In the US and UK, a CTV buyer with a DSP seat can access a significant portion of the total CTV audience through open programmatic auctions — inventory from dozens of publishers flowing through independent SSPs and exchanges. In India, this model barely exists. The vast majority of CTV viewing happens on three walled garden platforms — JioCinema, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video — and none of them expose their premium inventory to open programmatic. Understanding this distinction is the most important structural fact about buying CTV in India.
What is a walled garden in CTV?
A walled garden is a platform that controls its own advertising ecosystem end-to-end — it owns the viewer relationship, the inventory, the targeting data, the ad serving, and the measurement — and does not expose these to external ad tech infrastructure in the way an open programmatic publisher would.
In practice, a walled garden CTV publisher:
- Sells inventory primarily through its own sales team or dedicated programmatic channel (not through independent SSPs accessible to any DSP)
- Uses its own first-party data for audience targeting (not third-party data from external DMPs)
- Measures and reports campaign performance using its own metrics, which cannot be independently verified by third parties in the same way as open programmatic
- Controls which buyers can access which inventory and at what terms
Walled gardens offer real advantages to advertisers — premium content, large audiences, strong first-party data — but they come with trade-offs in transparency, measurement independence, and cross-platform comparability.
India CTV: the three walled gardens
JioCinema (Reliance / Viacom18)
JioCinema is the dominant walled garden in India CTV, anchored by IPL (Indian Premier League) rights and a large library of Bollywood and Hollywood content. Its free tier (AVOD) reaches an enormous India audience on smart TVs and mobile. JioCinema's advertising is primarily sold through its own sales team, with limited programmatic access. During IPL season, JioCinema commands CPMs that are multiples of the rest of India CTV combined. You cannot buy JioCinema programmatically through a standard DV360 or Trade Desk setup — you need a direct or PMP relationship with the platform's ad sales team.
YouTube (Google)
YouTube is unique among the walled gardens in that it does offer programmatic access — through DV360 and Google Ads. However, it is still a walled garden in the sense that YouTube inventory is only available through Google's own ad buying tools. You cannot access YouTube CTV inventory through The Trade Desk or Amazon DSP. Google's identity graph, audience targeting, and measurement are all specific to the YouTube ecosystem. YouTube is the largest single CTV platform by monthly viewers in India when mobile and TV are counted together — but TV-screen-only YouTube buying requires specific device-type targeting in DV360.
Amazon Prime Video (Amazon)
Amazon Prime Video's advertising tier is accessible programmatically only through Amazon DSP. Like YouTube and DV360, Amazon has built a closed loop — its inventory is only available through its own demand infrastructure. Amazon's value proposition for India CTV buyers is its purchase intent data: Amazon knows what Prime members search for, browse, and buy, which enables product-category targeting that other platforms cannot replicate. Fire TV (Amazon's streaming device) also runs display and video ads served exclusively through Amazon's ad stack.
Disney+ Hotstar (The Walt Disney Company India)
Hotstar occupies a middle position — it has more programmatic openness than JioCinema but is still largely a direct-sold or PMP-deal platform for premium inventory. Some Hotstar inventory is accessible through DV360 for buyers with existing arrangements, but premium inventory (sports, premium VOD) is direct or PMP. Hotstar's advertising audience is large and well-defined — it skews toward higher-income, English-comfortable, urban viewers.
What open programmatic CTV looks like in India
Open programmatic CTV does exist in India — it is just a much smaller portion of total CTV inventory than in Western markets. Open programmatic India CTV inventory includes:
- SonyLIV remnant: SonyLIV has some open programmatic inventory accessible through DV360 and other DSPs, primarily for non-premium placements after direct and PMP deals are fulfilled.
- Zee5 open auction: Zee5 similarly exposes some inventory to open programmatic, particularly for regional language content.
- MX Player: MX Player (Times Internet) has historically been more open to programmatic access than premium platforms, reflecting its AVOD monetisation model.
- FAST channel inventory: Samsung TV Plus and LG Channels (FAST linear channels on smart TVs) have programmatic inventory accessible through DV360 and other DSPs with relevant integrations.
- Mid-tier OTT apps: A range of smaller streaming apps available on Android TV and smart TV platforms have inventory in open programmatic, but their aggregate scale is small.
The challenge with open programmatic India CTV: the scale is limited and the audience quality is uneven. A buyer running open programmatic CTV in India will find CPMs lower than premium walled garden inventory, but reach among the most-engaged CTV viewers will be limited. You cannot build an India CTV plan around open programmatic alone and expect meaningful scale.
Implications for India CTV buyers
No single DSP covers India CTV
In the US, The Trade Desk gives buyers meaningful access to a large portion of the CTV market. In India, no single DSP does this. DV360 gives you YouTube. Amazon DSP gives you Amazon. Neither gives you JioCinema. JioCinema requires a direct relationship. A buyer who wants meaningful India CTV reach across multiple platforms needs multiple buying arrangements, not just a single DSP seat.
Media planning must account for walled garden silos
Because each walled garden uses its own audience targeting, measurement, and frequency logic, it is impossible to deduplicate reach or manage frequency across JioCinema, YouTube, and Amazon from a single platform. A viewer who sees your ad four times on JioCinema and three times on YouTube appears as a different user in each platform's count. Cross-platform frequency management in India CTV is an unsolved problem at the moment.
Measurement cannot be independently unified
Each walled garden reports its own metrics using its own methodology. JioCinema impressions are not directly comparable to YouTube impressions or Hotstar impressions because each platform uses different definitions, different SSAI implementations, and different counting windows. Building a unified India CTV reach curve across platforms requires stitching together incompatible data sources. BARC India's streaming measurement panel provides some cross-platform audience data, but coverage is incomplete and not fully accepted as a universal currency by all platforms.
Negotiating leverage matters
In open programmatic, any buyer with a DSP can access any inventory. In the walled garden world, access to premium India CTV inventory is relationship-driven. Agencies with volume commitments to JioCinema or Hotstar get better deal terms, earlier access to premium inventory, and more transparency into what is available. Smaller buyers or buyers without direct sales relationships pay more for less.
The future: will India CTV open up?
There are forces pushing in both directions. JioCinema has signalled interest in expanding programmatic access as it looks to monetise its large free-tier audience at scale — direct sales teams have capacity limits that programmatic does not. Amazon and Google have obvious incentives to keep their ecosystems closed. BARC India and the industry are working toward a more unified measurement framework, which would reduce one of the structural advantages walled gardens hold (their own measurement).
The trajectory in mature markets (US, UK) is toward slightly more openness over time, driven by advertiser pressure for third-party measurement and interoperability. India is likely to follow, but slowly. For the next few years, the walled garden structure of India CTV is the structural reality that every media plan must accommodate.