Why checkout is the new media channel in India

This festive season, India’s retail and quick-commerce platforms proved they “aren’t side channels anymore — they’re where discovery and decision actually happen,” according to Rahul Karwa, chief strategy officer and head of experiential at Interspace Communications.

When this change hit him, Karwa had “opened a quick-commerce app to order a few last-minute essentials. Every suggestion made sense. It wasn’t random. It felt like the platform knew me — my rituals, my rush, my reality in that moment.”

That moment captures the transformation sweeping India’s retail ecosystem. During Diwali, quick-commerce platforms emerged as the most consequential growth driver for festive e-commerce, with order volumes surging by 150% year on year, according to Redseer. The consultancy further estimates that total online sales crossed ₹1.2 lakh crore (about $14.5 billion). And over 90 million online shoppers participated in the first leg of festive sales — marking India’s most broad-based digital festival economy ever.

For many marketers, the 2025 festive period confirmed that the question is no longer whether quick-commerce platforms belong in media plans, but how they can be used meaningfully.

The new pillar of effective marketing strategies

Quick-commerce platforms are uniquely positioned to drive growth. Rekha Motwani, vice president of digital media at ARM Worldwide, said these platforms “have evolved beyond simple purchase environments into comprehensive ad ecosystems, delivering measurable results from awareness to conversion.” Compared to upper-funnel channels like social, she noted, commerce platforms now deliver stronger conversion rates and higher return on ad spend (ROAS). 

“Although their scale is still smaller than social or video platforms, their efficiency and measurable ROI [return on investment] have solidified their position as a core pillar in festive strategy,” she said.

According to GroupM and Magna, retail media ad spend in India is projected to reach $2.1 billion (about ₹174 billion) in 2025, growing at a 10% compound rate through 2030. Nonendemic advertisers (from financial services to auto brands) are now buying inventory on e-commerce and grocery platforms, using marketplace shopper data to extend audiences across over-the-top TV (OTT) and the open internet.

For Nitin Kumar Kosari, assistant vice president of e-commerce and marketplaces at LS Digital, this shift marks a structural reordering of media plans. “The biggest truth we saw was that the best measurable ROI didn’t come from any single channel but from combining them,” he said. 

“Retail media acted as the ‘conversion engine,’ social media as the ‘discovery funnel,’ and CTV as the ‘demand creator.’ Together, they delivered two-to-three times stronger conversion rates for high-intent shoppers,” Kosari said, adding that LS Digital clients allocated between 40% and 55% of their digital budgets to retail and quick-commerce platforms this season.

Connecting the consumer journey across channels

If the past year established e-commerce platforms as high-performance stand-alone environments, programmatic technology is now turning them into connected ecosystems. “The 2025 festive season has been transformative,” said Nikhil Kumar, chief growth officer at mediasmart by Affle. “Advertisers across India are spending nearly ₹1 crore (about $120,000) every 15 minutes programmatically. It now accounts for 44 percent of India’s digital ad spend and is projected to grow 47 percent next year.” 

He added that programmatic infrastructure is enabling brands to connect commerce ads with CTV and mobile journeys, turning household attention into measurable engagement. “We’re witnessing an inflection point as retail media intelligence is now being integrated into CRM and measurement frameworks at scale,” he said.

Amit Verma, founder and CEO of DigitUp, believes technology is no longer the bottleneck; rather, creativity is. “Advertisement cost, customer experience and loyalty remain the real issues,” he said. “We can run ads at scale, but the question is whether we can produce creativity at scale. AI is going to change this a lot.”

AI’s growing role in predictive commerce, shifting campaigns from reactive to anticipatory, has already started to reshape how brands plan festive seasons. Marketers are using AI to forecast sourcing, inventory and service offers up to three months ahead, moving toward automated campaigns that link moment-based intent with instant fulfillment.

As Karwa put it, “The next wave won’t come from buying more space, but from showing up at the right moments where data, experience design and instinct meet.”

In India, those moments are multiplying — and they’re increasingly shoppable.