Streaming paradox: Is India’s CTV boom running into a precision problem?

Connected TV in India is no longer an emerging opportunity waiting to be unlocked. It has already arrived as a core layer in the digital media mix, sitting at the intersection of television-scale storytelling and digital precision. The growth narrative has been swift and decisive. From smart TV adoption to premium video consumption, the ecosystem has expanded at a pace few anticipated.

Yet, as the market matures, a more complex reality is beginning to surface. The same forces that powered CTV’s rise are now exposing its limitations. More platforms, more devices and more data have not necessarily translated into better audience connection. Instead, marketers are navigating a system where scale is visible, but clarity is not.

This emerging tension is what industry insiders are increasingly referring to as the streaming paradox. It is a market where abundance exists on the surface, but efficiency is harder to achieve underneath. The shift is subtle but significant. The conversation is no longer about whether CTV works, but about how well it works in a fragmented and rapidly evolving environment.

Scale Without Clarity

India’s CTV ecosystem today reflects both momentum and complexity. The country’s active CTV user base has crossed 129 million in 2025, growing more than 85% year on year, with 60 to 70 million CTV homes now forming a significant part of the video consumption landscape. Viewers are spending nearly 2.8 hours daily across OTT and linear television, with 67% planning to increase their streaming subscriptions. On average, Indian consumers now subscribe to three streaming platforms and spend over ₹1,360 per month on content.

This expansion has been mirrored by advertiser interest. Industry estimates place CTV advertising investments between ₹2,300 crore and ₹3,000 crore by the end of 2025, growing at up to 40% annually. For many large brands, CTV is no longer experimental inventory but a premium video layer embedded in annual planning cycles.

However, the growth story is accompanied by a structural challenge. As audiences spread across multiple platforms and devices, the same user often appears as multiple impressions. Russhabh R Thakkar, Founder and CEO, Frodoh, explains, “CTV scale today is often overstated, largely because it is measured in silos. The same household or user is frequently counted multiple times across these environments.”

Adding a sharper lens to this, Somendu Singh, Chief Contributor, CTV Scale, points out that the industry still lacks unified visibility. “Unified data on audience duplication across fragmented platforms is lacking, but signals from OTT suggest a single user overlaps across 2.5 platforms in India. With programmatic multi-OTT buying, almost 60% of campaign audiences can end up overlapping,” he says.

Industry estimates suggest duplication rates can range between 20% and 40%, and in a market like India where devices and logins are shared, the inefficiency can be even higher at a household level.

At the same time, data from global benchmarks points to a different layer of inefficiency. Campaigns are reaching only a fraction of households while already delivering high frequency. Prrincey Roy, CEO and Co-founder, Huella Services, notes, “Innovid’s 2025 benchmarks show the average campaign reaching only 19.64% of households while already delivering an average frequency of 7.09. That tells you the issue is not just duplication, but inefficient concentration of spend before incremental reach is unlocked.”

The implication is clear. The market is delivering impressions, but not necessarily outcomes.

The Frequency Trap

As fragmentation increases, frequency is becoming harder to control. Campaigns that run across multiple OTT platforms and device ecosystems often lack a unified mechanism to regulate exposure. What begins as a planned strategy quickly turns into cumulative repetition.

Thakkar points out, “What should ideally be an effective frequency of three to five exposures often escalates to eight to twelve or more exposures per user across platforms. Beyond a certain point, incremental recall begins to plateau.”

Singh highlights how this inefficiency plays out in practice. “The fragmented CTV landscape has created a situation where brands are over-serving a small slice of the audience rather than efficiently spreading their reach. Heavy streamers, who are the most valuable audience, are also the ones most likely to see the same ad across multiple platforms in a single evening,” he says. “Beyond a point, repetition stops building brand affinity and starts generating irritation.”

Roy echoes this concern, adding that frequency is rising faster than effective reach. “For large campaigns, frequency can move beyond 10 exposures. That is usually where the conversation has to shift from delivery to efficiency,” she says. “Brands risk paying more for repetition than for real persuasion.”

This is not just a planning issue but a structural one. Most CTV environments do not support cross-platform frequency orchestration. As a result, marketers are forced to manage exposure in silos, leading to inefficiencies that are difficult to quantify in real time.

Yet, not all stakeholders view duplication purely as a drawback. Varun Mohan, Chief Commercial Officer India at MiQ, offers a more nuanced perspective. “Overlap can reach low double-digit levels, but the focus today is moving toward incremental reach rather than total impressions. Duplication is a sign of scale. The opportunity now is to manage it better,” he says.

This shift in thinking reflects a broader evolution in how marketers are approaching CTV. The focus is gradually moving from volume to value.

Measurement Still Playing Catch-Up

If fragmentation is the symptom, measurement remains the underlying challenge. While walled gardens offer relatively strong accuracy due to deterministic first-party data, they operate within closed ecosystems. This limits transparency and cross-platform comparability.

Singh notes that structural advantages continue to sit with closed platforms. “Walled gardens still hold the advantage because they control both the inventory and the data used to evaluate it, effectively marking their own homework. Third-party providers remain dependent on platform cooperation,” he says.

Independent measurement solutions are evolving, but gaps persist. Roy observes that while progress is being made, structural barriers such as limited identifiers and lack of standardisation continue to hold the ecosystem back. “Closed ecosystems still have the advantage of cleaner identity loops and tighter attribution,” she says. “The open web will only close that gap when measurement becomes more interoperable and outcome-linked.”

Thakkar reinforces this point, noting that while the industry is now better at measuring individual segments of the journey, it still struggles to track the entire consumer path across screens. “The ecosystem does not lack scale. It lacks interoperability,” he says.

The stakes are rising as investments grow. India’s CTV ad market is projected to reach ₹2,800 crore to ₹3,000 crore in FY26, with further expansion expected in the coming years. This level of spending increases pressure on the ecosystem to deliver accountability.

From Reach to Precision

The response to these challenges is beginning to take shape. Marketers are gradually moving away from supply-led planning toward audience-first strategies that prioritise identity and cross-platform visibility.

Roy frames this shift clearly. “The bigger problem is that a lot of CTV planning is still supply-first when it needs to become audience-first. Brands are buying impressions without a unified view of who they are actually reaching.”

This transition is also visible at the brand level. Swati Rathi, Head of Marketing for the Appliances business at Godrej Enterprises Group, highlights the practical realities of CTV planning. “At this stage, though CTV is growing fast, it has limited penetration in upcountry markets and is largely concentrated in the top cities. Our strategy is more about maximising reach within CTV audiences rather than slicing it too narrowly using first-party data,” she says.

On measurement and efficiency, she adds, “We run campaigns through DV360, which enables us to have unique reach delivering higher efficiency. Fragmentation is a challenge, which is why we work towards unified communication and plan our media mix strategy to maintain consistency across audiences.”

Her perspective reflects how brands are balancing ambition with practicality. “We currently approach CTV as a premium audience channel and avoid over-segmentation beyond basic demographics,” Rathi notes.

At the same time, marketers are becoming more disciplined about frequency and exposure. Mohan notes that fewer, well-timed exposures can often be more effective than repeated impressions, particularly in a high-attention environment like CTV.

This recalibration is also being driven by consumer behaviour. Indian audiences are increasingly multi-device, with 93% watching video on mobile and 71% on television screens. Nearly 91% engage with ads while watching content, often taking second-screen actions such as browsing or shopping. This dual-screen behaviour is pushing brands to think beyond isolated impressions and toward connected journeys.

The Full-Funnel Question

One of the most significant shifts in the CTV conversation is its evolving role in the marketing funnel. Traditionally seen as a branding channel, CTV is now being evaluated for its ability to drive measurable outcomes.

Data suggests early progress. Roy points to findings from an industry study showing that two-thirds of advertisers reported improved return on ad spend after implementing better data integrations, with 75% willing to reallocate budgets based on conversion performance. “This is where CTV starts behaving more like an accountable performance environment,” she says. “The moment exposure is tied to audience response, the channel moves closer to intent.”

Singh believes this shift is already visible in market behaviour. “Marketers who once used CTV only for upper-funnel storytelling are increasingly running it as a performance channel with hard conversion KPIs, and seeing results that rival traditional digital performance channels,” he says.

However, the transition is not yet complete. Thakkar cautions against overstating CTV’s maturity as a performance channel. “Most shoppable formats still rely on second-screen interactions. The transaction happens on mobile, not on television. Attribution remains indirect,” he says.

What has changed, though, is the quality and breadth of reach. CTV is no longer confined to premium urban audiences. Its expansion into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets is unlocking high-intent users at scale, strengthening its role in driving awareness and consideration.

A Market in Transition

The Indian CTV ecosystem is at a defining moment. Growth remains strong, driven by rising smart TV penetration, expanding content libraries and increasing advertiser confidence. The broader ecosystem is also seeing a shift in advertiser mix, with categories such as automobiles, financial services, e-commerce and premium consumer goods accelerating investments.

At the same time, the challenges are becoming more visible. Fragmentation, identity gaps and measurement limitations are forcing the industry to rethink its approach. The next phase of growth will likely be shaped not by scale alone, but by the ability to bring structure to that scale.

Identity frameworks, interoperable measurement and smarter frequency management are emerging as the critical levers. As Roy puts it, “The next phase of CTV growth will not be won by inventory scale alone, but by who can bring the most accountability into the fragmented environment.”

That shift is already underway. The market is moving from an era of expansion to one of optimisation. From chasing impressions to delivering outcomes. From visibility to clarity.

In that transition lies the real story of CTV’s evolution in India.