.

Influencers and trust: why “micro” is becoming the default unit

Trust became the core lens through which the WPP Media leaders described creator marketing in 2026.

Padmanabhan contrasted the earlier reliance on celebrity endorsement with a newer default: category credibility built through daily content. “We started working with influencers who created content in a specific area, and their credibility lay in the content they created every day,” he said.

He gave examples of creators whose credibility is not abstract, but specific and repeatable. It spoke about food creators who build authority within cuisines, and regional voices whose influence comes from being deeply relevant within a community.

Padmanabhan described why this shifts brand outcomes. Credible creators, he suggested, help brands “land at a micro level,” where the relationship is closer to advice than promotion, and where conversion can be driven without forcing mass persuasion.

 Vinit Karnik, Managing Director, Content, Entertainment and Sports South Asia, WPP Media, framed this as an evolution from reach to cultural ownership and measurable social commerce. 

He said marketing is moving “from shouting at the masses to whispering to communities through micro-trust”.

That line landed repeatedly in the room because it connects three themes at once. Micro-trust is how creators influence. It is also how brands earn selection inside AI answers. And it is how privacy-first relationships are built when consumers demand value exchange and control.

AI influencers: “not a soothsayer”, but brands will be forced to test

When asked whether AI influencers can replace human creators, or whether consumers will trust them.

The panel did not offer a neat prediction. “We’ll have to try it,” Padmanabhan said. “Honestly, I’m not a soothsayer on that.”

Padmanabhan also acknowledged the current trust gap. “As we stand today… trust has been built by human emotions and human relationships,” he said, even while noting that consumer behaviour is changing rapidly with AI in other roles.

WPP Media leaders referenced how unpredictable AI-led interactions can be, including instances where bots or AI systems can cause reputational damage through misinformation or toxic behaviour in digital environments.

The implication for marketers was not that AI influencers will fail, but that governance will become central. Disclosure, context, brand safety and monitoring are likely to become more important than novelty.

Search is shifting from keywords to questions, and credibility becomes the filter

Parveen Sheik, Head of Business Intelligence India, WPP Media, described a behavioural shift that marketers already see in analytics. Users are moving from keywords to questions. “You’re going in for the question, walking out with an answer,” she said, pointing to why traditional visibility metrics can mislead in an answer-led environment.

In that world, she argued, being “relevant” is not enough. “The credibility of what you’re saying” becomes the reason a system will surface a brand’s content in the first place.

“We go into an LLM and ask a question, and we look for an answer,” Sheik said. “It’s not about visibility, it’s about share of model.”

Muralidhar Thyagarajan, Senior Vice President, Media Delivery and Operations India, WPP Media, tied that back to day-to-day planning. Integrated search, he said, will increasingly connect “organic, paid content, commerce,” so brands “consistently appear where the discovery happens.”

WPP Media’s trend framing also calls out this “zero-click” reality and the idea that brands must become “the source AI trusts,” rather than optimising only for clicks.

For marketers, this creates a new content burden. Authenticity and expert-backed information become performance levers. Structured data and credible content are no longer only editorial decisions. They become media decisions because they influence whether an answer engine selects a brand at all.

Privacy: consent capture, opt-outs and clean rooms become marketing work

If the AI and commerce answers focused on opportunity, the privacy answers focused on constraint.

Asked what the Digital Personal Data Protection regime could mean for marketing, Vishal Jacob, President, Choreograph South Asia, WPP Media.

First, consent must be captured “at the point of capture,” and brands must be clear about purpose and value exchange.

Second, opt-out mechanisms must be explicit and operational. He stressed the need for consumers to be able to decline data usage easily, rather than navigating vague policy statements.

Third, partnerships and data collaboration will require privacy-safe infrastructure, with “data clean rooms," which he cited as a route because “you don’t necessarily use the PII data.”

He also explained how privacy is increasingly felt as a consumer expectation in daily life, not just as a compliance construct. 

Jacob framed the trust dimension more directly. “Privacy compliance is no longer a checkbox; it is the foundation of consumer trust,” he said.

The panel argued that privacy will not remain a legal-only conversation because marketing is a major route through which data is collected. Teams will have to design consent into journeys and treat collaboration frameworks like clean rooms as part of planning, not procurement.

Agents and orchestration: marketing work is being redesigned

WPP Media leadership also spent time on how AI changes execution, not just media choices.

Jacob described the move towards “agent ecosystems,” where tasks are no longer solved by a single tool. “One agent will need to work with a couple of other agents to really fulfil that task,” he said, arguing that work is shifting from isolated prompts to connected systems.

He gave the example of research workflows. One agent can perform “deep research”, another can consolidate and organise, and another can structure it into “bite-sized information,” making it usable for client output.

This matters because it changes the job of marketing teams. Execution can scale, but governance becomes more important. Jacob said, “We are entering an era where AI doesn’t just assist; it orchestrates,” he said, tying the shift to accountability and trust.

Upali Nag Kumar, President, Strategy, WPP Media South Asia, positioned the shift as a move from fragmented campaigns to intelligent systems. She said marketing strategy is evolving “from fragmented campaigns to intelligent orchestration,” where AI agents and omnichannel touchpoints still need “a framework of human insight and strategic foresight.”

Live events: growth is not only stadium-sized

Asked whether the live events boom is limited to large concerts, Karnik argued that smaller formats are also expanding, and that social distribution is now central to how events scale.

Karnik said the live-events upswing is not limited to large-format concerts. He noted that even stand-up comedians are filling smaller shows of 200–250 people, and that the market now has a steady pipeline of “small gigs” alongside headline events. 

Karnik added that demand is visible “right from the smaller capacities to larger formats,” with social media remaining a key pillar in marketing live events across the spectrum.

This linked back to WPP Media’s wider trend thesis around live events being social-first experiences, where cultural participation and data capture increasingly matter alongside sponsorship visibility.

Women’s sports: Momentum, but ad money still follows cricket

On women’s sports, WPP Media drew a line between cultural momentum and advertising maturity.

Women’s cricket, the speakers said, has become “a very, very big inspiration” for other sports. But from an advertising standpoint, scale is still limited. “At the moment, not too big from an advertising perspective,” Karnik said. “It’s driven by cricket predominantly.”

He suggested that broader commercial growth is likely to follow as more sports build consistent audiences and as India’s ambitions around global events translate into sustained interest.

Esports: Big audiences, smaller local competitive gravity

On esports, Karnik said the market remains muted relative to its audience size because a homegrown competitive ecosystem has not matured.

“Esports… is a little muted in India,” he said, attributing it to the fact that many competitive titles are “published in Korea or Japan or elsewhere,” and local tournament ecosystems are still evolving.

He also pointed to a monetisation reality. Until there is consistent competitive gravity, media rights and sponsorship structures will struggle to scale like traditional sports.

The ad-to-GDP question: Why India’s ratio remains low

One of the more structural questions asked why India’s advertising-to-GDP ratio at 0.5%, stays low compared to developed markets.

Prasanth Kumar, CEO South Asia, WPP Media, said that the gap reflects category participation. Several large GDP-contributing sectors do not contribute proportionately to advertising, while spending is concentrated in a narrower set of categories.

He linked the ratio to technology adoption, suggesting that markets with faster adoption and broader category participation tend to see higher ad intensity.

Kumar’s framing suggested that the ratio improves not only with GDP growth, but with a widening of categories that invest consistently in brand building and demand generation.

Why “content share” is under pressure, and what replaces it

WPP Media said “content” media, which includes entertainment and informational properties selected for their share of viewership or brand equity, spanning linear TV, streaming TV, audio and streaming audio, print and digital print, as well as non-commerce and non-intelligence digital platforms, will continue to lose share in the overall mix. 

In its TYNY framing, content’s share has fallen from 91% in 2010 to 83% in 2019 and 72% in 2025, and is projected to soften further to 70% in 2026.

Commenting on why content-based advertising share appears to be declining, and whether that will continue.

Sheik said that business pressure is pushing demand for “immediate and near-term outcomes,” which directs spend towards performance channels, commerce and intelligence layers.

It was careful not to declare content irrelevant. Instead, the she argued that content is still growing, but slower than commerce and intelligence formats, which changes its share of the mix.

This aligns with WPP Media’s broader framing in its India handout, which points to the rise of commerce and the corresponding share shift within ad spend.

What WPP Media says marketers should do next

The advice was less about betting on one platform and more about building readiness across three systems.

First, discovery readiness. Brands need to prepare for “answer” environments where credibility and authenticity decide visibility. They also need search plans that integrate organic, paid and commerce presence.

Second, commerce readiness. India’s commerce momentum, they argued, is being driven by creator communities and performance-led affiliate behaviour. That demands harder measurement and clearer rules on creator partnerships.

Third, privacy readiness. Consent capture, opt-outs and privacy-safe collaboration tools like clean rooms are moving into the marketing toolkit.

Thyagarajan described the execution goal as “synchronised engagement: meeting consumers in the right context, at the right moment, with the right message,” a line that summarised the wider push towards orchestration over channel silos.

Jacob tied orchestration to trust. “Privacy compliance is no longer a checkbox; it is the foundation of consumer trust,” he said, as WPP Media positions privacy as the base layer for personalisation and performance.