InMobi: 4 in 5 festive shoppers want AI-powered shopping assistants
InMobi Advertising’s India festive-season report finds demand for AI-led discovery, with 89% valuing smart search suggestions and 81% interested in virtual try-ons. Multi-screen behaviour is also prominent, as 67% use mobile devices while watching TV.
What happened
InMobi Advertising’s India festive-season report finds strong demand for AI shopping assistants and multi-screen discovery. Millennials lead AI-assisted
Key facts
- 4 in 5 shoppers seek AI-powered shopping assistants
- 89% cite smart search suggestions
- 81% cite virtual product try-ons
- 75% pay attention to festive content on idle TV screens
- 67% use mobile devices while watching television
- 3 in 5 plan to spend over ₹10,000
- 22% of Android users plan to spend ₹25,000–₹50,000
- 15% of iOS users plan to spend ₹25,000–₹50,000
- 50% intend to buy apparel and footwear
- 40% intend to buy jewelry
- 37% intend to buy grocery and daily essentials
Why this matters
Target partnerships or acquisitions in conversational commerce, visual search and virtual try-on that can strengthen omni-channel retail discovery and connect mobile engagement with TV-led demand.
What to watch
- Major Indian marketplaces and fashion chains launching or expanding native AI shopping agents ahead of Diwali.
- Reported conversion-rate, average-order-value, return-rate and customer-service changes attributable to virtual try-on or AI search.
- Growth in CTV-to-mobile attribution products, shoppable ad formats and retailer partnerships with streaming platforms.
- Consumer complaints or regulatory scrutiny around AI recommendation bias, sponsored results, data usage and misleading virtual try-ons.
- Merchant adoption of richer catalog, sizing and real-time inventory feeds needed to support AI-led discovery.
- Whether grocery and quick-commerce apps introduce conversational list building, meal planning and replenishment assistants.
- Prioritize AI search, natural-language product discovery and guided comparison for festive-category landing pages, starting with apparel, footwear, jewellery and grocery.
- Connect virtual try-on to size guidance, real-time availability, delivery promises and low-friction returns; measure conversion and return-rate impact rather than engagement alone.
- Build second-screen campaign flows using CTV/video creative, QR or deep links, mobile retargeting and closed-loop measurement across discovery, app installs and purchases.
- Upgrade product-information infrastructure: standardized attributes, imagery, sizing, regional-language metadata, price and inventory feeds are prerequisites for reliable AI recommendations.
- Create retail-media offerings that let brands sponsor assistant recommendations transparently, with relevance controls to protect consumer trust.
- Segment AI journeys by shopping mission—gifting, self-purchase, replenishment and festival-specific occasion buying—rather than using a single generic chatbot.