CTV’s 207 million reach raises the stakes for unified TV measurement

India’s connected TV (CTV) ecosystem has reached a scale where measurement is emerging as the next critical piece of the advertising puzzle. With 207 million viewers across an estimated 62-65 million households, the industry is moving beyond questions of CTV adoption and toward a more fundamental challenge: how to measure reach, frequency and outcomes consistently across linear TV, CTV and other screens.

The findings are part of The Connected TV Era: India’s New Prime Time, a joint study by WPP Media and The Trade Desk, executed by Ormax Media. The research combines a dedicated study of 3,000 CTV viewers in urban India conducted in May-June 2026 with the Ormax OTT Audience Report 2026, which sampled more than 12,000 respondents across urban and rural India. WPP Media also modelled household sizing.

The report argues that CTV is no longer an incremental digital channel sitting alongside television. With CTV growing threefold since 2022 and rural audiences doubling in a year, it is becoming an important component of how television reach is built in India. At the same time, its shared viewing environment means conventional digital measurement based primarily on individual users and impressions may not fully capture the value of the big screen.

Measurement moves to the centre of the CTV conversation

The central measurement issue stems from the fundamental difference between CTV and personal digital screens.

More than 80% of CTV viewing is shared, according to the study. While the average CTV household has 3.3 members, a single CTV ad impression reaches approximately 2.5 people. The report therefore argues that counting CTV delivery purely through impression metrics designed for personal devices could understate the actual audience reached.

This has implications not only for reach calculations but also for frequency and attribution.

The report points out that an advertisement served once to a household can be seen by several people simultaneously. As a result, household-level exposure needs to be incorporated into the way CTV impressions are interpreted. Individual-cookie-based measurement can also misread what is happening in a shared viewing environment, particularly when several people are consuming the same content on the same television.

For advertisers, the issue is increasingly about establishing a common view of the consumer across screens rather than evaluating CTV through an isolated dashboard.

Sajit Gopal, Head of Media, Domino’s India (Jubilant Foodworks), said the industry needs unified measurement that allows marketers to see TV and CTV together rather than as separate environments. The objective, according to the report, is to enable cross-screen frequency management and a consistent view of exposure.

This becomes particularly important as linear TV and CTV increasingly coexist within the same household.

The TV-versus-CTV debate is giving way to Total TV measurement

The study shows that CTV is not simply replacing linear television.

An estimated 68% of CTV households continue to maintain a linear TV connection. Within the CTV universe, 41% are regular linear TV viewers, 27% are light linear viewers, 27% are cord-cutters and 5% have never been connected to linear television. The report says almost a third of CTV households have disconnected cable or DTH entirely.

This fragmentation makes a unified measurement framework more important.

For urban India, 47% of TV households are CTV households, compared with 31% at an all-India level. The report says CTV therefore needs to complement linear TV, with advertisers increasingly required to assess Total TV reach — a combination of linear and connected television.

For cord-cutters and light-linear households, however, the planning equation is different. The study estimates that 32% of CTV audiences are cord-cutters or cord-nevers. These audiences cannot be reached adequately through conventional linear television, making CTV a primary reach vehicle rather than merely an incremental layer.

The measurement challenge, therefore, is not simply to establish how many people CTV reaches. It is to determine who is reached incrementally by CTV, who overlaps with linear television, how often households are exposed, and what those exposures contribute to the overall campaign.

Household IDs could reshape CTV measurement

The report identifies household-level identity as one of the key building blocks for the next phase of CTV planning.

As viewing becomes distributed across connected televisions and other devices within the same household, household IDs could enable advertisers to connect exposure across linear TV, CTV and additional screens without relying on an individual-device framework. According to the report, this could help brands measure reach, manage frequency, reduce unnecessary repetition, identify new households and sequence communication from awareness through action.

This would effectively move CTV measurement from a platform-centric approach toward a cross-screen framework.

Rajiv Rajagopal, SVP and Head of Advanced TV at WPP Media, said the next phase of India’s CTV market will move from scale to intelligence, with household IDs changing how television is planned. The report sees privacy-safe signals such as household life stage, language, content preferences and shopping behaviour playing a greater role in audience targeting.

The larger ambition is a platform-agnostic system that can establish a consistent currency for reach and frequency across screens while also linking exposure to business outcomes.

From impressions to outcomes

CTV's measurement proposition is also evolving beyond exposure.

The report says CTV’s addressability can help advertisers move beyond proxy metrics and connect ad exposure to outcomes such as brand lift, online engagement, store visits and retail sales. This potentially gives marketers the ability to optimise campaigns while they are still running and establish a clearer relationship between advertising exposure and business impact.

The study finds that 83% of CTV viewers seek more information after seeing an advertisement, rising to 89% among premium CTV viewers. The report positions this behaviour as evidence that CTV can play a role beyond awareness, potentially moving consumers toward consideration and action.

For advertisers, this creates pressure to connect the upper-funnel strength of television with the outcome measurement capabilities associated with digital media.

Chirag Sharma, Lead, Digital Marketing, Prime Video, India and SEA Markets, said the planning conversation has moved beyond impressions toward incremental reach, brand lift and share of voice against targeted cohorts, with unified cross-screen measurement representing the next frontier.

CTV's rapid growth is making the measurement problem harder

CTV's scale makes the need for measurement more urgent.

The study estimates 62-65 million CTV households and 207 million viewers, with daily viewing time at 2.9 hours. CTV has grown threefold since 2022. Importantly, growth is no longer concentrated in India's biggest cities. Metro CTV audiences have grown 21% year-on-year, compared with 46% in mini-metros, 55% in small towns and 110% in rural markets.

The report says non-metro India now constitutes the majority of the CTV audience, with rural viewers doubling over the past year. This changes the planning challenge from a premium-urban proposition to a national reach opportunity.

The demographic composition also cuts against the idea that CTV is exclusively a premium medium. While 44% of the CTV universe belongs to NCCS A, 56% is NCCS B or below.

For measurement systems, this increasingly diverse audience means that simple platform-level reporting may not be sufficient. Advertisers need comparable audience definitions across markets, devices, platforms and household profiles.

Co-viewing changes the value of an impression

Perhaps the biggest departure from mobile and desktop advertising is the scale of co-viewing.

More than 80% of CTV viewers watch with family or friends. The report estimates that a single impression reaches about 2.5 members of a household. This means the relationship between an impression and an individual viewer is fundamentally different from that on a personal device.

The report consequently argues that reach, frequency and measurement all need to be reconsidered around the household.

This also has commercial implications. If an advertiser evaluates CTV purely through individual impressions without accounting for co-viewing, it risks undervaluing the medium. Conversely, without a robust household identity framework, there is also a risk of overestimating unique reach or mismanaging frequency when the same household is exposed through multiple connected devices.

The industry challenge is therefore two-sided: capture the additional audience created by co-viewing while avoiding double counting across screens.

Smart TVs add another layer to measurement

Device fragmentation is another consideration.

The study finds that 82% of CTV users access streaming content through apps built into their smart televisions, while 18% use external devices or set-top boxes. This makes smart-TV operating systems and OEM ecosystems increasingly important distribution and advertising layers.

As a result, measurement needs to account for how consumers access content, rather than treating all CTV viewing as a single homogeneous environment.

The growing importance of FAST — free ad-supported television — adds another layer. One-third of CTV viewers are already aware of FAST, while one in five watches close to 50 minutes a day. FAST viewers spend an average of 3.4 hours per day on CTV, compared with 2.9 hours across the overall CTV audience.

As FAST inventory expands, advertisers will need comparable measurement across traditional OTT apps, FAST channels and other connected-TV environments.

CTV's role in Total TV planning is becoming unavoidable

The report ultimately positions CTV as part of a broader Total TV strategy rather than a standalone digital buy.

CTV viewers are active during traditional television prime time, with 78% active between 8 pm and 10 pm on weekdays, compared with 63% for linear TV. On weekends, CTV's corresponding figure is 73%, versus 61% for linear TV. The report also highlights late-night CTV viewing, particularly the 10 pm-midnight weekend window, where 61% of CTV viewers are active.

This overlap makes cross-screen frequency particularly important.

A household could encounter the same campaign on a linear channel, a CTV app and another connected device. Without deduplicated measurement, advertisers may struggle to distinguish incremental reach from repeated exposure.

Nithya Ravi, Head, Global Media, Godrej Consumer Products, said richer audience profiling combined with real-time understanding of co-viewing will be critical to optimise reach and minimise impression wastage.

The next battle will be for a common measurement framework

India's CTV market has arguably crossed the threshold at which measurement can no longer remain an afterthought.

The immediate requirement is a framework that can reconcile three realities: television remains a shared household medium; CTV has become addressable and increasingly granular; and consumers move fluidly between linear TV, CTV and personal screens.

The report says the industry is moving toward platform-agnostic, cross-screen frameworks capable of measuring genuine exposure and providing a consistent view of reach, frequency and outcomes.

That shift could fundamentally change how television is bought and evaluated.

For advertisers, the question is increasingly less about whether CTV should be part of the media mix and more about whether the industry can create a common measurement language that makes linear and connected television comparable.

With CTV already reaching more than 200 million Indians, the report suggests that the next phase of growth will not be defined only by more households coming online. It will be defined by how accurately the industry can identify those households, understand their viewing behaviour, deduplicate audiences across screens and link advertising exposure to measurable outcomes.

In that sense, India's CTV market may have already solved the scale problem. Its next and potentially bigger challenge is solving the measurement problem.