Artificial intelligence is helping India’s small and medium-sized businesses overcome cost and complexity barriers to newer advertising channels, with nearly 87 percent saying AI-powered advertising tools have enabled access to channels, audiences or formats that previously felt out of reach, according to an Amazon Ads-commissioned study by Opinium.

Three-fourths of the SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses ) surveyed also said AI-enabled advertising has directly supported business growth.

The study found that AI adoption among Amazon advertisers in India is accelerating, with the share using AI-powered tools rising 77 percent year-on-year.

SMBs generated 62 percent more ad creatives using such tools in the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier.

Key findings of the report include the following:

• Streaming TV: Three years ago, 56 percent of businesses surveyed considered streaming TV a viable advertising option, but cost, high minimum spends and the complexity of planning and buying kept it largely out of reach. Today, 62 percent of SMBs interested in streaming TV say it can help them reach new audiences, while nearly 48 percent say it can improve brand credibility.
• Going global: The respondents, who said cross-border campaigns were inaccessible three years ago, now stated increasingly the options are opening — 56 percent said such campaigns are more accessible. Another 59 percent said AI-enabled advertising has supported their expansion into new countries.
• More creative capabilities: As many as 88 percent of SMBs said they are likely to use AI to create advertising assets. Some 68 percent said AI has enabled them to be more creative in advertising by helping them produce video, experiment with formats and iterate faster without a dedicated creative team. Another 55 percent said the tools help them compete with larger brands with bigger budgets.
• Human oversight remains: Only 2 percent of SMBs reported fully automated advertising decisions without human review. Business owners remain the most common decision-makers, at 40 percent, followed by AI tools with human review at 32 percent.
• AI moves into strategy: Some 92 percent of SMBs said AI will be important to their future competitiveness. They are already using it for content generation (64 percent), strategic planning (58 percent) and competitor analysis (53 percent).

The study cited the experience of Klosia, a women’s ethnic wear brand, which used Amazon Ads’ AI-powered tools to turn a static product listing into a video advertisement and run it as a streaming TV campaign.

According to founder Vishal Singh Sisodiya, 80 percent of the customers reached were new to the brand, while combining the campaign with search ads resulted in three times more purchases than before.

“We are seeing Indian SMBs approach advertising with a confidence we have not seen before,” said Kapil Sharma, Director, Amazon Ads India.

He said AI-powered tools were opening channels such as streaming TV that had once been reserved for big brands with large budgets.

The research was commissioned by Amazon Ads and conducted by Opinium among 300 B2C marketing decision-makers from SMEs in India, as part of a wider survey of 4,100 respondents across 14 countries.

It covered industries including goods and manufacturing, e-commerce and retail, financial services and beauty. Data was collected between April 7 and April 23, 2026.