About Ad Tribe
Reporting on the people and the work that shape Indian advertising.
Ad Tribe is a trade publication covering advertising, marketing and media in India. We report on the agencies, brands and practitioners building the industry, and on the decisions behind the work they produce.
Our remit
The industry is well served with announcements. It is less well served with the record behind them.
Indian advertising generates a considerable volume of news each week, and the greater part of it arrives as an announcement: a campaign launch, an account move, a senior appointment. These are matters of record and we report them.
Our editorial interest begins after that. We are concerned with how a decision was reached, what shaped it, and what the work achieved once it met the market. That emphasis determines how the publication is organised. People is our largest section, and our reporting weights interviews, campaign analysis and first-hand accounts above release-driven copy.
Ad Tribe was established in 2025 and publishes daily, from Hyderabad, with coverage across the national market.
Sections
The publication is organised into desks, each with its own editorial remit.
Editorial standards
The commitments that govern what we publish.
Verification before publication
Attribution for well known Indian campaigns is frequently inaccurate in secondary sources. We confirm the agency, the year and the credits against primary sources, and we will hold a report rather than repeat an error already in circulation.
Editorial and commercial are separate
Editorial coverage is determined by news value and editorial judgement. It is not offered, withheld or shaped in connection with any commercial arrangement, and partner content is identified as such.
Proportionate treatment
Reports are written to the length the subject warrants. We do not extend copy to satisfy a word count, and we do not expand a single quotation into a feature.
Corrections on the record
Material errors are corrected openly and acknowledged on the report in question, rather than amended without notice.
The founder
Venkat Reddy Marri
Founder, Ad Tribe
Venkat Reddy Marri has spent more than twenty years across publishing and advertising, the greater part of it in editorial design.
As an art director he has shaped regional, national and international titles, among them editions of Fast Company, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Bloomberg and MIT Sloan Management Review.
Advertising has run in parallel throughout. He has worked inside agencies for much of his career and now runs Uppercut, the agency that publishes Ad Tribe.
Ad Tribe is the product of both: a publication shaped by someone who has spent a career on how journalism reaches a reader, and who still works in the industry it reports on.
“The movements get reported, and we report them too. What almost never gets written down is how the work actually happens. That is the record we are building, so the generation coming up can learn from the one before it instead of starting from scratch.”
Beyond the publication
Reporting on an industry and convening it are distinct undertakings. Ad Tribe has developed both.
Ad Tribe Awards South
An awards programme for South India, assessed by practising professionals. Every entry is scored independently by three to five jurors before the panel convenes to deliberate. The inaugural winners are announced in Hyderabad on 3 December 2026.
The Next 50
A list identifying the practitioners expected to shape the coming decade of Indian advertising, compiled through nomination and editorial review.
The weekly briefing
A Monday newsletter on the week in Indian advertising, written for practitioners who were occupied with the work while it happened.
Pitches, submissions and corrections
The editorial desk reads every submission. We welcome story pitches, campaign and case study submissions, corrections to published work, and general enquiries.