What is reach in CTV advertising and how is it measured in India?

Reach in CTV advertising is the number of unique households (or viewers, depending on methodology) that were exposed to an ad at least once during a campaign. Unlike digital display where reach is measured at the cookie or device ID level, CTV reach is typically measured at the household level — because a television is a shared screen. One connected TV device in a household may represent 2–4 actual viewers. Publishers in India report reach in two ways: device reach (unique device IDs that received the ad) and estimated viewer reach (device reach multiplied by a co-viewing factor, typically 2.0–2.5x for general entertainment).

Deduplicated reach — the number of unique households reached across multiple publishers without double-counting overlapping households — is one of the hardest measurement problems in India CTV. Each publisher uses its own device ID namespace, and there is no neutral identity spine connecting JioHotstar households to Sony LIV households. Current approaches: (1) Use a DSP with cross-publisher reach modelling — DV360 and The Trade Desk both offer estimated deduplicated reach reports, though these are modelled, not census. (2) Use a third-party reach measurement vendor (Nielsen, Kantar) that has integrations with multiple publishers. (3) Treat each publisher’s device reach as an independent count and apply estimated overlap percentages based on co-subscription rates.

India CTV addressable household reach: JioHotstar alone can reach 30–40 million unique CTV households per month on premium content; broader reach including long-tail apps extends to 50–60 million. For a €50 lakh (INR 5 million) campaign budget spread across two to three publishers at €200–300 CPM, you can expect 15–25 million household impressions and 8–12 million unique household reach at 2–3x average frequency. These are planning estimates — actual numbers depend on targeting parameters, content adjacency, and deal type.