As India gears up for its upcoming high-octane festive season, mobile engagement surges across the country. For app marketeers, this period represents a golden window to not just acquire new users but also re-engage lapsed ones. Capturing attention demands clarity in format, precision in delivery, and relevance at every touchpoint.
To capitalize on this, advertisers must go beyond "more ads" to delivering the right formats, powered by smart programmatic targeting. Whether it’s mobile screens or living-room CTVs, formats that balance engagement, contextuality, and urgency are key.
Programmatic advertising across mobile and CTV offers the reach, efficiency and higher ROAS needed during this competitive time. During the most recent festive cycle, digital advertising grew close to 20%, while CTV audiences expanded by 35 million viewers in just one quarter. But the success of any campaign hinges on ad formats that resonate with festive audiences, drive clicks, and most importantly, conversions.
1. Native ads
Native ads blend seamlessly into the user’s content experience, making them one of the most effective festive-season formats for performance-driven campaigns. Unlike standard banners or intrusive interstitials, native ads match the look and feel of the app or site they appear on.
During the festive period, when users are actively browsing for inspiration, gift ideas, or deals, these ads feel more like recommendations than promotions.
mDSP enhances native formats with real-time contextual targeting and creative optimization. Whether users are scrolling through editorial content or app recommendations, the platform adapts layouts, headlines, and assets to match the environment and behavior.
This is especially effective in high-scroll environments where timing and tone matter more than branding.
Playable ads are interactive, giving users a taste of your app (especially games or shopping apps with gamification) before they download. During the festive season, users are more likely to engage with content that entertains while offering value, such as interactive gamified offers or scratch cards for festive discounts. Playables can be dynamically optimized through programmatic platforms to serve the most engaging version based on real-time performance metrics.
These formats work well with retargeting as well, especially when reminding cart abandoners of limited-time offers.
Rewarded videos offer users something in return, such as bonus points, discounts, or in-game rewards, for watching a full-screen video ad. These opt-in formats align well with festive consumer psychology: they’re in a spending mode and are looking for more value per click. Rewarded video placements in gaming and entertainment apps can be programmatically bought, ensuring you're only paying for fully completed views.
It’s also a great tool for deeper engagement as users willingly give attention in exchange for rewards.
CTV is often treated as a branding channel, but during the festive quarter, it becomes a conversion catalyst when paired with interaction. Interactive and engaging ad formats on CTV such as short-form video ads, dropped at the right watching moments, or formats such as Pause Ads and QR ads build engagement with the users without interrupting their experience. When combined with a vernacular approach, such ads can adapt language and creatives to match regional triggers.
To further drive performance out of the CTV channel, QR ads are a great way to encourage users to take action from CTV to their mobiles, such as to take the user to a particular in-app offer, install page, or purchase.
Festive shopping is deeply personal. Whether it’s buying a kurta for Rakhi or electronics for Diwali gifting, users are in the market for specific products. Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) serve hyper-personalized creatives featuring items that users have previously browsed, wishlisted, or added to cart. DPAs are designed to re-engage users with high intent by combining behavior insights, catalog data, and programmatic delivery, creating a frictionless path back to conversion. Rather than relying on static remarketing, DPAs assemble the right message in real time, for the right user, in the right moment.
Through programmatic platforms, these ads can pull from your product catalog in real-time, showcase festive discounts, and adapt creative copy based on region, time of day.
Rich media ads powered by MRAID offer the kind of interactivity and visual flair beyond what static ads can offer, especially in a high-intent, festive environment. MRAID enables advanced in-app ad experiences like swipeable product showcases, expandable carousels, gamified scratch cards, and mini videos that run directly within the ad unit. These ads are particularly effective during the festive season, when users are in exploration mode and more willing to engage with branded content that feels entertaining or rewarding.
Programmatically delivered, they can be optimized in real time based on performance metrics like engagement rate, making them an ideal choice for mid-funnel campaigns where driving consideration is just as important as visibility.
Hybrid ads bring together two or more creative formats and features within a single ad unit, creating a more layered and interactive user experience. For instance, a user might watch a short festive-themed video and then be presented with an interactive carousel or multiproduct end card to explore more offerings. This combination helps drive both emotional impact and tangible action.
Hybrid ads work particularly well for apps in retail, fashion, and q-commerce, where showcasing multiple products or deals in one flow can dramatically improve clickthrough and engagement.
As India’s festive season heats up, app advertisers need formats that align with user intent, screen behavior, and campaign goals. Whether you’re building awareness with CTV, driving urgency with countdown ads, or re-engaging with rich media, the right mix can make all the difference. But not every format works for every objective. Choosing the right ones, backed by programmatic precision, can be the difference between a campaign that blends in and one that converts at scale. This festive season, don’t rely on guesswork or recycled playbooks.
Reevaluate your media strategy, experiment with format combinations, and use this guide to make smarter, data-driven choices that align with your app growth goals. Now’s the time to reassess your media mix and power your festive campaigns with high-impact, programmatic formats built for India.
If you’re looking for creative expertise to power-up your campaigns, mDSP’s in-house creative suite can help you to elevate your performance this season. Get in touch with us to know more