How does frequency capping work on India CTV?
Frequency capping on India CTV works through device IDs. Each CTV device has a unique advertising identifier (GAID on Android TV, TIFA on Samsung, AFAI on Fire TV). The DSP tracks how many times a given device ID has been served an impression from a campaign and stops serving once the frequency cap is reached.
Publisher-side frequency capping works similarly — the publisher's ad server tracks device ID impressions within their own platform and applies per-user frequency limits independently. DSP-side capping applies across all inventory the DSP buys, but only within that DSP's reach. If the same user watches on two publishers bought through different DSPs, neither can cap frequency across both.
What is the recommended frequency cap for India CTV campaigns?
Industry practice for India CTV frequency caps:
- Brand awareness campaigns: 3–5 impressions per device per week
- Product launch or event-adjacent campaigns: 5–7 per device per week for the launch period
- Retargeting campaigns: 2–3 per device per week
Exposure above 7–8 per week is associated with ad fatigue. Co-viewing complicates this — a single device impression may reach 2–4 viewers, so device-level frequency of 3× may equal 3–12 viewer-level exposures depending on household composition.
Can you cap frequency across all India CTV publishers in one campaign?
Cross-publisher frequency capping in India CTV is not possible through standard programmatic. Device IDs are non-interoperable across platforms — a GAID cannot be matched to a TIFA without a device graph. Even within the same device ID schema, frequency caps only work within a single DSP's reach.
The practical approach: set conservative frequency caps at each DSP or publisher (3–4 per week), accept some over-frequency at the margins, and prioritise direct publisher deals for premium content where the publisher can set household-level caps. Clean room matching (where available from JioHotstar, Samsung) can enable cross-publisher deduplication for first-party audiences.