Truecaller’s new masthead format is clearer point of entry for advertisers: Hemant Arora 

Truecaller, the caller ID and communication platform with a sizable footprint in India, has introduced Truecaller Masthead — a new advertising slot that appears on the app’s caller ID screen. 

While the company's press release described it as a “moment of undivided attention”, Truecaller’s VP of Global Ad Sales Business, Hemant Arora, struck a more measured tone and considers the move as part of a larger attempt to simplify the platform’s advertising offerings.

Truecaller claims over six billion daily impressions and a user base of more than 300 million in India. Yet despite the scale, many advertisers seem to be still trying to figure out if to use it for reach, frequency, targeted campaigns, or launch impact. The Masthead format, Arora said, is Truecaller’s way of providing a clearer point of entry.

“It’s the first screen,” he explained. “We are looking at a massive scale—almost 1.1 billion impressions. Masthead as a position was always voiced. It's a language, it's a currency.”

Masthead-style formats are hardly new—media platforms from print to digital have long offered premium real estate at the top of their interfaces. What Truecaller is banking on is the momentary pause when users glance at their screens to identify an incoming caller. “You look at the screen for at least three to four seconds,” Arora said. “That’s the purpose of this entire real estate.”

The company insists the format won’t disrupt the user experience. “It’s completely your choice,” he said. “Our entire purpose has always been user experience first.” Still, whether users will view it as a neutral interface or another billboard remains to be seen.

Unlike performance-based digital ads priced on CPM or CPC models, the Masthead space is sold by the day—more akin to an out-of-home media buy. “You’re doing that exactly with the OOH, right? If it belongs to you, you should have it for a day,” Arora said, noting that advertisers can rotate creatives throughout the day for better recall.

Use cases span car launches, festive promotions, FMCG campaigns and even movie releases. But Arora admitted that the format is better suited for top-of-funnel visibility than storytelling or engagement. “You're at the starting point of communication. You're not even going inside your phone as of now… That's why it's called a mast,” he said.

While the format supports rich visuals and HTML creatives, its pitch revolves less around interactivity and more around immediate presence.

Despite its premium positioning, he maintained that revenue wasn’t the driving force behind the launch. “The money comes on its own,” he said. “The revenue is generated if you follow the right process.”

Instead, Truecaller sees this as a way to clean up the buying experience for advertisers who previously struggled to navigate the platform’s inventory. “You come to my shop to buy stuff. It’s my headache to make sure that you find it easy,” Arora said.

For now, the company is keeping the offering focused with no plans to expand or iterate it further. “Why complicate something which is so simple to understand by customers?” he said.

Whether Masthead can distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded attention economy will depend on advertiser adoption—and, more critically, user tolerance. But Arora is optimistic. “We work on advertiser’s needs rather than our needs and I think that's the right way of building the system,” he said.