At its simplest, “spray and pray” marketing is volume-first outreach. Brands push the same message to the widest possible audience across channels and then hope a small percentage converts. It is the logic behind blanket email blasts, broad interest targeting, untailored display ads, generic WhatsApp forwards, mass influencer seeding with identical talking points, and even the familiar “20% off, today only” creative that shows up everywhere at once.
For years, this approach survived because digital distribution was cheap, attention was easier to buy, and measurement rewarded short bursts of reach. In the AI era, the economics and the rules have shifted. Distribution is still easy, but attention is scarcer, content is cheaper to produce, and platforms increasingly optimise for relevance and user experience rather than raw volume. Spray and pray has not disappeared. It has become riskier, noisier, and harder to justify.
A key reason is that the AI era is not only changing how marketing is targeted. It is changing how consumers filter. When people have algorithmic feeds, spam controls, auto-generated summaries, and recommendation systems doing the sorting, the brand’s job is no longer just to show up. It is to show up with a message that feels intended for that moment, that person, and that context.
In India, the pressure is sharper because the market is both massive and mobile-first. The same smartphone that enables a brand to reach millions instantly also enables consumers to ignore, mute, report, unfollow, and abandon in seconds. Push too hard, and the audience moves on.
Recent consumer research points to the volume backlash that fuels spray and pray fatigue. Studies over the past year show that a majority of Indian consumers feel overwhelmed by excessive choice and advertising clutter, and a significant proportion abandon purchases due to information overload. This is not a minor irritation. It is a measurable leak in the funnel.
Vineet R Ahuja, Managing Director and lead for Strategy and Consulting at Accenture in India, has described this as decision stress at every stage of the buying journey. According to him, brands need to simplify choices and reduce noise rather than add to it. For marketers, the implication is clear. If your strategy relies on adding more noise, you are betting against the direction consumers are already moving.
The AI era adds an uncomfortable twist. AI helps marketers create more content faster, translate it into more languages, repurpose it for more formats, and deploy it at greater scale. That is a gift for teams under pressure, but it also increases the temptation to spray and pray. When generating dozens of versions of a banner or post is easy, the question becomes whether those versions are genuinely more relevant, or merely more numerous.
This is where platform dynamics matter. The new reality is that relevance has become a form of cost control. Broad campaigns that once looked efficient on surface-level metrics can become expensive once you factor in wasted impressions, frequency fatigue, and limited incremental lift. Reach is not useless, but reach without specificity is penalised more quickly now, both by users and by algorithms.
Budgets also add to this pressure. Marketing spends have remained constrained over the past year, with many CMOs reporting limited room for experimentation. When budgets are tight, spray and pray becomes a luxury many brands cannot afford, even if they are tempted by short-term spikes in clicks or views.
India’s ad market trends reflect a similar tension. As digital channels grow, competition for attention intensifies. Industry research from 2024 and 2025 has repeatedly flagged creative fatigue and sameness as emerging risks. A majority of consumers report seeing too many ads that look and sound alike, especially on social platforms. For Indian marketers, this shows up as short-form videos that blur together, product pages that read the same, and influencer scripts that feel templated.
Amit Wadhwa, CEO of Dentsu Creative India, has warned that while technology has expanded reach, it has also widened the emotional gap between brands and consumers. In his view, brands must focus on building real connections rather than simply increasing output. Spray and pray, by design, is not built for connection. It is built for coverage.
Another reason spray and pray fails in the AI era is the changing quality of targeting signals. As privacy expectations rise and data regulations mature, marketers have less tolerance for blunt targeting. They can no longer rely on endless third-party tracking to follow users across the internet. In India, the evolving data protection framework has pushed brands to think more carefully about consent, purpose, and relevance. This shifts incentives away from indiscriminate outreach and toward permission-based engagement.
Manisha Kapoor, CEO and Secretary General of the Advertising Standards Council of India, has repeatedly emphasised that consumer trust and data responsibility must be built into marketing design rather than treated as afterthoughts. Assuming consent or relevance, she has noted in public forums, is counterproductive. For marketers, this is not just a legal concern. It is a strategic one. Spray and pray often depends on assumed permission and loose relevance, both of which are increasingly fragile.
Discovery itself is also being reshaped. Search engines, social platforms, and marketplaces now function as closed ecosystems where algorithms decide what gets distributed. On Instagram and YouTube, posting more does not guarantee reach. Distribution depends on how content performs with early viewers and how long it holds attention. On marketplaces, visibility depends on conversion rates, reviews, fulfilment quality, and pricing signals. On search, usefulness and intent alignment matter more than sheer volume. Spray and pray struggles in this environment because it optimises for output, not fit.
AI has also raised the bar for user expectations. When consumers can ask an AI assistant to compare products, summarise reviews, or recommend options based on constraints like budget or location, generic brand messaging feels weaker. A broad “best in class” claim has little weight when a consumer is presented with a personalised shortlist. In sectors like fintech, e-commerce, and travel, this shift is already visible. Consumers who once relied on brand claims increasingly rely on platform recommendations and aggregated insights.
Measurement further exposes the limits of spray and pray. The approach often survives on shallow metrics such as impressions or clicks. Campaigns can look successful on dashboards even when they do not drive long-term value. AI deepens this risk by making it easy to generate more activity. More creatives, more tests, more micro-campaigns can produce impressive-looking numbers without improving retention, trust, or profitability.
As a result, brands are being pushed to ask harder questions. Incremental lift, cohort retention, brand search growth, repeat purchase rates, and margin impact are becoming more important than raw reach. When these metrics are applied, spray and pray reveals itself as fragile. It may deliver short bursts of attention, but it also drives higher opt-outs, lower trust, and weaker brand memory.
In India, this shift is visible in the rise of high-intent tactics. WhatsApp commerce journeys that begin with user-initiated messages. Creator-led content that speaks to specific communities rather than mass audiences. Regional language targeting that goes beyond translation into cultural nuance. Search content built around long-tail questions instead of generic category pages. Even television, a traditional push channel, is being planned more carefully with contextual placement and sharper targeting.
The smarter transition is not from push to pull in absolute terms. It is from indiscriminate push to selective push. Push still works when it is triggered by behaviour, aligned with context, and respectful of attention. A delivery update, a back-in-stock alert, a price drop on a saved item, or a reminder tied to a real need is still push marketing. It does not feel like spray and pray because it is not random.
AI can support this shift when used for precision rather than volume. It enables better segmentation, faster creative iteration for specific cohorts, smarter frequency management, and messaging that adapts to context. It can also help brands build content that answers real questions, reducing dependence on repeated interruptions.
At the same time, the AI era demands restraint. Because content can be published at scale, strategic advantage now lies in discipline. In a world where everyone can shout, the brand that earns attention by being useful, timely, and specific stands out more than the brand that simply appears everywhere.
Spray and pray fails in the AI era because audiences have stronger filters, platforms reward relevance, and budgets punish waste. The brands that adapt are not necessarily the ones that stop pushing messages altogether. They are the ones that stop guessing who might care and start building systems that understand when, where, and why someone will.
Disclaimer: All data points and statistics are attributed to published research studies and verified market research. All quotes are either sourced directly or attributed to public statements.