India CTV CPMs are rising. After years of suppressed rates driven by excess supply and limited advertiser sophistication, the structural forces are shifting. Premium content scarcity, accelerating advertiser demand, programmatic maturation, and the price-discovery impact of IPL on JioHotstar are all pushing rates upward. This article breaks down exactly why CPMs are increasing, which segments are rising fastest, and what the trajectory looks like through 2025–2027.
The baseline: why India CTV CPMs started low
To understand why CPMs are rising, it helps to understand why they were suppressed. India CTV reached meaningful scale before advertiser budgets followed. The result was structural oversupply—more ad inventory available than committed advertiser demand could absorb. This supply-demand imbalance kept CPMs low, often below what publishers needed to justify content investment.
Three other factors reinforced low CPMs:
- Linear TV price anchoring: India GRP-based linear TV rates are among the lowest globally relative to audience size. Advertisers arriving at CTV brought those price expectations with them.
- Measurement gaps: Without cross-platform de-duplication and robust third-party verification, advertisers were reluctant to pay premium CPMs they couldn't verify were delivering.
- Fragmented market: Dozens of OTT platforms competed for the same advertiser budgets, which suppressed individual platform pricing power.
Force 1: IPL on JioHotstar as a price-discovery event
The single biggest catalyst for India CTV CPM increases was JioHotstar's broadcast of IPL. Live cricket at scale on a connected TV platform demonstrated something the market had not seen before: massive concurrent CTV viewership during a high-demand advertising window, with inventory too scarce to meet all buyer demand.
When inventory is genuinely scarce and demand is real, prices rise. IPL proved that India CTV audiences were large enough to justify premium CPM commitments from tier-one advertisers. This shifted the market's reference point for what premium India CTV inventory could cost.
The effect extended beyond IPL itself. Having experienced premium CPM pricing during cricket, advertisers and publishers both recalibrated their sense of what India CTV rates should look like for premium inventory year-round. The floor moved up.
Force 2: Ad-supported tier launches adding qualified demand
The launches of ad-supported tiers by major India OTT platforms—including JioHotstar's ad-supported plan and ad-supported access models on other platforms—brought a new audience segment into the CTV ad ecosystem: viewers who were previously on ad-free subscription tiers or free AVOD services but are now in ad-supported environments with strong content adjacency.
Ad tiers matter for CPMs because they convert previously unmonetised or low-monetised viewing time into premium ad inventory. The viewers on these tiers are typically higher-income than free AVOD users (they chose to pay for premium content but selected the ad-supported tier over the ad-free tier). This audience quality premium supports higher CPMs compared to pure AVOD inventory.
As more India households choose ad-supported streaming over ad-free subscriptions—driven by subscription fatigue and price sensitivity—the supply of quality CTV ad inventory grows. But because the audience quality is high and advertiser demand is also growing, this expansion of supply has not suppressed CPMs as raw supply growth would normally do.
Force 3: Programmatic maturation increasing auction competition
India CTV programmatic infrastructure has matured significantly. DSPs have expanded their CTV inventory integrations; SSPs have built direct publisher connections with India's major OTT platforms; and more advertisers are activating CTV campaigns programmatically rather than only through direct IOs.
This maturation has a direct CPM effect: more buyers competing in the same auctions push clearing prices up. As programmatic CTV adoption grows—particularly among mid-sized advertisers who previously couldn't access direct IO deals—auction competition for PMP and even open auction inventory increases. Higher auction competition mechanically drives CPMs upward.
The effect is strongest in PMP auctions where a curated set of advertisers compete for quality inventory. As more agencies activate PMP deals on India CTV, the bid density in these auctions rises, and floor prices move up accordingly.
Force 4: Premium content scarcity
India CTV has a structural scarcity at the top of the market. Live cricket is the most valued content environment in India advertising. There are a fixed number of IPL matches, ICC events, and marquee bilateral series per year. The pool of live sports content cannot expand to meet demand—it is physically constrained by the cricket calendar.
As advertiser demand for premium content adjacency grows, and as more brands recognise that live sports on CTV reaches the upper-income connected TV audience they want, the competition for a fixed pool of premium inventory drives prices up. This is not a temporary phenomenon—it is structural.
Beyond cricket, quality original content from JioHotstar (Disney+ content, Star originals), SonyLIV (acclaimed drama and sports), and Zee5 creates premium content environments that command higher CPMs than run-of-network inventory. As platforms invest more in originals to retain subscribers, the quality of ad environments at the top of the market improves, supporting higher CPMs.
Force 5: Advertiser education and budget migration
India's largest advertisers are increasingly building CTV-specific media plans rather than treating CTV as an incidental reach extension from digital video. This shift from opportunistic to planned CTV investment increases the volume of committed budget in the market, which supports premium pricing.
The education effect is real: as CTV-specialist media teams at major agencies develop the tools to plan, buy, and measure CTV distinctly, they are better able to demonstrate CTV's value to clients—which unlocks larger budgets. Larger, more committed budgets mean more advertiser demand for a fixed pool of premium inventory, and CPMs rise.
Which segments are rising fastest?
Not all India CTV CPMs are rising at the same rate. The segments with the fastest upward movement are:
- Live sports inventory: Highest absolute CPMs, fastest rate of increase, driven by scarcity and advertiser competition.
- Premium non-skippable pre-roll on direct deals: Rising as more advertisers commit to direct IO deals for brand safety and delivery certainty.
- PMP auction inventory on top platforms: Rising as programmatic adoption increases auction density.
Open auction and remnant inventory on mid-tier platforms has risen more slowly. There is still excess supply in the long tail of India CTV inventory, which constrains CPM growth at the lower end of the market.
Where India CTV CPMs are heading: 2025–2027
Directionally, India CTV CPMs are expected to continue rising over 2025–2027 for premium inventory segments. The key drivers will continue: IPL-driven price discovery, programmatic maturation, ad tier growth, and advertiser budget migration from linear.
However, the rise will not be uniform. Open auction CPMs will rise more slowly as supply continues to grow faster than demand in the remnant tier. Platform consolidation—if it continues—will concentrate advertiser demand on fewer platforms, giving those platforms more pricing power. Measurement improvements, when they materialise, will support higher CPM justifications as advertisers gain more confidence in CTV's delivery.
For media planners: build CPM escalation assumptions into multi-year CTV plans, particularly for premium inventory. Locking rates through long-term direct agreements now may prove advantageous as the market tightens at the top.