‘84% of Indians come to Google or YouTube daily’: Neeti Walia, Google India

At the e4m D2C Revolution Summit 2025, Neeti Walia, Head of Commerce, Mid-Market Sales at Google India, delivered a keynote session titled ‘Rethink Marketing with Google and YouTube. Speaking to founders and marketers, she underlined how Google and YouTube can be partners in helping businesses find, understand, and convert users in a fast-changing digital landscape.

“Shopping behaviour is extremely unpredictable,” said Walia while she highlighted how users are constantly “searching, streaming, scrolling and shopping”, often simultaneously, and pointed out that “84% of Indians come to Google or YouTube on a daily basis, significantly higher than any other platform.”

Walia explained how search itself is rapidly evolving. With multimodal search, AI overviews, AI mode, and visual tools like Google Lens and Circle to Search, she said search is no longer just about information but about intelligence. “One in five visual searches have commercial intent,” she noted.

On AI, she stressed its role in creating higher-quality user journeys: “AI overviews are helping people become high-quality traffic for your website. Walia also touched upon AI Powered ad solutions like Performance Max and newly launched Commerce Media Networks (CMN) where D2C brands can expand reach & sales across Q-commerce & e-commerce platforms like Flipkart, Myntra, Blinkit, Zepto & Swiggy Instamart Giving the example of RENEÉ Cosmetics, she said: “They tried Commerce Media network on Google ads with Blinkit and saw an 11.5% increase in sales and a 48% reduction in cost per acquisition by taking users to a friction-free point of sale.”

Moving on, she emphasized YouTube’s growing influence in commerce & shopping, pointing out that “76% of viewers believe creators on YouTube are more trustworthy than on any other platform” and that people watch “over 90 million hours of shopping content on YouTube” With innovations like shoppable connected TV ads, Shoppable Mastheads and partnership ads with creators, she said brands can drive both influence and transactions.

Wrapping up, Walia urged marketers to embrace AI-driven campaigns and reiterated Google and YouTube are where discovery starts and decisions are made. A whopping 87% of shopping journeys have both Google and YouTube present where consumers said they discovered a new brand , product or retailer, and when it comes to GenZ’s , 89% of Gen Z are using Google in their shopping journeys including - discovering, browsing, getting ideas, researching and/or purchasing.

She closed her session advising D2C brands to not just run better ads, run better business.