India, July 21 -- For over a decade, the D2C playbook was built on a simple premise: buy attention on Meta and Google, acquire customers at scale, and optimise using clear performance metrics such as return on ad spend (ROAS). However, with rising customer acquisition costs and fragmented attention across creators, marketplaces and quick-commerce apps, this marketing model has started to fray.

While Indian brands have not yet started treating AI assistants as an advertising channel, it is just a matter of time before they do. According to Viren Inaniyan, the founder of AI commerce infrastructure startup TruCommerce, the shift is already happening in the US.

"Consumers are now getting recommendations without even visiting a brand's websi...