There’s little point chasing business in a crowd scrolling through Instagram reels on stock tips when a startup’s core consumers — students — are busy looking for late-night snacks or last-minute stationery on Blinkit or Zepto.

That’s the blind spot traditional ad platforms never bridged: they couldn’t reach consumers in the real moments of need. And the reason is simple — most digital ads are still generic, fuelled by unreliable third-party cookies. The result: costs spiral, but consumers remain underserved.

This gap is widening even as India’s advertising market touches INR 1.64 Lakh Cr, with digital commanding 60% of the pie. Accuracy, privacy, and data ownership remain unresolved questions for marketers. That’s where new players like Nitro Ads step in — helping brands tap high-intent audiences beyond Meta & Google, while putting privacy and performance at the centre.

As other channels come with their restrictions, brands advertising on them often end up shooting in the dark, targeting audiences that are too broad, following outdated or inaccurate customer data, and dealing with shallow analytics. The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) shoots up and the Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) plummets.

Nitro Ads solves for this by partnering with premium and high-performing ad channels like food delivery apps, payment apps, OTTs and other connected TV (CTV) formats to show ads to a highly curated and potentially engaging audience.

The platform devised a pricing strategy based on performance and outcome. “Brands need to pay only when campaigns deliver measurable results,” said Umair Mohammed, CEO, Nitro Commerce, which lets brands choose to pay as per clicks, sign-ups, or sales, which not only makes the marketing more accountable but also directly impacts the ROI.

“We use real-time intent signals, instead of third-party cookies or static demographics. With transparent, cross-channel analytics, brands can measure ROAS across the entire funnel, discover high-intent audiences in alternative spaces, and........

© Inc42