IPL 2025: Marketers look to make the most of multi-screen viewing

As the Indian Premier League (IPL) continues to dominate screens across the country, brands are now navigating a new kind of battleground—one where attention is divided, fluid, and increasingly mobile.

Welcome to the age of dual-screening, where consumers watch a match on TV while simultaneously scrolling through social media, scanning scores, responding to WhatsApp pings, or even shopping — all from the comfort of a single couch. For marketers, this evolving behaviour is both a challenge and an opportunity.

IPL 2025 kicked off with record-breaking viewership: JioHotstar reported 137 crore (1.37 billion) views during the opening weekend — a 40% jump from last year — driven by a 54% rise in connected TV consumption and peak concurrency of 3.4 crore (34 million). Total watch time hit 2,186 crore (21.86 billion) minutes for the first three matches. On TV, Star Sports drew 25.3 crore (253 million) viewers during the same period, a 22% increase over 2024, with TV ratings rising 39%.

For context, IPL 2024 saw JioCinema reach 620 million viewers and 2,600 crore video views, while Disney Star pulled in 546 million TV viewers for 67 matches. If the current momentum continues, IPL 2025 could shatter all previous cumulative reach records across TV and digital.

Jacob Joseph, Vice President - Data Science at CleverTap, says this new viewing landscape is moving brands to re-strategise. “In an era where consumers seamlessly switch between devices, brands must rethink their marketing playbook to create truly immersive, cross-screen experiences,” he says. For him, high-engagement events like the IPL only amplify this transformation. “They push marketers to craft dynamic, synchronised campaigns that captivate audiences across primary and secondary screens.”

With IPL season in full swing and audiences consuming content across devices, dual-screening—watching on one screen while interacting with another—is becoming a hot topic among advertisers. But not everyone is convinced it’s as impactful as the hype suggests.

According to Preetham Venkky, Chief Digital Officer at DDB Mudra Group, dual-screening is not a new phenomenon, and its implications for brands are often overstated. “The only real difference between terrestrial TV and connected TV is that the latter allows on-demand viewing and stores content,” he explained. “From a user interface standpoint, there’s no meaningful engagement happening on connected TV itself. The engagement happens entirely on the phone.”

Prasun Kumar, Chief Marketing Officer at Magicbricks, echoes this sentiment, noting that IPL’s immersive nature makes it ideal for “moment marketing.” “The viewer’s attention span is at its best during an IPL match,” he said. “That’s when a meaningful intervention can deliver high ROI and measurable results.”
He explained that brands are integrating tools like shoppable ads, QR codes, and real-time WhatsApp engagement to tap into second-screen behaviour. “If you can craft a narrative or a value proposition for users that has immediacy, then you make the best use of that moment,” he said. “Pizza, for example—you can offer something for the next two hours and drive immediate action.”

This behaviour isn’t IPL-specific. According to the latest TRAI and IAMAI reports, India now has over 850 million internet users, with more than 700 million accessing the internet via smartphones. A 2024 Kantar survey found that 62% of Indian viewers now engage with a second screen while watching TV, jumping to 78% during live sports. The trend is as much about habit as it is about technology.

With dual-screening now an integral part of consumer behaviour, the challenge for brands is to deliver seamless, targeted, and privacy-conscious advertising experiences across multiple devices. 

"Achieving this requires advanced measurement solutions that can connect fragmented touchpoints while adhering to evolving privacy regulations," says Rupak Ved, CBO & CEO-Media, LS Digital.

"Cross-device attribution remains a key focus, ensuring advertisers can accurately measure engagement across TV, mobile, and web. Deterministic matching, which relies on logged-in user data, offers precise tracking, while probabilistic modelling analyses behavioural signals to infer user identity without compromising privacy. Data clean rooms play an important role in this ecosystem, enabling brands to conduct aggregated analysis across platforms like TV, OTT, and mobile in a secure, privacy-first environment.

 Integrating TV viewership, mobile interactions, and digital touchpoints into a single platform provides a comprehensive understanding of audience behaviour," notes Ved.  

Beyond bespoke measurement setups, industry-leading tools like Comscore Everywhere and Adobe’s Cross-Device Analytics empower brands to gain a more precise and holistic view of their customers’ journeys. These solutions not just enhance attribution accuracy but also unlock higher ROI. 

"Poor data quality is estimated to cost brands up to $15 million annually, optimising cross-device attribution, leveraging data clean rooms, and implementing server-side tracking can drive more efficient ad spend, improve conversion rates, and ensure deeper, privacy-compliant consumer insights," says Ved.

And the tech powering this moment is rapidly evolving. “AI-driven personalization, real-time analytics, and interactive formats like live polls and gamified ads are being leveraged to capture consumer attention and drive engagement,” says Joseph. “Contextual targeting and AI-powered recommendation engines ensure that messaging aligns with real-time user behaviour.”

To make this work, the backend has to keep up. Real-time sentiment analysis and cross-device attribution are now table stakes. But measuring success in a multi-screen world isn’t straightforward. “That remains the holy grail at this point,” said Kumar. “You don’t exactly know which screen is delivering the result, but the best a marketer can do is to ensure meaningful presence across both.”

Yaron Tomcin, CEO of ad-tech platform Mobupps, agrees that presence has to be seamless — and compliant. “Consumers constantly switch between screens—watching the match on one while scrolling social media, checking stats, or chatting with friends on another,” he says. “Brands must create campaigns that integrate across both platforms to stay relevant.”

That integration now depends on smarter, privacy-first identity solutions. Tomcin explains that modern cross-device tracking relies on deterministic and probabilistic matching using first-party data, hashed emails, and AI modelling. “To tackle attribution, multi-touch attribution models and unified identity frameworks—like Unified ID 2.0 or Google’s Privacy Sandbox—help track user interactions while respecting data privacy.”

He also points to the role of clean rooms, which allow brands and publishers to collaborate on anonymized data without exposing individual user identities. “With real-time analytics and AI-driven insights, advertisers can now adjust campaigns dynamically,” he says. “It ensures ad relevance across screens.”

The tech evolution is one thing. The consumer mindset is another. According to Kumar, audience segmentation is critical—especially when engaging young, male-dominated IPL viewers who tend to be multi-device personalities. “CTV and mobile sync strategies, whether through QR codes or shoppable formats, are what will drive the most impact in that environment,” he said.

And for marketers looking to capture this attention? The early results are promising. Case studies from e-commerce and FMCG brands running dual-screen campaigns during IPL 2025 have shown 15–25% higher engagement rates and up to 3x conversions when second-screen triggers are synced with key match moments.

But success isn’t just about personalization—it’s about trust. Joseph notes that the industry is moving toward first-party and zero-party data strategies, not only for targeting precision but to foster long-term user confidence. “Privacy-preserving solutions, including clean rooms and AI-driven analytics, are helping marketers gain actionable insights without reliance on third-party cookies,” he said.

The convergence of technology, privacy awareness, and evolving viewer habits is forcing marketers to be more agile and intentional than ever before. Dual-screening isn’t a niche trend—it’s the new default, especially during high-impact events like the IPL. And while the race to master attribution and personalization continues, one thing is clear: winning the attention war now means showing up in more than one place—at the same time.