Are brands now banking on data-led creator content?

As brands double down on performance-led marketing, programmatic buying is emerging as the missing link that could finally bring scale, structure and measurable outcomes to India’s fast-growing creator economy.

Programmatic buying, in simple terms, is the automated, data-driven purchase of digital advertising inventory. Instead of manually selecting where ads appear, brands use algorithms and real-time bidding to place content in front of the most relevant audiences across platforms such as display, video, mobile and social media. Increasingly, this includes creator-led content, from Instagram Reels to YouTube Shorts, turning them into targeted ad units rather than just organic posts.

According to the dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report 2026, programmatic accounted for 42% of India’s total digital media spends in 2025, translating to ₹30,081 crore, and marking a 19% year-on-year growth. The momentum is only expected to accelerate, with programmatic ad spends projected to grow at a CAGR of 18.77%, reaching ₹42,435 crore by 2027, while its share in overall digital advertising is set to inch up further to 43%.

Industry leaders say this shift is fundamentally changing how influencer marketing operates.

Vikas Chawla, Co-founder, Social Beat and Influencer.in, said, “We are doubling down on programmatic and media buying this year because we see it as the intersection where data, creative and influencers come together to drive real business outcomes. Programmatic allows us to combine audience intelligence with creator-led storytelling, making campaigns far more targeted and performance-driven. It is no longer about running influencer campaigns in isolation, but about integrating creators into a larger media and programmatic ecosystem.”

This convergence is already visible in how campaigns are being executed. A creator’s reel is no longer just a piece of content posted on social media. It is now amplified using programmatic tools to reach high-intent audiences, retarget users, and drive conversions across platforms.

Raj Mishra, MD and CEO, Chtrbox, explains how brands are increasingly moving away from vanity metrics. “Brands need to move beyond follower counts and start selecting creators based on audience data. Programmatic tools allow marketers to match creator audiences with their own high-converting customer profiles, replacing instinct with signal-driven decision-making at scale.”

This means that instead of picking a creator with a large following, a skincare brand, for instance, can identify creators whose audience mirrors its core buyers, such as urban women aged 25 to 35 who shop online. The creator’s content can then be distributed programmatically across platforms, ensuring it reaches users most likely to convert.

Game of Platforms

The role of platforms is also evolving rapidly. With Meta Platforms pushing shoppable formats such as Reels and native commerce integrations, and Google scaling YouTube Shorts alongside its data-rich advertising space, the lines between content, commerce and media buying are blurring.

Brands are now combining short-form and long-form content to build full-funnel strategies. For example, a campaign may start with a YouTube Shorts video for discovery, move into long-form creator content for consideration, and then use programmatic retargeting to drive conversions on marketplaces or quick commerce platforms.

For many brands, programmatic is being seen more as a distribution layer rather than a creator discovery tool.

Nidhi Rastogi, Marketing Head, UNIQLO India, said, “For influencer marketing, the choice of influencers is still something we do ourselves. It is not programmatic. Where programmatic helps is in distributing that influencer content. You can identify the kind of audience you want to target with that content, which makes it more efficient. Earlier, we were more broad in how we used content, but now it has become far more targeted. You can work with multiple influencers and then use programmatic to understand which audience resonates with which kind of content, so the overall efficiency improves. Our influencer mix varies by category, depending on the kind of audience and storytelling we want to build.”

Despite the growing interest, a key challenge remains measurement. Programmatic ecosystems, especially connected TV, rely on metrics such as reach, impressions and completion rates, while creator campaigns are still evaluated on engagement indicators like views, comments and follower growth. This mismatch makes it difficult for brands to build a unified performance framework across channels.

Even so, marketers believe the shift is inevitable.

However, adoption is not uniform across industries.

Early Stages 

Sai Narayan, Chief Marketing Officer, PolicyBazaar, said, “We’re not really doing programmatic buying on influencers. We have a relatively small team and we work with multiple smaller agencies across regions, including the South and North. What we do use are tools to understand which creators have a larger reach and audience base, and who can help amplify our message. So while the selection is still manual, we operate at a very large scale across markets like Andhra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Currently, about 8–10% of our marketing spend goes into influencer marketing, which has grown significantly from near zero a few years ago.”

Similarly, some brands are still at an early stage of integrating programmatic with creator marketing.

Amit Lakhotia, Founder and CEO, Park+, said, “No, we haven’t started programmatic buying yet. Roughly 80% of our marketing mix is now digital, and out of that, about 15-20% is being allocated to influencer marketing.”

As brands experiment with programmatic-led creator strategies, AZ by AZORTE has rolled out a Gen Z-focused campaign that blends creator storytelling with data-driven amplification. The campaign features three digital creators, Sarah, Shachi and Subhiksha, each fronting stylised fit check films that spotlight bold silhouettes, experimental layering and individual fashion expression. Instead of a single narrative, the brand built multiple creator-led stories designed to reflect diverse Gen Z identities, which were then amplified through programmatic buying to reach distinct audience cohorts based on behaviour, aesthetic preferences and cultural cues.

Manoj Rajpurohit, Brand Marketing of AZORTE (a fashion brand owned by Reliance Retail) commented, “Every creator selection, whether it’s Sara, Shachi, or Subhiksha, is driven by a deep understanding of our Gen Z consumer: their cultural cues, aesthetic preferences, and digital behaviour. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, we use data to identify distinct audience cohorts and pair them with creators who naturally embody that mindset. This ensures that the content feels native, not imposed, and drives stronger engagement as well as measurable outcomes. The result is a cohesive narrative where media efficiency meets cultural relevance, delivering not just reach, but resonance and conversion.”

Petal Gangurde, Chief of Brand and Culture, XYXX, a premium men's clothing brand said, “Programmatic buying works best when it stops being treated as just a media-buying tool and starts functioning as a decision-making layer across content and creators. Data from programmatic campaigns helps us understand what narratives are landing, and we then brief creators to build on those exact stories. When you combine programmatic intelligence with creator authenticity, you move from just targeting audiences to actually building relevance at scale.”

Angela Toppo, Co-founder and CMO of Be., a wellness brand based in India that specialises in collagen-infused products added that programmatic enables brands to align storytelling with consumer journeys. “By mapping the consumer journey from first discovery to repeat usage, programmatic allows us to deliver the right message at the right moment, reinforcing trust and intent. This alignment across creators, content and audience ultimately drives more meaningful, performance-led outcomes rooted in relevance and credibility.”

As brands move away from siloed campaigns towards integrated, data-led strategies, programmatic is increasingly becoming the backbone that connects creators, content and commerce.

With platforms investing heavily in short-form video, social commerce and AI-led targeting, the fusion of programmatic and influencer marketing is still in its early stages, but the direction is clear. For brands chasing both scale and accountability, creator-led storytelling backed by data may well define the next phase of digital advertising.