CTV Monetisation: how publishers make money from Connected TV in India

The four monetisation models in CTV

Every CTV platform chooses a position on the subscription-versus-advertising axis. Most large platforms now sit somewhere in the middle.

• SVOD (subscription video on-demand): Revenue from subscriber fees, no advertising. Pure SVOD platforms — Netflix's base tier historically, Amazon Prime Video — make money when audiences pay. Advertisers have no access unless the platform launches an ad tier.
• AVOD (ad-supported video on-demand): Content is free or low-cost, funded by advertising. JioCinema's free sports tier, MX Player, Zee5's free content — this is where India CTV advertising runs. The publisher's job is to sell this inventory at the highest possible CPM.
• FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV): Linear-style channels over the internet, funded entirely by advertising. Low content acquisition cost, predictable ad break structure, growing globally. FAST is nascent in India but gaining attention from regional broadcasters looking to extend reach without a subscription model.
• Hybrid tiers: A platform that offers both an ad-free paid subscription and an ad-supported free or cheaper tier. JioHotstar post-merger operates this model. Advertisers buy the ad-supported tier; subscribers pay for the ad-free experience. This is becoming the dominant model for large Indian streaming platforms.

The model a platform chooses determines everything downstream: who the sales team is selling to, how inventory is packaged, what CPMs are achievable, and how yield is managed.

How Indian publishers structure CTV revenue

For most Indian CTV publishers, revenue comes from three commercial channels running in parallel:

1. Direct sales: A publisher's own sales team sells packages directly to brands and agencies. Premium inventory — live IPL, tentpole content, homepage takeovers — is sold this way. Direct deals command the highest CPMs because the publisher controls the relationship and the packaging. CPMs for premium direct-sold CTV inventory in India range widely; for major live sport, they are meaningfully higher than display equivalents.
2. Programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace (PMP) deals: Technology-mediated transactions where terms are pre-agreed but execution is automated. PMPs give publishers control over who buys their inventory without the overhead of fully managed direct campaigns. This is the fastest-growing revenue channel for mid-tier Indian CTV publishers.
3. Open auction programmatic: Inventory that goes unsold through direct and PMP channels enters the open auction. CPMs are lower, but fill rate can be managed through floor price strategy. Publishers who rely heavily on open auction revenue are leaving money on the table — the goal is to push as much inventory as possible up the yield stack.

FAST channel economics in India

FAST channels have a fundamentally different economics model from AVOD. There is no content licensing cost for many FAST channels — operators use archive libraries, public domain content, or syndicated content at low per-episode rates. Revenue comes entirely from advertising against a linear-style programming schedule.

The FAST economics equation: ad revenue per hour = (ad load in minutes per hour) x (fill rate) x (effective CPM). A FAST channel running 12 minutes of ads per hour, with an 80% fill rate, and an effective CPM of ₹200, generates roughly ₹1,920 per thousand viewer-hours. At any meaningful scale, that compounds into real revenue — but scale is the hard part. India FAST distribution is still limited relative to the US, where platforms like Pluto TV and Tubi have established mass audiences.

Indian broadcasters and content owners exploring FAST should prioritise distribution first — getting onto smart TV operating system platforms (Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, Fire TV) before optimising monetisation. An FAST channel with no viewers generates no revenue regardless of how well the ad stack is configured.

Yield optimisation: the publisher's perpetual problem

Yield optimisation is how publishers maximise revenue from the inventory they have. The levers are:

• Floor prices: The minimum CPM a publisher will accept in auction. Set too high and fill rate drops; set too low and you leave revenue behind. Dynamic flooring — adjusting the floor based on content type, audience quality, and demand signals — is standard practice among sophisticated CTV publishers.
• Ad pod configuration: How ads are packaged within a break — number of spots, duration, competitive separation. A well-configured ad pod maximises ad revenue per break while protecting viewer experience. Pods with too many ads increase abandonment.
• Demand source diversity: Publishers who rely on a single SSP or a single demand source are exposed. Diversifying demand — direct, PMP, open auction across multiple SSPs — creates competitive pressure that lifts CPMs.
• Audience data activation: Publishers who can attach first-party audience segments to their inventory command higher CPMs. A platform that can tell an advertiser "this audience is a verified auto intender in Mumbai, 28–45" is selling something different from undifferentiated eyeballs.

India CTV CPM benchmarks: what the market actually looks like

Specific CPM data for India CTV is hard to pin down because most direct deals are confidential and open auction data varies by demand source. That said, industry participants broadly agree on the following shape of the market as of 2025–2026:

• Premium direct-sold live sport (IPL-equivalent events) commands the highest CPMs — significantly above any other CTV context in India.
• Premium VOD content on tier-1 platforms (JioHotstar, SonyLIV, Zee5) sits in the mid-range for direct deals, with programmatic open auction meaningfully lower.
• Regional language CTV inventory trades at a discount to Hindi premium, partly due to lower direct sales coverage and less programmatic demand.
• Pre-roll outperforms mid-roll and post-roll. Completion rates are higher and CPMs reflect that.
• IPL season (March–May) creates a CPM spike across the broader CTV ecosystem — not just IPL inventory but adjacent premium sport and entertainment.

These are directional indicators. Actual CPMs depend on the specific deal, inventory package, audience targeting applied, and the buyer-seller relationship. Any specific benchmark should be verified with up-to-date market data before use in a plan or proposal.

Subscription fatigue and the ad tier opportunity

Globally, subscriber growth for pure SVOD platforms has slowed. Netflix launched an ad-supported tier in late 2022. Disney+ followed. The pattern is clear: subscription-only is not a sustainable long-term position for most platforms because consumer willingness to pay for multiple subscriptions has a ceiling.

In India, subscription fatigue arrived earlier — partly because average consumer spending on subscriptions is lower than in the US, and partly because free AVOD alternatives (JioCinema's free cricket, YouTube) set a strong no-cost baseline. Platforms that offer a free ad-supported tier have a larger total addressable audience in India than those requiring payment.

For advertisers, this is structurally positive: more ad-supported inventory, more audience, more targeting options. For publishers, it means the ad revenue model needs to be robust enough to fund content at the quality level that retains that audience.

What you will find in this tower

The four hubs below go deep on each dimension of CTV monetisation. Start with revenue models if you are new to the topic. If you are a publisher trying to improve margins, go straight to publisher yield. If you are an advertiser trying to benchmark your spend, the India CPM benchmarks hub is where you want to be.