What is addressability in CTV advertising?

Addressability in CTV means the ability to serve different ads to different households watching the same content. Unlike broadcast TV — where every viewer of a channel sees the same ad — CTV delivers ads to individual devices. This enables targeting by audience segment, geography, and household characteristics. The mechanism is the device advertising ID (GAID on Android TV, TIFA on Samsung, AFAI on Amazon Fire OS) which allows the ad server to identify each device and serve an ad tailored to that device's audience profile.

When a viewer watches a streaming app on a connected TV and an ad break begins, the publisher's ad server receives the device ID and sends a bid request via OpenRTB to the buyer's DSP. The DSP checks whether the device ID matches any audience segments the advertiser has set up — demographic targets, geographic targets, or first-party customer lists. If it matches, the DSP bids and potentially wins the impression, serving an ad specifically to that household. In India, DV360 and The Trade Desk are the primary DSPs enabling addressable CTV targeting; JioHotstar also enables addressable targeting directly through its own ad platform using subscriber data.

Three structural constraints limit addressability in India CTV: (1) Approximately 30–40% of India CTV impressions lack a resolvable device ID due to opt-outs, older devices, or publisher configuration issues — these impressions cannot be targeted by audience segment. (2) Audience data quality in India is thinner than in US markets — demographic and behavioural segments are modelled estimates, not verified data. (3) Co-viewing means that even a precisely targeted device-level impression reaches everyone in the room, not just the targeted household member. Addressability is real in India CTV, but its precision is narrower than in more mature markets.