Revolutionizing Digital Advertising: How Gupshup and JioHotstar Are Transforming IPL Advertising with AI-Powered Lead Management

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has long been India’s most powerful advertising platform, bringing together cricket, entertainment, and brand messaging in a spectacular 60-day festival. Now, through an innovative partnership between JioHotstar and Gupshup, advertisers can leverage this massive platform more effectively than ever before, combining the reach of IPL with sophisticated AI-powered lead management capabilities.

The Evolution of India’s Digital Landscape

India’s digital transformation has been nothing short of remarkable. With internet users growing 165 times from 5.5 million to 900 million, and the economy expanding beyond traditional urban centers, businesses face both unprecedented opportunities and challenges. The number of cities with populations exceeding 2 million has more than doubled from 13 to 30, while registered companies have tripled from 860,000 to 2.6 million.

In this rapidly evolving landscape, brands face three critical challenges. First, they need to discover effective strategies to acquire new customers efficiently in an increasingly competitive market. Second, they must find ways to establish credibility and trust in a world where consumers are bombarded with marketing messages. Third, they need innovative approaches to stand out amidst the noise and capture the attention of their target audience.

IPL on JioHotstar: A Platform Like No Other

The IPL on JioHotstar represents an unparalleled opportunity for brands to connect with India’s largest congregation of passionate, emotional, and involved audiences. With a staggering reach of 620 million viewers during IPL 2024, the platform offers unprecedented access to consumers across the country.

This massive reach extends to over 420 million households, spanning 32 states and 38 cities, truly making it a pan-India phenomenon. The multi-device presence across households, web, and CTV ensures that no viewer is left out, regardless of their preferred viewing method. Furthermore, programming in 12 regional languages breaks down linguistic barriers, allowing brands to communicate with consumers in their mother tongue.

The sophisticated targeting capabilities based on demographics, geography, and user interests enable brands to reach precisely the audience they want to connect with. This level of granularity in targeting was previously unimaginable for live sports content.

Introducing Click to Engage: The Game-Changer

The integration of Gupshup’s AI capabilities with JioHotstar’s massive reach creates a revolutionary advertising solution called Click to Engage (C2E). This innovation transforms traditional one-way advertising into interactive, two-way conversations that capture, qualify, and nurture leads in real-time.

How Click to Engage Works

The user experience with Click to Engage is remarkably seamless. Viewers watching IPL on JioHotstar see an ad that resonates with them. When they click on the call-to-action (CTA), they immediately receive a WhatsApp message from the brand’s business handle. This process requires minimal effort from the user yet creates an instant connection between them and the brand.

Behind the scenes, the technology works efficiently to ensure no lead is lost. JioHotstar securely transfers the user’s phone number and message template ID to Gupshup through an authorized API call. Gupshup’s AI agents then initiate real-time communication through the brand’s WhatsApp handle, creating a personalized interaction. For users who aren’t logged in, the system intelligently prompts them to log in, ensuring even these potential leads are captured.

The Power of AI Agents in Lead Management

Gupshup’s AI agents transform the traditional manual sales process, which typically loses over 40% of leads due to delayed responses. This AI-powered system ensures that no opportunity slips through the cracks by providing immediate responses at any time of day or night.

When a lead is captured, the AI agent instantly engages them, qualifying prospects based on parameters like budget, location, and specific requirements. It can answer basic queries about products or services and share relevant information exactly when the prospect is most interested. This immediate engagement is crucial, as research shows that lead conversion rates drop dramatically after just five minutes of inaction.

The automated nurturing capabilities further enhance the system’s effectiveness. AI agents can schedule appointments and site visits based on both the prospect’s and the sales team’s availability. They guide users through document collection processes, eliminating one of the most tedious aspects of the sales process. Even after purchase, they continue to provide value by handling post-purchase queries efficiently, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Perhaps most importantly, the system excels at smart lead qualification. It captures comprehensive lead information and updates it directly in the brand’s CRM systems, ensuring sales teams have access to the most current data. The AI assesses lead quality based on multiple parameters, identifying which prospects are most likely to convert. Qualified leads are then assigned to the appropriate sales advisors, optimizing the human touchpoints in the sales process.

Benefits for Advertisers

The Gupshup-JioHotstar integration offers multiple advantages for advertisers looking to maximize their ROI during the IPL season.

Personalized engagement stands out as a primary benefit. The system delivers tailored messages and offers based on user preferences and behavior, creating a more relevant experience for each prospect. This personalization creates stronger emotional connections with brands, as consumers feel understood and valued. As the conversation progresses, the system adapts its communication based on user responses, further refining the experience.

Data-driven insights represent another crucial advantage. The system captures verified phone numbers through OTP verification, ensuring the quality of the data collected. It tracks user preferences and behavior throughout the interaction, building a comprehensive profile of each lead. This wealth of information enables brands to refine their marketing strategies over time, becoming increasingly effective at targeting and converting their ideal customers.

The interactive ad formats themselves provide significant benefits. Unlike traditional advertising that interrupts the viewing experience, these formats integrate seamlessly into the content. The background OTP verification process happens unobtrusively, while the ad continues to play, maintaining user engagement without disruption.

From an operational standpoint, the system delivers impressive efficiency gains. It reduces cost per acquisition by automating much of the lead qualification process, allowing sales teams to focus on high-value activities. Lead qualification improves dramatically through consistent application of criteria and immediate engagement. Document collection, traditionally a bottleneck in many sales processes, becomes streamlined and efficient.

Implementation and Integration

Implementing Click to Engage advertising requires a straightforward process that begins with partnering with Gupshup as the Business Solution Provider (BSP). This partnership establishes the technical foundation for the integration.

Next, brands need to prepare their campaign assets, including creative specifications for fence and video ads that will appear on JioHotstar. They must also develop WhatsApp message templates that will be sent to users who engage with their ads. Privacy policies and consent statements are essential components, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

The implementation timeline typically follows standard operational turnaround time plus one additional day for WhatsApp testing. This testing phase ensures that the entire system works seamlessly before going live, preventing any potential issues that could impact the user experience.

IPL Advertising Trends by Industry

The IPL has become a battleground for advertisers across various industries, with each sector adopting unique strategies to capitalize on the massive viewership. Understanding these industry-specific trends can help brands optimize their approach to Click to Engage advertising.

E-commerce and D2C Brands

E-commerce and direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands have emerged as dominant players in IPL advertising. These companies leverage the tournament’s reach to drive immediate action, with many seeing conversion rates spike during match hours. For these advertisers, Click to Engage offers an ideal solution as it shortens the path from awareness to purchase.

Fashion and lifestyle e-commerce platforms have reported conversion increases of up to 35% during IPL campaigns, particularly when targeting second and third-tier cities where traditional retail penetration is lower. The ability to instantly engage potential customers through WhatsApp has proven particularly effective for flash sales and limited-time offers.

Financial Services and Fintech

The financial services industry, including banks, insurance companies, and fintech startups, has consistently increased its IPL advertising budget year over year. These companies face unique challenges in lead qualification, as financial products often require extensive information gathering and verification.

Click to Engage has revolutionized this process by allowing AI agents to conduct preliminary qualification, verify basic eligibility, and schedule appointments with financial advisors. Some fintech companies report reducing their customer acquisition costs by up to 40% through this approach, while simultaneously improving the quality of leads passed to their sales teams.

Automotive Industry

Automobile manufacturers and dealerships have traditionally struggled with the gap between television advertising and getting potential buyers into showrooms. With Click to Engage, these advertisers can now capture interest in real-time, share vehicle specifications, and schedule test drives—all while the prospect’s interest is at its peak.

Luxury car manufacturers, in particular, have embraced this technology to create personalized engagement with qualified prospects. By targeting premium segments on JioHotstar and using AI agents to qualify leads based on budget and preferences, they’ve created a seamless journey from initial interest to showroom visit.

FMCG and Consumer Goods

Fast-moving consumer goods companies use IPL advertising primarily for brand building, but have increasingly sought ways to measure the direct impact of their campaigns. Through Click to Engage, these brands can now capture consumer preferences, offer product samples, and gather valuable first-party data on their target audience.

Several beverage companies have successfully used this approach to build consumer databases during IPL campaigns, later leveraging this information for targeted promotions and new product launches. The ability to maintain ongoing conversations through WhatsApp has transformed what was once a pure awareness play into a relationship-building opportunity.

Real Estate and Property Development

The real estate sector has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of Click to Engage advertising during IPL. Property developers can now capture interested prospects immediately, showcase properties through rich media on WhatsApp, and schedule site visits—all automated through AI agents.

With high-value transactions and complex decision-making processes, real estate companies value the ability to nurture leads over time. AI agents can maintain engagement through timely updates on construction progress, new amenities, or financing options, keeping prospects warm until they’re ready to make a purchase decision.

Real-World Impact

The effectiveness of IPL advertising on JioHotstar is backed by impressive metrics, particularly when combined with Click to Engage capabilities. Compared to industry norms, advertisers on the platform see 1.4x higher category aided awareness, 1.2x better online ad awareness, 1.3x improved brand favorability, and 1.7x increased purchase intent.

For advertisers who maintain a presence across multiple IPL seasons, the results are even more striking. Those present in both IPL 2023 and 2024 experienced 1.8x higher category aided awareness, 1.4x better online ad awareness, 1.6x improved brand favorability, and 2x increased purchase intent. This demonstrates the cumulative impact of consistent investment in the platform.

When Click to Engage is added to the mix, brands report significant improvements in lead quality and conversion rates. The ability to instantly engage prospects while their interest is high dramatically reduces drop-off rates in the sales funnel. Many advertisers have found that leads captured through this method convert at rates 3-5x higher than those from traditional digital advertising.

Future of Digital Advertising

The Gupshup-JioHotstar integration represents the future of digital advertising, where massive reach meets intelligent engagement. This partnership enables brands to build and leverage first-party data at an unprecedented scale, creating a valuable asset that becomes more valuable over time.

As third-party cookies face increasing restrictions, the ability to create sophisticated audience segments based on first-party data becomes increasingly crucial. The Click to Engage system facilitates this by capturing not just contact information but also preferences, behaviors, and engagement patterns.

Looking ahead, we can expect to see further evolution in how AI agents engage with prospects. Natural language processing capabilities will continue to improve, making conversations more natural and effective. Integration with other systems, such as CRM platforms and marketing automation tools, will become more seamless, creating a unified customer experience across all touchpoints.

Conclusion

As India’s digital landscape continues to evolve, the integration of JioHotstar’s IPL platform with Gupshup’s AI capabilities offers brands an unprecedented opportunity to connect with and convert their target audience. By combining the country’s biggest sporting event with cutting-edge AI technology, advertisers can now create more meaningful connections with potential customers while significantly improving their return on investment.

This revolutionary approach to digital advertising not only solves the traditional challenges of lead capture and nurturing but also sets new standards for how brands can engage with their audiences in the digital age. As we move forward, this integration will likely become the gold standard for how digital advertising should work – immediate, interactive, and intelligent.

For brands looking to stay competitive in an increasingly digital India, embracing innovations like Click to Engage isn’t just an option—it’s becoming a necessity. Those who leverage the combined power of IPL’s reach and AI-driven engagement will find themselves well-positioned to thrive in the new era of digital marketing. To know more about how AI Agents can transform your digital marketing function, click here.

FAQ’s 

1. What makes IPL advertising so effective?

IPL advertising is highly effective due to its massive viewership, with over 620 million viewers in 2024. It provides brands with unparalleled reach, multi-device accessibility, and regional language support, ensuring deep audience engagement across India.

2. How does JioHotstar enhance IPL advertising?

JioHotstar offers advanced audience targeting based on demographics, geography, and interests. It allows brands to reach highly specific segments, ensuring maximum ROI and engagement.

3. What is Click to Engage (C2E) in IPL advertising?

Click to Engage is an AI-powered lead management solution by Gupshup that enables interactive advertising on JioHotstar. It turns static ads into two-way conversations, capturing, qualifying, and nurturing leads in real time.

4. How does Click to Engage work?

When a user clicks on an ad during IPL streaming, they receive an instant WhatsApp message from the brand. AI agents then engage the user, answer queries, qualify leads, and even schedule appointments, ensuring no lead is lost.

5. What role do AI agents play in IPL advertising?

AI agents automate lead engagement, qualification, and follow-ups. They instantly respond to inquiries, schedule interactions, and update CRM systems, reducing response time and improving conversion rates.

6. How does Click to Engage improve lead conversion?

Traditional lead responses often take too long, causing over 40% of potential customers to drop off. AI-powered Click to Engage ensures instant responses, leading to up to 5x higher conversion rates.

7. What industries benefit the most from IPL advertising with AI agents?

Industries like e-commerce, fintech, automotive, FMCG, and real estate see significant benefits. The ability to engage users instantly via WhatsApp improves customer acquisition and sales funnel efficiency.