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There’s a quiet revolution underway in India’s digital retail ecosystem, and it’s not being led by flashy campaigns or billboard budgets. Instead, it’s happening in product pages, brand stores, and AI-assisted ad tools. It is here where small and medium businesses are finding new ways to grow, test, and scale using Amazon Ads.
With legions of Indian SMBs accelerating their digital transformation over 2025, and e-commerce spending expected to surpass $140 billion in 2024, the challenge for young brands isn’t just visibility; it’s viability. Increasingly, they’re turning to Amazon’s advertising stack not just to be seen, but to be bought.
In FY2024, Amazon India’s ad revenues reached ?6,649 crore (up sharply from previous years) fueled in no small part by SMBs seeking full-funnel advertising options that go beyond spray-and-pray tactics. With Amazon’s global Q2 earnings for 2025 expected later this week, keep an eye on that number.
Saurabh Sameer, co-founder of Ugaoo, a fast-growing gardening and home improvement brand, credits Amazon Ads with helping the company move from awareness to actual utility. “Our goal wasn’t just to reach more customers, but also to enhance their shopping experience,” he said. “Amazon helped us create an immersive experience with Brand Store via interactive widgets. Shoppers enter their home lighting conditions and the Brand Store automatically recommended relevant products. It is not just visually appealing but has also delivered strong results.”
That emphasis on experience design, and not just clicks, is part of what Amazon Ads refers to as its full-funnel vision. Whether a brand is launching its first lipstick or looking to expand in a competitive skincare category, the stack now spans Sponsored Products, Streaming TV, Display, and AI-generated creatives.
Jitendra Rawal, Head of eCommerce at RENÉE Cosmetics, explains how the platform has become a default launchpad. “We have always used Amazon to test out our new launches like RENEE Madness, Very Matte Lipsticks and Stay With Me Lipsticks,” he said. “For Midnight Kohl, Amazon Ads played a crucial role in reaching the right audience and testing our product-market fit in launch phase. It helped us connect with high-intent shoppers, leading to better engagement.”
That keyword, intent, has become Amazon’s calling card in a media landscape flooded with vanity impressions. The company’s ability to align ads with shoppers already searching for relevant products gives it a performance edge, particularly for new or niche players who can’t afford to burn ad budgets on cold audiences.
According to Kapil Sharma, Director, Amazon Ads India, that’s by design. “We’re committed to democratizing advertising technology for businesses of all sizes,” he said. “By continually innovating our ad products and making them accessible to small and medium-sized businesses, we help brands connect with relevant audiences effectively and achieve meaningful business outcomes.”
That innovation includes the recent launch of an AI-powered Image Generation tool that allows advertisers to create brand-themed product visuals in seconds using just product metadata. While AI-generated images are now ubiquitous across advertising, Amazon’s integration is built for speed and scale, particularly helpful for brands without large creative teams.
Also newly launched is Sponsored TV, Amazon’s self-serve streaming video ad product that brings television-style awareness campaigns to the same dashboard where SMBs already manage Sponsored Products. This push into video completes a loop that many small businesses have been missing: the ability to tell their story at scale and then convert it with performance ads, and all without leaving the Amazon ecosystem.
Malini Adapureddy, founder of Deconstruct, knows firsthand how valuable that loop can be. “Penetration in the ‘Sunscreen & Serum’ category has always been a challenge for us due to rising cost-per-click and increased competition,” she said. “With support from Amazon Ads, we have grown by 17X in 2024. Key insights from Amazon Ads helped us make informed choices and see exponential growth while keeping the spends in control.”
The narrative around SMB success stories isn’t just anecdotal. At this year’s Indian Digital Marketing Awards, Amazon Ads brand partners picked up 26 awards, and several of them for breakthrough campaigns by smaller players who used the platform’s suite of tools to punch above their weight.
It is clear Amazon is betting on the long tail. But it’s doing so not just by making ad products available, but by engineering them to be usable without agency overheads or legacy media know-how. In a digital India where every rupee of ad spend needs to be justified, that accessibility might just be the difference between a brand that gets noticed and one that gets remembered.
As competition intensifies across platforms, Amazon Ads is positioning itself not as the loudest marketplace, but as the most quietly effective. And for India’s next wave of SMBs, that may be exactly what they need.
