YouTube unveils India-first separate ad targeting for urban and rural audiences

Google also announced a new immersive masthead ad format for connected televisions in India.

Google-owned video platform YouTube on September 11 introduced an India-first feature that lets advertisers buy and target urban and rural audiences separately, ahead of the festive season.

Shubha Pai, Head of Brand Solutions, Google India, told Moneycontrol that this feature will enable brands to personalise their campaigns for different consumer segments, factoring in consumer behavior, cultural preferences, and purchasing power.

"Think about the personalisation, the differences in messaging, language-related regional communications. All of that can happen now," Pai said.

She mentioned that a FMCG conglomerate piloted this solution for one of their biggest brands in India to reach rural audiences with the precision to target specific rural areas.

"In the rural geographies where they implemented it, the business outcome of the campaign has been so powerful that they have switched to YouTube-led planning in those regions," Pai said.

The announcement was made at YouTube Brandcast India 2025, the company's annual event highlighting its offerings for advertisers and marketers.

Immersive masthead ads

Google also announced a new immersive masthead ad format for connected televisions in India. YouTube’s masthead is the platform’s most prominent placement, allowing brands to showcase new product launches and drive traffic during key moments.

This announcement comes months after the tech giant extended shoppable connected TV ads on YouTube to the country, along with shoppable mastheads on its mobile platform in July.

YouTube stated that as of April 2025, it reached over 75 million people aged 18 and above in India on connected TV, with more than half of watch time spent on content 21 minutes or longer.

"The form factor of connected TV lends itself beautifully to deep, immersive viewing behaviors," Pai said. Overall, an average online adult in India watched over 72 minutes of YouTube per day as of April 2025.

Pai also said that viewership of Shorts, the service's bite-sized video feature, on connected televisions has more than doubled on a yearly basis. As of June 2025, YouTube Shorts has over 650 Million monthly logged-in viewers in India.

Later this year, Google will roll out a new Creator Partnerships Hub within Google Ads, a single destination designed to simplify and manage collaborations with YouTube creators.

With this new hub, advertisers can deepen existing relationships, discover new creators, and integrate authentic creator content into their ad strategies using Partnership Ads, the company said. It will also help in improved sponsored video discovery, creator search, and paid and organic reporting for linked videos.

Ashish Mishra, CMO, Acko said, "This year, we are leading with a digital first media approach, doubling down on YouTube as the primary medium. By leveraging connected TV and our first-party data, we’ve reached premium audiences with precision and scaled our business cost-effectively"

Mishra said the startup now intends to build on these efforts by exploring YouTube’s creator ecosystem and Google AI tools.

Using Gemini AI for creatives

Next year, the tech giant is extending Peak Points to India, an artificial intelligence (AI) feature that uses the Gemini AI model to analyze YouTube videos and help brands target ads when viewers are most engaged with a video. The feature was first announced in the United States in May 2025.

Pai said that Gemini is also playing a key role in providing relevant insights to marketers along with the ability to develop creatives faster. For example, Swiggy Instamart used Google’s AI video generator, Veo 3, for its Raksha Bandhan, Ganesh Chaturthi, and Onam campaigns.

Another FMCG brand tapped into Veo 3 to produce video assets in multiple South Indian languages, she said.

"The big shift is that AI has moved from being behind the scenes and under the hood on powering products to being in the forefront on how you create and do insights," Pai explained.

She noted that the time for brands to create the first version of assets using AI tools has dropped to three to four hours, compared with several weeks previously before further iterations. These AI-generated creatives also delivered a 12–14 percent increase in purchase intent over traditional assets, she said.

"It (AI) creates a far more level playing field. Earlier, if you wanted to do something, you might have needed access to a creative agency or a lot more money. Today, you need a lot more creativity," Pai said.

India is Google's largest market in terms of users and a critical region for its future growth, particularly its AI efforts.