Advertising isn’t over, but it is no longer the main act

New Delhi: When was the last time a 30-second TVC truly stayed with you? Not just something you watched, but something you remembered a week later. When was the last time you caught yourself humming a jingle unprompted? 

That question alone explains why, across boardrooms and agency corridors, a quiet but growing belief is taking hold: advertising, at least in the way we’ve known it, is over!

Niraj Ruparel, Creative Technology Lead, India at WPP, framed the evolution clearly. “Branded content in India has scaled rapidly. But this isn't about advertising losing relevance; it is about advertising changing its job. In a world of endless content, advertising is no longer just about making a 30-second spot. It is about building a system that ensures every piece of content, whether a tweet, a long-form video, or an influencer post, actually adds up to a coherent brand image. Without this system, you just have noise,” he said. 

Siddhant Mazumdar, Omnicom Media Content, reinforced the structural reset. “When brands start building their own content and long-term IPs, advertising doesn’t go away. It simply changes its role.”

That role is no longer dominant. It is support. Even at the creative operations level, Ruparel acknowledged the collapse of traditional cadence. “Finally, the old way of ‘client briefs agency, agency goes away for two weeks’ is too slow for this content-heavy world,” he said. 

Where has power moved? 

Upstream! Into product experience. Into UX. Into IP. Into community and creator ecosystems.

“Advertising no longer needs to be the story. Its job is to create context, credibility, and momentum for the story the brand is telling,” Mazumdar described how gravity has shifted.

Tusharr Kumar, CEO of OML, added that advertising still plays an important role, but it is no longer the organising centre of brand communication. “Today, brands have multiple tools at their disposal, including branded content, creators, owned platforms, performance marketing and traditional advertising. The real question is not which one replaces the other, but which one is most effective for the objective at hand. If you are trying to tell a deeper story, build cultural relevance, or create long-term engagement, branded content or IP-led formats often do a better job. Distribution choices then follow from that thinking, whether the content lives on owned channels, third-party platforms, or is supported through paid media.”

Meanwhile, Manoti Jain, founding member and Chief Operations Officer at Kulfi Collective, explained how the role of advertising has evolved. “Brands today aren’t just advertisers anymore; they’re becoming participants in culture. They’re building IP, collaborating with creators, investing in communities and shaping stories people want to engage with, not just watch. In that ecosystem, advertising isn’t the main act—it's the amplifier. Its role is to take what a brand is building culturally and make it travel. It keeps the brand present in conversations, gives moments scale and helps translate participation into memory.”

Meanwhile, at a systems level, Ruparel sees advertising becoming connective tissue rather than centre stage. “Connecting Content to Commerce (Signal to Supply) Making great content is only half the battle; you have to know who should see it. We use Open Intelligence to connect the signal to the supply. This means using AI to identify audience patterns (signals) and instantly match them to the right media inventory (supply). It ensures the content drives real business value, not just vanity metrics like ‘views.’”

Where do agencies stand?

If power has shifted upstream, agencies built around campaign thinking must evolve.

From Kulfi Collective, Jain sharpened the ecosystem perspective. “We’re no longer just campaign builders. We need to think in ecosystems, across content, communities, creators and platforms, and help brands navigate culture, not just media. It’s not about producing more content; it’s about participating meaningfully in the right cultural moments. Because the goal isn’t content for the sake of it, it’s cultural relevance.”

This is not a service pivot. It is an identity shift. “I would not say all brands need to become entertainment studios, but they do need to think like one. That means being far more conscious about attention, storytelling, and retention. At its best, advertising has always done this well. The ads we remember are the ones that told strong stories and respected the audience’s time,” Kumar added.

Mazumdar reframed creative authority in IP-led environments. “The strongest brand-owned IPs sit at the intersection of two worlds: what consumers care about and want more of, and what the brand genuinely stands for. At their best, these IPs are not about pushing products. They are about showing that the brand has a meaningful place in culture beyond functional utility,” he underscored. 

Creative control fragments across creators, communities and platforms. Agencies must anchor coherence. Ruparel described how delivery itself is transforming. “We are moving to new delivery models where clients and agencies work together in a shared, secure digital workspace on the WPP Open platform. We co-create in real-time, combining the client's speed with our agency expertise,” he said.

Meanwhile, Neelesh Pednekar, Co-Founder and Head of Digital Media at Social Pill, said he doesn't think advertising has disappeared. “It just changes jobs. Earlier, advertising was the centre of the ecosystem because it was the fastest way to capture attention. Today, brands can create attention through content, creators, communities, and even product-led virality. So advertising becomes less about ‘making noise’ and more about building distribution and consistency. In a world where brands run their own IP, advertising becomes the fuel that scales it, keeps it discoverable, and ensures it reaches the right audiences repeatedly. You can have the best branded show or creator series, but without paid amplification and smart retargeting, it stays a niche success. The role of advertising is to accelerate reach, shape memory, and turn content into a repeatable growth system.” 

Have metrics lost the plot, too?

In a world of endless scrolling, reach can look impressive, and engagement charts can seem healthy. But what are we really measuring? Mazumdar identified the core disconnect. “Views, watch time, likes, and shares tell us whether content was entertaining. They do not tell us whether it changed how people think or feel about a brand. As a result, branded content is frequently undervalued, not because it failed, but because it was measured through the wrong lens.”

Megha Marwah, Vice-President - Strategy, White Rivers Media, simplified the diagnostic. “In a content-first world, the question is simple. What is this content doing for the brand?” She explained it through two structural shifts. “First is content efficiency. Is the output aligned to the objective? Awareness demands impact, not passive views. Consideration demands completion, return behaviour, and depth. And the second one is community depth. Follower count is surface. Cultural resonance is substance. Storytelling builds retention. Retention builds memory. Memory builds a brand.”

The metrics crisis is not about numbers. It is about alignment. Even advertising integration can be measured in more sophisticated ways. Mazumdar pointed to empirical reinforcement. “There is clear evidence that advertising and content work better together. Nielsen research shows that when branded integrations run alongside standard ads in the same programming environment, brand memorability goes up by 18% and message memorability by 19% among adults aged 18 to 49.”

Jain added a cultural perspective. “Most branded content is still being measured on the wrong signals. Views, likes, and shares tell you how far something travelled, not whether it meant anything. And today, scale is easy to manufacture. You can push distribution and hit numbers overnight. But branded content isn’t built just to perform in feeds; it’s built to live in culture.”

“Most of what we measure today is content performance, not brand impact. Views, likes, shares, and watch time, these tell you if the content was entertaining or sticky. They don’t automatically tell you if the brand became more desirable or more trusted,” Pednekar added. 

The takeaway is clear. Measurement must evolve from simply counting exposure to assessing memorability and brand equity.

So, what replaces the campaigns?

“Brands today are expected to behave like content houses, not occasionally, but consistently,” Mazumdar captured the inevitability.

“In a Rs 10,000-crore content ecosystem, our role shifts from creating bursts to building brand-owned universes. We design formats, shape narratives, and engineer cultural relevance that compounds over time.  Distribution becomes amplification, not strategy. The real value we bring is strategic clarity of aligning business ambition with content systems that attract, retain, and monetise audiences. We move from execution to orchestration, from vendor to co-creator, and from communication partner to long-term equity builder. With our brand activations and campaigns, we end up building brand worlds that own attention, culture, and growth,” Marwah described the scale of the opportunity.

Kulfi Collective’s Jain captured the cultural recalibration. “Because the real shift isn’t from advertising to content, it’s from promotion to cultural relevance.”

“The future belongs to brands that treat content and advertising as one single, integrated machine,” said Ruparel.

Ruparel articulated the infrastructure underpinning this transformation as well. “Scaling quality with volume (Agents) as the demand for content grows, human teams get stretched. We are using AI agents to scale our expertise. These aren't just automation tools; they are strategic partners that help our teams maintain high creative standards and strategic consistency, even when producing assets at speed and scale,” he said.

Hence, advertising can survive, but as infrastructure, as amplification, and as connective tissue. Not as monarch! Because always-on replaces bursts. IP replaces isolated executions. Distribution follows creation.“The industry now needs to get serious about brand lift studies, memory metrics, and downstream behaviour, not just engagement.” Pednekar summed up.

Is subtle branding the new loud? 

Subtle branding has emerged as both an art and a challenge in today’s content-driven world. The debate among industry leaders shows how contrasting the views are, yet how convergent the goal is: making the brand matter without overwhelming the audience.

For Mazumdar, the key is designing content around brand-owned IPs that intersect what consumers care about and what the brand genuinely stands for. Advertising, then, acts as a context-builder, amplifying the brand’s story without overshadowing it.

Jain highlighted that subtle branding must be baked in from the start. “I don’t think subtle branding is the problem. Vague branding is. If content entertains but doesn’t build the brand, it usually means the brand’s role in the story wasn’t clear to begin with. Subtlety only works when the brand’s voice and point of view are baked into the idea, not added later,” she added.

She pointed to campaigns like Cadbury’s girl-POV cricket film and Spotify Wrapped as examples where the brand’s cultural participation creates recall, and advertising ensures it scales. Subtle branding succeeds when the brand’s voice and point of view are integral to the idea, not applied superficially.

“It is no longer enough to think in isolated campaigns or formats. Agencies need to help brands think across content, advertising, and long-term storytelling in a joined-up way,” Kumar added.

Pednekar acknowledged the practical challenges. “Subtle branding can absolutely risk invisibility, especially when the creator’s personality dominates the content. There’s a difference between ‘not being pushy’ and ‘not being remembered.’” 

He stressed that responsibility must be shared: brands, agencies, and creators must ensure the brand is present without overwhelming the content. Advertising remains powerful, but only when connected to product truth, cultural relevance, and measurable outcomes.