In India’s saturated streaming market, viewers often spend more time scrolling through titles than actually watching them. Choice is a growing problem, as the sheer volume of films and series overwhelms even seasoned viewers.
Prime Video, in collaboration with WPP OpenDoor, is experimenting with a novel solution: a first-of-its-kind AI-powered campaign that combines real-time emotion detection with insights from food-ordering behaviour to recommend content that resonates with users’ moods and preferences.
Since WPP has conceptualised this, here’s what Deepa Jatkar, India Lead at WPP OpenDoor, has to say, “We did not leverage emotion-based cues as a primary method of targeting. Instead, emotion-based cues were crafted to communicate contextually. We have used demographic and behavioural targeting, layering it with real-time emotional context.
Inside the Campaign
The Prime Video-WPP OpenDoor campaign treated content discovery as a fully personalised media journey. It began with a rich-media mood-check unit that used on-device AI to read micro-expressions and classify viewers as happy, sad, excited, or neutral. Backgrounds, icons, and copy adapted instantly: bright layouts and shows like Panchayat for happy moods, softer palettes and titles like Piku for sad ones, and high-energy visuals for excited viewers.
Zomato order data and Meta touchpoints added a second layer of relevance. A biryani order suggested thrillers, desserts unlocked friendship stories, and snacks led to quirky, bite-sized content. All processing stayed on-device, respecting privacy, while clickthroughs took users straight to a curated watchlist. The campaign’s media flow included repeated exposures with fresh creative and dayparting logic. Mornings leaned toward light content, nights toward binge-worthy series.
Through this integration of emotion, behaviour, and context across Meta and Zomato, WPP OpenDoor positioned Prime Video as more than a content library, making it a personal entertainment guide tailored to each viewer’s moment.
Emotion meets targeting
The role of emotion in this campaign is nuanced, with AI-driven emotional cues complementing rather than replacing traditional targeting. “By aligning content recommendations with a user’s current emotion, we achieve a deeper, more resonant connection, leading to significantly higher engagement and perceived relevance than traditional targeting alone,” she added.
Furthermore, “It’s about serving the right content at the precise emotional moment – whether the audience is reading entertainment news on Indiatimes, ordering a Biryani on Zomato, or scrolling through TOI.”
This layering of real-time emotional insights over conventional targeting reflects a shift in how media strategy is evolving in India. Marketers are increasingly aware that relevance is no longer about demographic boxes alone; emotional context and user behaviour are critical to cutting through content fatigue.
Scalability and privacy
Real-time emotion detection in ads presents both technical and ethical challenges. Jatkar explained that the technology was engineered to be fast, efficient, and privacy-conscious
“Highly viable, provided the technology is engineered for efficiency and privacy, as ours was, built with our tech partner, Wootag. Their solution demonstrated that advanced AI for facial detection and real-time contextual mapping can operate in milliseconds, on-device, and within the constraints of mobile ad formats.”
She also highlighted the importance of privacy-first design in ensuring scalability, “This lightweight, privacy-first approach (no data stored, opt-in consent) makes it inherently scalable, across diverse devices, audiences, and publisher platforms without compromising performance or user trust.”
And stressed real-world readiness, “The key is optimizing the AI model for minimal processing power while maintaining accuracy, proving that this sophisticated personalization can indeed be deployed broadly.”
By ensuring that emotional data remains on-device and consent-driven, the campaign preserves user trust while demonstrating that AI-driven, real-time personalization is feasible at scale.
Tackling content fatigue
Content fatigue has become a genuine challenge for streaming platforms. As the number of titles grows, generic recommendations can fail to engage, leaving viewers overwhelmed or disinterested. Jatkar believes emotion-based targeting can help, “We are optimistic that this approach can contribute significantly. In an age of overwhelming content and diminishing attention spans, generic targeting contributes to content fatigue. Our emotion-based approach offers a powerful antidote by delivering hyper-relevant, personalized experiences that resonate deeply with a user’s current emotional state. This moves beyond passive consumption to active, intuitive discovery, transforming advertising from an interruption into a valuable service.”
According to her, “By prioritizing human emotion and respecting privacy, this campaign offers a compelling model for how brands can authentically connect with audiences, fostering genuine engagement and loyalty in a saturated media landscape.”
Food and mood integration
The campaign’s integration of food-order data adds an unexpected but compelling behavioural layer. Orders are mapped to genre recommendations in real time; desserts unlock light-hearted, friendship-themed “dosti-wala sweet” content such as The Family Man, biryani prompts action-packed selections, while chaat or pizza lead to quirky, fun titles.
This combination of behavioural and emotional cues transforms content discovery into a highly contextualized experience, making recommendations feel intuitive and personal. Prime Video’s Indian tagline ‘Every kind of emotion…it’s on Amazon Prime’ is mirrored in this initiative, underlining that AI-driven discovery is about more than what viewers watch; it’s about why they choose it.
Strategic implications for streaming media
Beyond technological execution, this initiative signals a shift in the Indian streaming ecosystem’s approach to personalization. The blend of emotional context with real-world behaviour suggests that advertising can be repositioned as a service rather than an interruption.
In a crowded content market, where viewers’ attention spans are increasingly finite, AI-driven emotion-based strategies can help platforms like Prime Video cut through the noise while offering genuinely resonant experiences.
The campaign also underscores a subtle change in media strategy: moving from purely demographic or historical behavioural targeting to incorporating moment-to-moment human experiences into decision-making. The result is more empathetic, context-aware media capable of responding to both a viewer’s emotional state and their real-time actions.
Looking ahead
For streaming platforms facing the dual challenge of content overload and audience fragmentation, AI-powered personalization offers a promising path forward. By integrating real-time emotional insights with behavioural cues like food preferences, Prime Video and WPP OpenDoor are redefining content discovery as an emotionally intelligent process.
The initiative sets a precedent for how media strategy can evolve in an age where engagement is no longer just about visibility but about resonance.
Ultimately, the campaign demonstrates that when brands prioritise human experience alongside technological capability, engagement becomes not just a metric but a natural outcome.
