For years, the consumer journey followed a familiar order: people would search, compare, evaluate and decide. That path is becoming far less linear, more shaped by AI, and more personalised by the day. The question for marketers is whether their measurement is keeping pace.
I was at Goafest recently, an event that captures the pulse of India’s media industry, where I gave a keynote on AI, audiences and cross-platform clarity. My message was a simple one: the consumer journey is changing faster than ever before, and India is one of the most compelling markets in the world where we can observe that change.
Three forces are driving that change at once:
Today, before anyone clicks through to a website, there is usually an AI-generated summary sitting above the familiar list of results. For a growing share of searches, that summary is the first answer a person sees, and sometimes the only one.
Comscore’s AI Intelligence data for India shows which domains are cited in those overviews on Google and Bing, broken down by search context. For example, the table below covers the Entertainment, Sports, Financial Services and Retail sectors.
Source: Comscore AI Intelligence, Custom Search data. Search context categories: Entertainment, Sports, Financial Services and Retail. February 2026, India. Ranking based on search volume and associated cited domains.
These are not traffic rankings or search rankings. Instead, these are influence rankings – in other words, the sites that are most often cited by the LLMs providing consumers with answers. Being cited in an AI overview shapes what people see and consider well before they reach anyone’s website, and a brand or publisher that does not appear may never enter the consideration set. The domains at the top have earned their place over time, by being where people reliably turn for a trustworthy answer.
The same concentration appears in the tools themselves. OpenAI accounts for 86% of the time people in India spend on AI platforms, in line with the global picture.1
The people leading AI adoption in India are young. The 18 to 24 group is out in front, and their behaviour cuts against the mobile-first assumption. AI usage here splits 58% desktop to 42% mobile, which points to deliberate, task-driven use.
ChatGPT and Gemini lead on both desktop and mobile. Microsoft Copilot completes the top three on desktop, while on mobile the third spot goes to Canva, a sign of how much creative AI matters to this group.2
Somewhere in that journey, a new screen has taken hold in the living room. India’s connected TV audience has reached 96 million, up 34% year on year.3
Platforms with deep cross-platform reach in India, YouTube among them, are seeing some of their strongest growth on the big screen. Time spent on YouTube at the device level has grown 77% in India over two years, the second fastest rate of any market Comscore measures globally.4
The living room screen is now a connected screen, and understanding who is watching, and how often, calls for measurement that can follow audiences across every platform they use.
After three days of conversations with industry leaders at Goafest, and looking at the data above, three priorities stand out for marketers right now.
India’s media market is moving at remarkable speed, and these shifts are changing how brands earn reach, stay relevant and show results. The organisations that pay attention now, and measure what is genuinely happening, will set the pace rather than chase it. If any of this is useful for your own planning, please get in touch.
Sources:1Comscore AI Intelligence Custom Search, Desktop and Mobile, Total visitation, OpenAI, March 2026, India.2Comscore AI Intelligence CustomIQ, Desktop, Age range: 18-24, OpenAI, March 2026, India.3Comscore Enumeration Study CTV in collaboration with international vendors, May 2025 to May 2026, India.4Comscore Video Metrix CTV Device-Level, Total Audience, YouTube, January 2024 to January 2026, India.