Diwali advertising in the US is becoming more sophisticated. For agencies, the opportunity goes beyond putting festive creative in front of an Indian American audience. The harder part is understanding which audiences within that market matter, where they consume media, how cultural relevance should influence channel selection, and how the campaign should move from awareness to action.
The audience itself is substantial. The US Census Bureau estimates that 5.6 million people of Asian Indian descent lived in the US in 2024, making Asian Indians the second-largest Asian group in the country after Chinese Americans. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2026)
For US agencies, that raises a more useful question: How should media planning change when Diwali is an audience opportunity rather than simply a festive advertising moment?
The Indian American audience is too valuable to treat as a niche segment
The audience’s scale makes Diwali relevant across far more categories than traditional festive advertisers.
Jewellery, fashion, food and grocery are obvious examples. But the same cultural moment can also create opportunities for automotive, financial services, travel, technology, beauty, entertainment and consumer brands.
For agencies, this changes the way the opportunity should be approached.
Diwali should be treated as an audience opportunity, not simply a seasonal creative theme.
That means identifying the audiences that matter to the brand, understanding where they consume media and choosing environments that align with the campaign objective.
It also means looking beyond a single audience segment. Different regions, generations, cultural behaviours and media habits can influence how an audience engages with a Diwali marketing campaign.
The media plan should reflect those differences from the beginning, rather than adding cultural targeting after the broader campaign strategy has already been defined.
What does current media behaviour tell agencies about the Indian American audience?
A 2025 study from the 3AF Foundation, Market Analysis: A Comparative Deep Dive into Asian American Media Consumption Habits, provides recent insight into how Asian Indian Americans consume media.
Among Asian Indian American consumers surveyed, long-form video accounts for 7.42 hours per week and social media for 6.60 hours per week. YouTube was the most-used daily platform at 68%, followed by WhatsApp at 56% and Instagram at 55%.
The study also reports that in-culture media accounts for 50% of connected TV viewing among Asian Indian consumers. At the same time, the vast majority of Asian Indian consumers surveyed use English when engaging on social media.
These findings point to an important distinction for agencies.
Cultural relevance does not automatically mean translating every campaign into an Indian language.
For many Asian Indian American consumers, the opportunity can be English-language creative that reflects the culture, combined with media environments where that cultural context already exists.
That gives agencies more options when building a Diwali media planning strategy.
Instead of treating language as the only cultural signal, planners can consider:
- Content environment
- Audience interests
- Regional identity
- Language
- Generation
- Geography
- Platform behaviour
- Campaign objective
“Indian American” is not a complete targeting strategy
A broad audience label can be useful as a starting point. It does little to explain the differences within that audience.
The 2025 3AF study separates Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean and Vietnamese audiences in its analysis, highlighting differences in media behaviour across Asian American subgroups. 3AF Foundation, 2025 Media Consumption Study
The same principle applies when planning across different communities within the broader Indian American audience.
A campaign aimed at a younger, English-dominant audience may require a different media mix from one targeting a regional-language community or an audience with stronger connections to Indian cultural content.
That means agencies should ask more specific questions:
- Which markets are we prioritising?
- Which cultural or regional communities are relevant?
- Which platforms and content environments do they use?
- Does the creative need to be language-specific, culturally resonant in English, or both?
- What behaviour are we trying to influence?
The more specific the audience definition becomes, the more useful the media plan can become.
Cultural relevance needs to reach the media plan
Cultural relevance is often treated as a creative consideration.
The media plan deserves the same attention.
If the creative reflects a specific cultural audience but the media strategy relies entirely on broad targeting, the two parts of the campaign are working at different levels of precision.
A stronger approach connects:
Audience → Media environment → Creative → Format → Objective
For example, an agency could use broad video and CTV placements to establish awareness, culturally relevant publishers or content environments to deepen engagement, and retargeting to reconnect with people who have already interacted with the campaign.
The role of cultural relevance can therefore extend beyond the ad itself.
It can influence where the ad appears, who sees it, what version they see and what happens after they engage.
That is particularly important for multicultural advertising, where audience identity and media behaviour can vary significantly within the same broad demographic group.
Regional media can add another layer of precision
Regional media can be useful when a campaign needs to reach specific communities within the broader Indian American audience.
That does not mean every Diwali advertising campaign needs a separate media strategy for every Indian language or region.
The point is to match the level of media segmentation to the campaign objective.
If a brand is trying to reach a broad Indian American audience, mainstream platforms and culturally resonant English-language creative may provide the scale required.
If the campaign is built around a particular regional community, regional publishers, language-specific environments or community media can provide additional relevance.
The 2025 3AF study reinforces the broader point that Asian Indian Americans have a distinct media behaviour and platform mix, with YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram among the most-used daily platforms in its research.
For agencies, the takeaway is simple: Don’t choose media only because it can identify the audience. Choose it because it can reach that audience in a context that supports the campaign.
Diwali should be planned as a full-funnel opportunity
Diwali does not have to be treated as a short burst of awareness activity.
The opportunity can span the funnel.
CTV and premium video can build awareness. Display and video can extend reach and reinforce messaging. Social and creator activity can add engagement. Retargeting can bring interested audiences back into the consideration journey. Lower-funnel media can then support conversions, store visits, purchases or other business outcomes.
A current example comes from Tanishq USA.
According to the ANA Marketing Knowledge Center, Tanishq USA exceeded its Diwali sales target by 24% in 2026 using cultural precision, premium video and a full-funnel media system around its “India wali Diwali” campaign. (Source: ANA Marketing Knowledge Center, 2026 Tanishq case study)
This is a specific campaign result, not an industry benchmark. But it provides a useful example of what happens when cultural strategy, media planning and business objectives are connected.
So the planning model for agencies could be:
Awareness → Engagement → Consideration → Conversion → Retargeting
with the role of each channel defined before the campaign launches.
Don’t wait until it’s too close to Diwali week to start implementing
One of the easiest mistakes is to treat Diwali as a single-day advertising moment.
The media plan should account for the journey leading up to the festival as well.
People may discover brands, research products, compare options and begin planning celebrations before Diwali itself. That creates opportunities for agencies to build a sequence rather than compressing the entire campaign into the final few days.
A practical structure could look like:
Early phase: Build awareness and establish cultural relevance.
Consideration phase: Introduce products, offers and stronger category messaging.
Peak period: Increase high-intent and conversion-focused activity.
Post-Diwali: Retarget engaged audiences and extend relevant messaging.
The exact timing will depend on the category, purchase cycle and campaign objective.
The important part is to build the media plan around how the audience moves towards the purchase, rather than around the festival date alone.
What should agencies change in their Diwali media planning?
A stronger Diwali media planning strategy starts with the audience and works outward.
Before launching, agencies should ask:
1. Who are we actually trying to reach?
Move beyond a broad Indian American audience definition and identify the geographic, cultural, behavioural and platform signals that matter to the campaign.
2. Where does this audience consume media?
Use current media behaviour to inform the channel mix. For Asian Indian American audiences, recent research points to strong engagement with long-form video, social media, YouTube and WhatsApp. (Source: 3AF Foundation, 2025 Media Consumption Study)
3. Does the creative match the audience?
Cultural relevance can come through language, imagery, storytelling, values and context. It does not have to mean translating the same campaign into multiple languages.
4. Does the media environment support the creative?
A culturally relevant ad can have greater context when it appears alongside content and environments that already matter to the audience.
5. Does the media plan support the entire funnel?
Connect awareness with engagement, consideration, retargeting and conversion rather than treating Diwali advertising as a single awareness burst.
6. What will success look like?
Define measurement around the actual business objective, whether that is reach, engagement, consideration, store visits, leads, sales or return on ad spend.
Diwali is an opportunity for better media planning, not just festive creative
The latest available audience research shows that Asian Indian Americans have distinct media behaviours and platform preferences. Current campaign evidence also shows how cultural precision can be connected to broader media planning and business outcomes.
For agencies, the opportunity is to make those connections earlier.
Audience strategy should inform media selection. Media selection should inform creative context. Creative should support the campaign objective. And measurement should connect the entire system back to the business goal.
That makes Diwali media planning less about adding festive messaging to an existing campaign and more about building a media strategy around the audience the brand actually wants to reach.
For agencies running programmatic advertising as part of the media mix, this also means connecting audience signals with the right inventory, context, geography and frequency across the funnel. Datawrkz’s current multicultural advertising approach similarly connects CTV and video for awareness with display, social and YouTube during consideration, followed by retargeting and second-screen activity for conversion. Diwali provides the cultural moment.
The media plan determines how effectively an agency can use it.
