₹2,000 Cr in Ad Spends: How CTV blends TV’s safety with digital precision

The flavour of the season is continuing its run in the Indian advertiser’s media plan, and it doesn’t live in a cookie jar or an opaque algorithmic black box. Connected TV, or CTV, continues looking shiny and promising, dressed up in the language of “brand safety,” “premium content,” and that ever-seductive pitch: a fraud-free environment. But is it actually the safety net it's sold as, or are we just watching a high-definition rerun of the same old hype cycle?

The Promise: Cleaner Screens, Smarter Placements

CTV blends the brand-safe aura of traditional television with the targeting and control of digital. And in an industry haunted by dodgy banner placements and bots pretending to be humans, that blend is starting to look pretty appealing.

India’s CTV advertising landscape is also experiencing significant growth, with different projections estimating the market to reach anywhere between ₹1,500 and ₹2500 crore by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 45% from 2023 to 2025. This surge is driven by increased internet penetration, affordable smart TVs, and a shift in consumer viewing habits towards streaming platforms

“OEM CTV solutions have the ability to offer highly brand safe and largely fraudulent free execution to advertisers,” says Prabhvir Sahmey, Sr. Director, Samsung Ads India. He adds that Samsung Ads offers advertisers the ability to reach 55+ million CTV homes via its 13M+ active TV households in India. These households are identified based on the ad enabled feature within Tizen OS.

“Further, to understand the household behaviour of linear vs streaming patterns, we rely on Samsung’s proprietary technology called Automatic Content Recognition. ACR technology only identifies what content is being played on the TV—it does not identify who is watching it. There’s no personally identifiable information (PII) involved. That means data like names, phone numbers, email IDs, or even IP addresses are never linked to the viewing data.”

The promise of CTV isn’t just in hardware-level safety. Content structure plays a big role too. “CTV in India is undergoing a meaningful transition, offering advertisers a brand-safe, high-attention environment,” says Nikhil Kumar, Chief Growth Officer at mediasmart by Affle.

“While television has traditionally been a high-impact medium, CTV elevates this by combining the engagement of legacy TV with the programmability and control of digital media. What we’re witnessing is not hype, but a foundational shift in how television is consumed—powered by evolving technology, content, and consumer expectations,” he says

Kumar adds that “the nature of CTV content, which is typically long-form, studio-produced, spanning genres, languages, and demographics, creates a more controlled and curated viewing environment. This diversity, paired with the cleaner content landscape, makes CTV a natural fit for brands seeking scale without compromising safety.”

He also highlights FAST channels. “FAST channels, in particular, replicate the linear TV experience within a connected, measurable, and ad-supported framework. This gives advertisers access to familiar, story-rich content enhanced with programmatic capabilities like geo-targeting and cross-device reach.”

“The nature of CTV content, variety of viewing options, channels and platforms within CTV, significantly reduces the risks of brand misalignment and creates a more brand-safe environment. Complementing this equally is the role of ad technology partners like mediasmart, where we have a proprietary AI CTVSafe feature, which exemplifies how artificial intelligence can proactively enhance brand safety in the CTV space,” says Kumar.

Sahmey points to the controlled nature of the ad environment itself. “OEM CTV Advertising solutions are placed with highly valued environments such as the homescreen mastheads. The content surrounding this inventory could either entail various app icons or recommended content prompts. In such cases, the point of engagement between a brand and the viewer is limited to the Smart TV environment, before the viewer decides to view a specific form of content. This makes the ad placement fairly brand safe.”

The Problem: Fraud’s New Playground?

All of this sounds great. But even clean pipes can leak.

“Let’s be clear—CTV isn’t a silver bullet,” says Karan Kumar, CMO of Hero Realty. “But, yes, for advertisers fatigued by the volatility of open web programmatic, CTV is emerging as a cleaner, more controllable environment. The closed ecosystems of smart TVs, premium OTTs, and authenticated logins inherently reduce bot traffic and spoofing. That doesn't mean fraud disappears—it means the entry points are narrower, and more importantly, they are traceable.”

Marketers are cautiously optimistic, but many still want receipts. “Of course you need to be on CTV. While brand safety is definitely a plus when it comes to CTV, the fact is that we're still waiting for actual verifiable measurements,” says the marketing head of a major FMCG brand, who asked not to be named.

“It's always just around the corner, but until I see where my ad rupees are going and how they're converting, I'm not going to shift a bulk of spends there. And it's not like the prices are particularly competitive,” they observe.

These are still early days for CTV, notes Prasun Kumar, CMO at Magicbricks, adding that while it offers potential from a targeting point of view, however its effectiveness as a primary reach platform is yet to be proven. Also, it offers limited formats to brands as against open web programmatic formats.

“However, CTV indeed offers a cleaner environment, though, as said, ROI is yet to be fully established. Hence, brands continue to experiment with both. A CTV consumer expects premium viewing experience and hence may not be appreciative of and may view brand messaging as unnecessary intrusion. So, quality of reach is also a factor to be considered,” he says.

And then there’s fraud—the kind with better lighting and production values. “CTV advertising is in a journey from hype (few years ago) to reality,” says Vibhor Mehrotra, Managing Partner at Innocean India.

“With better control and choice of content on which our ad gets shown on, whether it is streaming of YouTube content or content via OTT apps on connected TV, brand safety can be more or less ensured (with right content and platform selection) as largely it mimics family viewing like linear TV,” he says, noting that, however, when it comes to ad-fraud the platform is not immune and has its own challenges which are largely technology driven “like Server Side Ad Insertion Fraud or SSAI spoofing, device spoofing or fake CTVs to name a few issues it grapples with.”

“There are techniques which brands cum agencies can try to implement and see how much this can be curtailed by insisting on app-ads.txt or sellers.json compliance for CTV supply, work with DSPs offering CTV-specific fraud prevention tools (e.g., HUMAN, IAS, DoubleVerify), prioritizing curated marketplaces and direct publisher deals etc,” he says.

The Payoff: Somewhere Between Hope and Hype

So where does all that leave us? Somewhere between trust and tracking, between cleaner screens and clear metrics.

“I’d say we’re way past the initial hype—CTV is genuinely starting to deliver when it comes to safer ad environments,” says Dev Batra, CEO and Chief Culture Guardian at Lyxel&Flamingo.

“Unlike the open web, where fraud and brand safety might keep many marketers up at night (Right trackers and vigilant approach can solve that as well, though), CTV platforms like YouTube, JioHotstar, Sony LIV, and Zee5 offer controlled environments, so brands know exactly where their ads are running. Global benchmarks put CTV fraud at just 0.6% (DoubleVerify), and that trend stands true even as adoption grows in India.”

“At Lyxel&Flamingo, we make it a point to run every CTV campaign through verified tracking and measurability partners so there’s full transparency on viewability, placement and traffic quality. It has helped us maintain quality and deliver peace of mind to brands that are rightly cautious about where their ads land. So no, it’s not just a buzzword anymore. For a growing number of Indian advertisers, CTV is already the safer choice.”

Meanwhile, a report by Integral Ad Science found that 93 percent of Indian consumers say it’s important that the content surrounding online ads is appropriate, and 85 percent hold brands responsible for this context.

CTV may not be foolproof yet. But it may already be a better bet than most.