India's CTV advertising market is growing rapidly but remains structurally uneven — a handful of dominant platforms capture most of the advertising spend, while a long tail of mid-size and niche publishers operate in a monetisation environment that is still maturing. Understanding where money is flowing, what different types of publishers earn, and what structural dynamics are shaping the market is essential for anyone making investment decisions in India CTV on either the buy or sell side.
Market size and growth trajectory
India's digital video advertising market — which includes CTV, mobile video, and desktop — crossed an estimated ₹10,000–12,000 crore in 2025 across all screens. CTV's share of that total is growing, driven by smart TV penetration increasing from approximately 30 million households in 2021 to an estimated 60–80 million by 2025–2026. As a proportion of digital video spend, CTV is estimated to represent 10–20% of total digital video in India, with the remainder on mobile and desktop — reflecting the relative maturity of mobile advertising versus CTV in the Indian market.
These figures are industry estimates drawn from research reports and analyst projections; precise figures vary by source and methodology. The directional trend is clear: CTV's share of India digital advertising is rising year over year.
The monetising players: a tiered view
India CTV's monetisation landscape divides into roughly four tiers of publisher:
Tier 1: Dominant platforms
JioHotstar, SonyLIV, Zee5, and Amazon Prime Video (for its ad-supported inventory) are the tier-1 CTV monetisation players. These platforms capture the majority of India CTV ad spend. They operate at scale — tens of millions of monthly active users across their apps — and have direct sales teams capable of selling large-format sponsorships to major advertisers and agencies. Their CPMs for premium inventory (live sport, original series) are the highest in the market. They have proprietary audience data and measurement capabilities that smaller publishers cannot match. Advertisers allocate the bulk of CTV budgets to these platforms first.
Tier 2: Large OEM and telco platforms
Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, and telco-affiliated FAST or smart TV services represent a second tier. These platforms have distribution scale — Samsung smart TVs ship with Samsung TV Plus pre-installed — but their content offering is more commodity and their audience engagement is lower than premium content platforms. CPMs on these platforms are lower than tier-1 AVOD but their inventory is available at scale programmatically, making them useful for broad-reach campaigns where creative context is less critical.
Tier 3: Mid-size category publishers
Regional-language OTT platforms (Sun NXT, Aha, Hoichoi, Hungama), niche vertical platforms (gaming, devotional, kids), and news OTT apps (India Today, Republic World, NDTV) represent a third tier. These publishers offer defined audience segments — Tamil-language viewers, Telugu-specific households, Hindi news audiences — that tier-1 platforms cannot deliver with the same specificity. CPMs for highly targeted category buys on these platforms can approach or exceed tier-1 rates for the right advertiser. The challenge is scale: individually, their CTV audiences are small. Aggregating across several tier-3 publishers to build reach is operationally complex.
Tier 4: Long-tail and emerging publishers
A large number of smaller content publishers — YouTube channels distributed on CTV, niche streaming apps, FAST aggregator-distributed channels — occupy the fourth tier. Monetisation here is primarily programmatic, at open-auction CPMs that are the lowest in the market. Revenue per publisher is modest. These publishers depend on platforms and aggregators for distribution and monetisation infrastructure they cannot build independently.
What publishers earn: estimated revenue ranges
Publisher revenue in India CTV varies enormously by tier and content type. The following are directional estimates based on industry conversations and publicly available information — not guaranteed or disclosed rates:
- Tier-1 platform CPMs: Premium live sport inventory (IPL, cricket bilaterals) is estimated in the ₹300–₹800 range or higher for premium direct-sold formats during tentpole events. Standard AVOD inventory on these platforms runs in the ₹150–₹400 range depending on audience, format, and deal structure.
- Tier-2 OEM platform CPMs: Estimated ₹80–₹200 range for standard programmatic inventory. Direct-sold integrations command higher rates but are less common.
- Tier-3 regional publishers: CPMs vary widely — ₹100–₹350 for targeted regional-language buys, lower for untargeted run-of-network inventory.
- Tier-4 long-tail/open auction: ₹50–₹120 range, with significant variability depending on content quality, audience verification, and fill rate.
A mid-size Indian CTV publisher with 2–5 million monthly CTV viewers, a 70–80% fill rate, and a blended CPM of ₹150 would earn in the range of ₹2–₹5 crore annually in CTV advertising revenue — a rough directional estimate, not a forecast. Revenue at this level is meaningful for an independent publisher but does not support a large organisation on its own. Most mid-size publishers treat CTV as one revenue stream among several (linear TV, OOH, events, sponsorships).
Where ad money is flowing
The categories spending most on India CTV advertising in 2025–2026:
- FMCG: The largest category by spend. Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Marico, Dabur, and other large FMCG players are shifting television budgets toward CTV as smart TV penetration grows in the household categories they target.
- Automobile: Car and two-wheeler brands are significant CTV spenders, particularly around tentpole events. High-consideration purchase categories benefit from the full-screen, living-room context of CTV.
- BFSI: Banking, financial services, and insurance brands are increasing CTV investment, attracted by the premium household audience and brand-safe environment of major platforms.
- E-commerce and quick commerce: Flipkart, Amazon, Blinkit, Zepto — building CTV as part of upper-funnel brand activity alongside their performance digital spend.
- Telecom: Jio, Airtel, and Vi are significant CTV spenders despite operating some of the platforms they advertise on — a dynamic that does not exist in most global markets.
Structural dynamics shaping India CTV monetisation
Several structural forces will determine how the monetisation landscape evolves:
- Measurement standardisation. India CTV lacks a single cross-platform measurement standard. BARC's streaming measurement efforts are advancing, but cross-platform deduplication — knowing the true unduplicated reach of a campaign across JioHotstar, SonyLIV, and YouTube on CTV — remains an unsolved problem. Advertisers are cautious about allocating large budgets to environments they cannot measure with confidence.
- Programmatic maturity. India CTV programmatic infrastructure is growing but lagging. Deal types available in US CTV — guaranteed programmatic, programmatic direct — are less standardised in India. The market is maturing toward this, but buyers and sellers who expect US-style programmatic CTV should calibrate expectations for the current India reality.
- Platform consolidation risk. The JioCinema-Disney+ Hotstar merger created a dominant platform. Further consolidation would reduce competition for advertising budgets and potentially compress publisher rev share terms. Advertisers should monitor concentration dynamics.
- Smart TV growth outside metros. The next phase of India CTV audience growth is in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, where smart TV penetration is accelerating with falling device prices. This audience is valuable for FMCG, telecom, and regional-language advertisers — but current measurement tools under-count it.