Sign in with Google At the Google Marketing Live (GML) India, a hot topic was how profoundly AI is transforming the ways people search, stream, scroll and shop.
We’re seeing AI-empowered shoppers roam at the light speed of curiosity across touchpoints to find inspiration, answers, and products. Those behavioural shifts are particularly dramatic in India, where consumers who use AI features navigate an average of 13 touchpoints before buying,1 compared to only 5.5 touchpoints for non-AI users.2
Faced with such unpredictable, high-velocity journeys, how can brands keep up with customers and stand out from competitors? AI tool updates are far from enough. And a single AI model can no longer sustain your competitive advantage, given the breathless pace of innovation today.
Your business’s real competitive advantage today lies not in an AI model, but the full AI stack.
Your brand’s real edge, as experts at GML affirmed, lies in adopting the full AI stack — a deep, unified collection of technologies that eliminates fragmentation, efficiently captures consumer demand, and multiplies margins.
That’s why leading brands are building their success on Google’s foundation of hardware; core AI models powered by Gemini; trusted platforms like Search, YouTube, and agentic development platform Google Antigravity, as well as modern measurement solutions. Across India, this “Gemini Advantage” is redefining marketing playbooks across four critical pillars.
AI Search: Capture intent across decisive moments
For decades, Search put information at people’s fingertips. Now, Gemini is giving them intelligent, personalised, agentic experiences. And Search users are exploring those conversations not only through text queries, but also through their voices, visuals and endless imagination.
Advertisers, too, will need to think outside the rigid keyword box and embrace AI Search’s multimodal, expansionary capabilities. There are billions of enticing reasons to do so: AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly users, while AI Mode has surpassed 1 billion monthly users.3 And most users report making more confident decisions.
It’s no wonder that Search advertisers are reporting outsized returns. In India, Google Search ROI is 1.47X of total media ROI, according to a meta analysis of Consumer Packaged Goods MMM Studies done by Analytic Edge.4
Even more opportunities abound for marketers to grow ROI using our reimagined Search box, which integrates AI Overviews and AI Mode into unified experiences. Here’s how your brand can get ahead using our latest solutions:
- Convert AI Search users efficiently. Reach shoppers with ads directly inside AI Mode. And to win their purchase, use Direct Offers, which dynamically trigger custom discounts when purchase intent peaks.
- Optimise performance in real time. Use AI Max for Search to deliver tailored ad messages and unlock new searches. Advertisers adopting AI Max campaigns are seeing 27% more conversions at a similar cost per action (CPA) or ROAS compared with campaigns that mostly use exact and phrase match keywords.5
- Drive conversions with optimised creatives. Use AI Max for Shopping campaigns to complement AI Max for Search with benefits such as text ads powered by your data feed.
- Stay in control of your brand voice. Use AI Brief to steer AI Max in showcasing your brand across assets and conversational searches.
Using AI Max has already helped used-gadgets marketplace Cashmart and health technology company Ultrahuman maximise results. By shifting to a keywordless, asset-based Search framework, Cashmart captured a 62% conversion lift, and Ultrahuman drove a 40% jump in non-branded clicks.
YouTube: Unify brand-building and performance
The Gemini advantage is helping marketers dispel the myth that video advertising entails trade-offs between brand-building and performance marketing. Google and YouTube let you achieve both.
YouTube, ranked No.1 in reach and watchtime among ad-supported online video platforms in India according to a Comscore study in May 2025, lets you drive unparalleled brand awareness and trust. That advantage comes from its expansive ecosystem, which includes:
- The biggest audiences: YouTube Shorts, for example, has over 650 million monthly logged-in users.6 And 45% of these users do not use Instagram reels, a 2025 GWI report found.
- The widest reach on connected TV: YouTube is ranked No. 1 in reach across CTV screens among media in India, according to Comscore.
- The most trusted creators: Across India, 88% of surveyed viewers agree YouTube has the most trusted creators.7
YouTube also delivers performance results you can’t get anywhere else. Gemini helps you tap into the gold standard of intent signals to reach the right audiences at the right moments, while YouTube ads are unmatched in capturing attention. In fact, YouTube ad placements rank No. 1 in attention compared to ad placements on streaming, social and linear TV, according to a 2025 Comscore report.
To help you fully apply YouTube’s unique advantages to optimise your brandformance, we’ve introduced new advanced features:
- YouTube BrandStack: Developed and launched first in India, BrandStack is an automated, all-in-one planning and buying engine. It combines high-frequency branding with performance strategies to drive real bottom-line growth.
- Affiliate Partnership Ads: This upcoming feature lets you run streamlined, commission-based shoppable storefronts, making it even easier for creators to tag your products directly in their videos.
- Creator Partnership Boost: Use YouTube creator videos in your ad campaigns to reach new audiences through authentic, diverse content.
Better yet, combine YouTube with Google Ads to maximise overall ROI. High-spending campaigns running YouTube and Google Performance Ads together deliver a combined average ROI that is 1.6X higher than Paid Social ROI, according to an Analytic Edge DML Meta Study in India.8
So add Demand Gen, which can deliver a 43% boost in branded searches on average for Indian advertisers, as a performance multiplier to your existing Search, Performance Max and Commerce Media Network campaigns.
Agentic experiences: Use Google AI to drive commerce and win leads
As Google’s tech stack pushes the frontiers of AI, your business can leverage the Gemini advantage to stay ahead, especially in the fast-evolving sphere of agentic commerce and lead generation.
Across India, consumers are embracing Gemini as a personal assistant to get things done, including shopping for products and services in AI Search. Concurrently, businesses are using agents to influence customer decisions, and help users move faster from curiosity to conversational search and checkout.
Here’s how two of Google’s innovations can help your business capture more AI-assisted consumer spend and qualified leads.
Agentic commerce: To enable Gemini users’ agents to securely complete checkout and buy your eligible products in Google, we’ve introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard for agentic commerce. The UCP acts as a universal translator between merchants’ inventories and AI agents. Merchants like Flipkart are already partnering with Google to offer this agentic experience to Indian shoppers, and help brands grow sales.
Business Agent for Leads: Use this conversational agent to answer shoppers’ questions in your brand’s voice, so you can influence their purchase decision in real time. The AI agent also finds qualified leads on the Search results page and triggers a pay-per-lead action.
Business agent for Leads
Education brands upGrad and Amity Education Group have piloted Business Agent for Leads to engage students 24/7 with instant responses to their questions. The agents nurture high-intent, qualified leads for the sales teams, who are thus freed up to focus on the highest-value conversions.
AI-powered measurement: Rev up your ultimate profit engine
No matter how state-of-the-art your AI stack is, you won’t be able to fully reap its benefits unless you feed it with robust data. When you do, the returns roll in. Advertisers who build their data strength through tools like Google Tag Gateway and Google Data Manager see an 11% average increase in incremental ROAS.9
These four marketing measurement steps can help you maximise your Gemini advantage and ROI:
- Strengthen your data foundation: Use Google Data Manager API to dramatically simplify how you manage and send your data to Google. Next, integrate it with Google Analytics 360 (GA360) and Meridian, our open-source MMM, to unify your data streams. This enables your GA360 data command centre to provide a comprehensive view of your marketing activities and answer complex questions in plain language.
- Securely collect quality data: Google Tag Gateway recovers lost signals and feeds your web campaigns with first-party data. For app advertisers, use privacy-safe On-Device Measurement to securely recover iOS and Android conversions directly on users’ phones.
- Map a direct line between search and purchase intent: Use Attributed branded searches (ABS) to track when users view your YouTube ads and then search for your brand on Google. That can be a leading indicator of performance, since a 1% increase in searches for your brand triggers an approximately 0.35% increase in your sales.10
- Experiment for success: Conduct A/B testing directly in your Search, Performance Max, and Demand Gen workflows, and optimise for your best ROI.
Investing in data strength has helped insurance provider HDFC Life score a 16% improvement in CPA. And when automotive platform Cars24 used ABS for media planning, it improved conversions on CTV by 1.96X and efficiency by 1.45X.
By embracing the full Google AI stack, your brand can hone your edge and stay at the forefront of innovation in Search advertising, “brandformance” on YouTube, agentic commerce, and measurement. Above all, the Gemini advantage keeps your marketing seamlessly in sync with modern customers, wherever their AI-powered journeys may lead.
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