Hybrid CTV monetisation is the model where a single streaming platform offers both a paid ad-free subscription tier and a free (or lower-cost) ad-supported tier. The platform earns from both subscribers and advertisers simultaneously. As of 2026, hybrid is the dominant model among large Indian streaming platforms and is becoming standard globally. For advertisers, it means more premium inventory. For publishers, it means diversified revenue. Understanding how each hybrid implementation works — and which audience segment your buy actually reaches — is essential for India CTV planning.
Why hybrid models emerged
Pure SVOD platforms discovered that subscriber growth has a ceiling. Once the most willing-to-pay segment of the audience is captured, growing further requires either lowering the price (which cuts ARPU) or adding a cheaper tier that carries ads. Netflix's launch of its Standard with Ads tier in 2022 was the clearest signal that pure SVOD had reached its natural limits at full price.
At the same time, pure AVOD platforms saw the ceiling on ad revenue. As inventory supply grew faster than advertiser demand, CPMs came under pressure. Adding a paid SVOD tier allowed platforms to convert their most engaged viewers into direct revenue — reducing dependency on ad market cycles.
The hybrid model solves both problems: it expands the total addressable audience (by including users who cannot or will not pay) while extracting higher per-user revenue from the segment willing to pay.
How major platforms use hybrid models
JioHotstar (India)
The merged JioHotstar platform is the most important hybrid example for India CTV planning. The platform operates:
- Free AVOD tier: Includes live cricket (IPL and other BCCI properties), reality TV, archive content, and selected originals. No subscription required. Ads run in all content including live sport.
- Paid SVOD tiers: Premium plans at multiple price points offering ad-free access to originals, exclusive content, and 4K streaming. Higher tiers include international content.
For advertisers: the free tier is where scale lives. JioHotstar's IPL AVOD audience is the largest single addressable CTV audience in India. The paid tier subscriber base is meaningful but the AVOD tier is larger by an estimated multiple.
Netflix (India ad tier)
Netflix launched Standard with Ads in India as part of its global ad tier rollout. The tier offers full Netflix content access at a lower subscription price in exchange for a limited number of ad minutes per hour (typically four to five minutes). Netflix's ad tier inventory is positioned as premium — high-quality original content, non-skippable ads, verified audience data. In India, the ad tier audience is growing but remains smaller than domestic AVOD platforms' free-tier audiences.
What makes Netflix's hybrid model distinct: the company controls the entire ad serving stack (via its internal ad platform). It does not route inventory through open programmatic auction in the same way as domestic Indian platforms. Access is through direct buys or select programmatic partnerships.
Amazon Prime Video (India)
Amazon introduced ads into Prime Video globally including India in 2024. Prime Video subscribers now see ads in most content by default. An ad-free upgrade is available at an additional fee. This is a different hybrid structure from Netflix: rather than creating a new lower-price ad tier, Amazon added ads to an existing paid tier and charges extra to remove them.
For advertisers, this opens Prime Video's premium content — including Amazon originals and licensed films — as ad inventory. Amazon's first-party purchase data (from Amazon.in) makes its targeting potentially the strongest of any Indian CTV platform.
SonyLIV
SonyLIV's hybrid model is content-delineated: premium original content and live sport require a SVOD subscription; catalogue, archive, and non-premium content is available free with ads. The boundary between AVOD and SVOD is drawn by content type rather than by ad load. Users on the free tier see more ads per hour; SVOD subscribers see fewer or none.
What hybrid means for advertisers: more inventory, different audiences
Every streaming platform that adds an ad-supported tier increases the total supply of premium CTV inventory available to advertisers. This is structurally positive for buyers — more inventory in a market that has historically undersupplied relative to demand.
But the audience composition on the ad-supported tier is not identical to the platform's total subscriber base. Key differences to account for in planning:
- Income and willingness-to-pay: AVOD and lower-cost ad tiers skew toward younger viewers and lower household income brackets compared to premium SVOD subscribers. This is not a negative — it is a planning variable. A campaign targeting young adults in Tier 2 cities may prefer the AVOD tier. A luxury brand may prefer the SVOD ad tier where the audience profile is different.
- Content context: On platforms where the ad tier shows a subset of content, audience context differs. The AVOD tier on SonyLIV delivers a different content context than the SVOD tier's original series.
- Attention and tolerance: Viewers on ad-supported tiers have implicitly accepted advertising as the price of free or discounted access. Attention to ads on CTV AVOD is generally higher than on mobile scroll-through formats — viewers cannot skip and are seated in a lean-back environment.
Revenue diversification for publishers
From a publisher's perspective, the hybrid model is a risk management strategy as much as a revenue maximisation strategy. Advertising revenue is cyclical — it contracts during economic downturns and expands when advertiser demand is strong. Subscription revenue is more predictable but harder to grow.
The hybrid model creates two revenue lines that do not always move together:
- In a strong ad market, AVOD revenue rises while SVOD revenue remains stable.
- In a weak ad market, SVOD revenue provides a floor while AVOD revenue contracts.
- During content tent-poles (IPL, World Cup, major originals), both tiers can see simultaneous uplift — SVOD from new subscribers, AVOD from premium ad rates on high-demand inventory.
For Indian mid-tier publishers considering hybrid: the decision to add a SVOD tier requires exclusive or premium content that viewers will pay to access. Without that content, a paid tier will not attract subscribers, and the SVOD infrastructure costs will drag on overall profitability. AVOD-first with a clear path to content exclusivity is the more practical sequencing for most Indian publishers outside the top tier.
India-specific dynamics: why hybrid dominates here
India's hybrid model landscape is shaped by several market-specific factors:
- Telco bundling: When Jio bundles JioHotstar Premium with a SIM plan, that subscriber is technically SVOD but acquired through a channel with economics very different from a direct subscription. The bundled SVOD tier and the free AVOD tier together maximise total platform reach.
- Live sport as the pivot point: In India, live cricket is the content that drives both AVOD scale and SVOD conversion simultaneously. IPL on AVOD delivers hundreds of millions of streams and premium ad rates. Premium sport access on SVOD drives subscription upgrades. No other content category does both jobs at scale in India.
- Regional language tiers: Some platforms use language access as a tier differentiator. Regional content may be AVOD only, while national Hindi originals sit on SVOD. This creates audience segmentation along both income and language dimensions.