Regional language content has become the primary growth engine of India OTT, and increasingly of India CTV. South India — particularly Tamil and Telugu — leads regional CTV engagement. Hindi belt markets (UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan) are the largest-volume regional opportunity. For advertisers, regional CTV represents a fundamentally different audience profile from the English-language or Hindi-premium viewer who defined the first wave of India CTV: larger households, lower English proficiency, higher co-viewing multipliers, and strong brand loyalty once earned.
Scale: how large is regional language CTV?
No single public dataset gives a precise regional language breakdown of India CTV viewing hours, but directional signals from platform disclosures and industry surveys suggest:
- Hindi content accounts for approximately 50–55% of total India CTV viewing time — but this includes Bollywood, GEC (general entertainment), and news, not only Tier 2 belt audiences.
- South Indian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam) collectively account for 20–25% of India OTT engagement by time. Tamil and Telugu individually have strong standalone streaming platforms (Aha for Telugu, Sun NXT for Tamil/Telugu, Kalaignar TV for Tamil) alongside their presence on JioHotstar and Zee5.
- Marathi, Bengali, and Gujarati are the next tier — each with 3–7% of total engagement and dedicated content verticals on national platforms.
- The remaining regional languages — Punjabi, Odia, Assamese, Malayalam-specific — together represent a significant long-tail audience growing fastest as CTV reaches non-metro homes.
How major platforms approach regional content
JioHotstar: The dominant Hindi platform (by scale). Strong in Tamil and Telugu through the Star Vijay and Asianet networks. IPL is multi-language — JioHotstar streams IPL with commentary in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, and English simultaneously. This makes IPL the single largest multi-language CTV event in India, and IPL advertising reaches regional audiences through JioHotstar regardless of the buyer's targeting setup.
Zee5: Strong Zee Tamil, Zee Telugu, Zee Bangla, Zee Marathi presence. Zee5's regional content library is arguably deeper than JioHotstar's for South and East India. Zee5's CTV app is available on Android TV and Samsung Smart TVs and is a primary regional destination for CTV buyers targeting non-Hindi audiences.
SonyLIV: Strong in Hindi GEC (Sony Entertainment Television) and sports (Sony Sports Network, WPL cricket, Premier League). Regional presence is smaller than Zee5 or JioHotstar. The SonyLIV CTV audience skews slightly more urban and premium.
Aha: Telugu-first streaming platform with a dedicated, deeply engaged South Indian audience. Aha is AVOD-supported and has CTV apps. For advertisers targeting Telugu audiences in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Aha is a primary CTV destination that national platforms do not fully replicate.
Sun NXT: Sun Group's OTT with Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam content. Strong in South India, particularly Tamil Nadu. CTV apps available on major platforms. Sun NXT is the CTV access point for audiences loyal to Sun TV's GEC programming.
Advertising on regional CTV content: what buyers need to know
Regional CTV advertising differs from national campaigns in three practical ways:
Programmatic reach is thinner for pure regional buys. JioHotstar, Zee5, and SonyLIV all support programmatic buying across their full inventory, including regional content. However, DV360 and TTD audience segments for regional language audiences (Tamil speakers, Telugu households) are built primarily from mobile signal data and may have lower match rates on CTV than for metro-Hindi audiences. Contextual targeting — buying on Tamil content categories or specific app bundles (Zee5 Tamil, Aha) — is often more reliable than attempting demographic audience matching for regional CTV.
Direct deals are common for regional premium inventory. Aha and Sun NXT are primarily direct-deal platforms for advertising. They do not open their full inventory programmatically via DSPs. Buyers wanting these audiences should work through direct IO agreements or through a media agency with existing platform relationships.
CPMs for regional content are typically lower than metro Hindi or English premium. Regional CTV CPMs (open programmatic) are 15–30% lower than equivalent Hindi GEC inventory on the same platform. The audience is larger in absolute numbers but commands less premium from direct-response advertisers who associate regional audiences with lower purchase intent — a generalisation that brand advertisers in FMCG, telecom, and durables increasingly challenge.
Targeting regional language CTV audiences via programmatic
Three approaches work for regional audience targeting in India CTV:
- App bundle targeting: Target by CTV app bundle ID on regional streaming apps. Aha (com.aha.tv.android), Sun NXT (com.sun.sunott), Zee Tamil (within Zee5's app bundle), and other regional apps can be included in a PMP or open programmatic buy as app-level targeting. This is the most reliable proxy for regional language audience.
- Content genre and language metadata: JioHotstar, Zee5, and SonyLIV pass content metadata (language, genre, show title) in the OpenRTB content object. DSPs supporting content targeting can filter for Tamil, Telugu, or Marathi content categories within these apps. Availability and consistency of this metadata varies by publisher.
- Geographic targeting as a proxy: Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka — these state-level geographic targets are strong proxies for regional language audiences when app-level and content-level targeting are not available. CTV geographic targeting uses IP-based geolocation, which is accurate at state and metro level but imprecise for district-level targeting.
Creative considerations for regional CTV
Language is the first and most important variable. A creative in Hindi will reach a Tamil Nadu CTV viewer at reduced effectiveness regardless of how precisely the media was targeted. Regional CTV audiences respond to vernacular creative — this is well-documented from television advertising research and holds for CTV.
Regional CTV audiences also have higher co-viewing multipliers than metro audiences. In Tamil Nadu, Andhra, and Telangana households, average co-viewing multipliers for GEC content are 2.5–3.5x. A family household watching a Tamil serial together on CTV is a fundamentally different ad delivery context than an individual metro subscriber watching an English original on a laptop. Creative designed for individual viewing (quick-cut, text-heavy, assumes headphone listening) underperforms in regional co-viewing environments.