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Across India, preparations for the year-end festive season are in full swing.
Search interest for “Diwali sales” started surging as early as August. And shoppers say they plan to increase spending for the 2026 festive season compared to last year, which saw gross merchandise value (GMV) reach a massive $6.8 billion in the first 11 days of the sales event alone.
For Indian advertisers, the key to winning this year’s festive season lies in understanding the behaviours of India’s inspired, immersive, instant, and intelligent consumers.
These AI-empowered consumers are embracing always-on loops of shopper discovery, validation, and gratification, where festive purchases can happen anywhere across myriad online or in-store touchpoints. That means you’ll need the power of AI to make your retail marketing strategy dynamic and omnichannel enough to capture sales in the exact moments when shoppers decide.
Below, we reveal essential consumer insights and actionable Google Ads strategies to place your brand at the top of Indian shoppers’ wish lists this season.
Inspired browsing: Help shoppers discover your brand first
For today’s shoppers, casual browsing on visual feeds has replaced traditional window shopping as their primary source of festive ideas. Eight in 10 shopping journeys involve Diwali/Navratri shoppers getting ideas directly from image searches or images on social media.1
Two platforms stand out as touchpoints where most shoppers find inspiration: 81% of shoppers who used Google and/or YouTube during their Navratri/Diwali shopping journey used at least one of these two platforms for discovery and inspiration, outperforming other online platforms including Instagram and/or Facebook, Amazon, and Flipkart2 among their users.
Shoppers also turn to trusted curators to help them spot the best festive ideas: YouTube creators. That’s only natural, since 88% of surveyed viewers in India agree that YouTube has the most trusted creators.3
Win over the inspired shopper: Get a Creator partnerships boost (formerly known as Partnership Ads) to drive brand discovery at scale among YouTube audiences. And with Creator Media Bundles, which let marketers choose a package of assets made by YouTube creators with subscriber bases ranging from 10,000 to 1 million, you can strategically multiply the impact of your sponsored ad content.
Next, drive widespread reach and awareness using YouTube Masthead with product feeds. It showcases your products and makes them shoppable for mobile device users as they scroll and stream on YouTube for festive ideas.
There’s more: Amplify your Google Ads’ impact on the biggest screen in your customers’ homes via YouTube on Connected TV, which reaches over 75 million adults in India. The new immersive design of YouTube Prime Time Mastheads can help your brand capture even more attention and conversions.
Immersive research: Be ever-present across omnichannel journeys
India’s shoppers are deeply deliberate in their festive shopping across immersive in-store and online experiences. During Navratri/Diwali, 9 in 10 shoppers who made a purchase report that they researched beforehand, with 33% saying they did “a lot of research”.4
Their omnichannel journeys typically include multiple online searches. For example, during Navratri/Diwali shoppers on average performed 8.3 searches on search engines (e.g. browser search, address bar, app),5 and watched 7.7 online videos6 in their shopping journey.
While they use many touchpoints, shoppers stick with Google’s immersive surfaces as the primary channel for validating their choices. Case in point: Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) of shoppers in India during Navratri/Diwali who used Facebook and/or Instagram went to Google Search to research further after seeing a brand or product on those platforms.7
Win across immersive journeys: To make your brand ever-present for shoppers wherever they’re researching, use AI Max for Search. The campaign type lets you optimise your ads by matching them to relevant search queries, including those with nuanced intent. By dynamically customising your assets to make ads more visually immersive and efficient, AI Max can help you unlock net new, high-intent searches.
Be sure to stay on shoppers’ physical store radar too. Capture “near me” moments using premium Google Maps ad placements. And by using Performance Max for store goals, you can promote available products to high-intent local Google Search users via local inventory ads.
With fast-evolving, long-tail queries becoming core to shopper journeys, astute retail brands like Tira are using AI Max campaigns to efficiently capture such queries at scale. The success of Tira’s pilot campaign, which drove 35% purchase growth, led the brand to adopt AI Max as a full-scale strategy with search term matching across all campaigns.
Instant gratification: Be ready for the spontaneous triggers
Even the most immersed researcher succumbs to the adrenaline rush of instant gratification delivered by hyper-fast logistics. Throughout the Navratri/Diwali season, 70% of shoppers made a spontaneous purchase.8
Short-form video is a key catalyst for instant shopping: 61% of shoppers during Navratri/Diwali who made purchases within a couple of days or less without researching the product used YouTube Shorts in their shopping journeys.9 Quick commerce platforms have become a go-to channel, used by nearly 30% of shoppers as a source for their festive needs.10
Win instant demand spikes: To capture impulse buys at the exact moment of intent, use Google’s Commerce Media Suite. It lets you integrate first-party retail data from leading marketplaces like Flipkart, Blinkit, Myntra, Instamart, and Zepto. With richer demand signals, you can efficiently reach high-intent shoppers across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, and direct them to their desired products on your platform.
To avoid budget bottlenecks during spontaneous demand spikes, deploy Demand-led Budgeting. It lets you set daily budgets up to 3X your standard spend to capture every available conversion. As for your App campaigns, use seasonality adjustments to bypass algorithmic learning lags, so you can instantly scale bidding during short-term promotions.
Nestlé India wanted to transform quick commerce into a primary growth engine for expanding its market share and incremental GMV. So it deployed Google Commerce Media Network solutions to tap into first-party data from retail networks to not only capture demand, but actively create new demand as well.
That helped it to drive impressive incremental GMV growth across various brands, including 15.2% for Nestlé Purina on Blinkit. Nestlé’s Nangrow brand also enjoyed a 50% lift in GMV on Instamart.
Intelligent decisions: Be the brand that shoppers choose every time
Indian consumers’ use of AI has evolved from a novel tool into an essential intelligent companion for finalising purchase decisions.
In India, shoppers used generative AI chatbots 7.5 times on average during their Navratri/Diwali shopping journey.11 And among shoppers who report using AI platforms or features during their journey, 51% say it helped them make decisions, while 38% say it shortened the time for decision-making.12
Their positive experiences mirror those of the 1 billion monthly users of Google’s AI Mode.13 Globally, 95% of consumers who use AI Mode for shopping find it helpful.14
Win intelligent customers’ loyalty: AI-powered Search helps to nurture qualified leads and accelerate shoppers’ journeys from curiosity to checkout. When festive shoppers who use AI Search land on your website or marketplace store, chances are they’re already better informed and more ready to decide. That opens rich opportunities for your brand to turn both existing and new customers’ seasonal curiosity into lasting loyalty.
To capture high-intent leads and sales, you’ll also need to engage AI users with intelligent marketing solutions that showcase your brand’s relevance and value in meeting their needs.
Acquire new customers using AI-powered Performance Max, which complements your Search campaigns to find more converting customers across Google properties. Additionally, use Demand Gen campaigns to find new demand across Google’s most immersive surfaces, including YouTube.
Optimise your campaigns by setting customer lifecycle goals in Google Ads. Those goals, such as seeking new high-value customers, revitalising new customer acquisition efforts, or re-engaging lapsed customers, are all available for Performance Max. By using your data strength to fuel Smart Bidding, you can optimise your campaigns and maximise customer lifetime value.
This customer lifecycle strategy helped Nykaa acquire and retain new, valuable customers. The leading beauty retailer fed Google Ads with secure first-party customer match lists, segmenting past buyers, high-value spenders, dormant users, and lapsed shoppers.
The robust data steered Nykaa’s customer acquisition and remarketing campaigns towards its goal of scaling profitable growth. Return on ad spend jumped by 13% and average order value soared by 66%.
This 2026 festive season, India’s consumers are rewarding brands that engage them with inspired, immersive, instant, and intelligent shopping experiences. Rise to the occasion with Google AI-powered ad solutions, which help you win not just customers’ festive purchases, but their lasting loyalty.
Contributors: Ragini Sundarraman, Shopping & Commerce Specialist; Kanika Jain, YouTube Product Specialist
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