What is connected TV advertising?

Advertising shown on a television through an internet-connected app or device — a smart TV's own apps, a streaming stick, or a set-top box — rather than through a traditional broadcast signal. It looks like a normal television ad to the viewer, but is bought and targeted the way a digital ad is.

How big is the CTV audience in India right now?

Kantar's Media Compass report measured 166 million connected TV viewers in India in the first quarter of 2026, a 23% increase year on year, with a growing share of that audience watching exclusively through connected platforms rather than broadcast.

Is CTV advertising affordable for a regional or smaller business?

It can be, and this is the main shift from broadcast television. CTV inventory can be bought against a specific city or platform without the scale commitment traditional TV required, which brings a large-screen presence within reach of budgets that broadcast television never suited.

Should a performance-marketing business try CTV?

Only alongside its existing search and social spend, not instead of it. CTV builds awareness and household-level familiarity; it does not catch someone actively searching for a solution. The two do different jobs and are usually most effective together, awareness feeding the search behaviour it helps create.

How is CTV advertising measured, compared with a Google or Meta campaign?

Primarily through reach, frequency and completion rate, closer to how traditional television advertising is judged than to a click-through dashboard. It is not built to report a cost-per-click figure, and expecting that kind of measurement from it usually leads to the wrong conclusion about whether it worked.

Digital Marketing

The TV ad that knows who is actually watching

A television ad used to mean paying for an audience you could only guess at. A connected TV ad is shown on the same screen, in the same living room, to someone the platform can actually identify.

12 September 20266 min read

The screen changed owners

The television has not moved from the living room. What changed is what is powering it. Kantar's Media Compass report puts India's connected TV audience at 166 million people in the first quarter of 2026, up 23% from a year earlier, with 59 million of them — over a third — now watching exclusively through a connected device rather than broadcast. Sixty percent of that audience sits in NCCS A households, the most affluent consumer classification.

Entry-level smart TVs falling below ₹15,000 did most of the work here, pulling connected viewing out of premium urban homes and into a much wider base. The living room screen did not change. What it is connected to did.

Why this is not just "TV, but digital"

A broadcast TV ad is bought against a channel and a time slot, on the assumption that a certain kind of household is watching at that hour. It is a reasonable guess, and it has always been only a guess.

A connected TV ad is served through an internet connection, on a platform that can apply the same kind of targeting a website ad already uses — location, household, sometimes even viewing history — to a thirty-second spot playing on a fifty-inch screen. It keeps television's best asset, a large screen commanding full attention, and adds the one thing broadcast television could never offer: some actual idea of who is on the other end.

That combination is why completion rates on CTV ads run far ahead of skippable pre-roll on a phone. Nobody skips an ad on their television the way they skip one between videos on a five-inch screen held at arm's length, and the format is not competing with a thumb hovering over a "skip" button.

What it is actually good for

Reaching a household, not a browser. A phone's targeting knows one person. A connected TV ad reaches whoever is in the room, at the moment a family is together — which for anything from a car to an appliance to a wedding-season purchase is often the actual decision-making unit, not the individual who happened to click.

The frequency a brand needs without the waste of broadcast. One exposure is not a memory; a brand needs to be seen enough times to be remembered, and CTV's household-level targeting means that repetition can be aimed at people who are plausibly in the market, rather than at everyone who happens to own a television.

A genuine middle ground for smaller regional businesses. Broadcast TV's cost structure assumed a national or state-wide advertiser. CTV inventory can be bought at a fraction of that commitment, aimed at specific cities or even specific platforms, which puts a large-screen presence within reach of businesses that could never have justified a broadcast slot.

Where it does not yet make sense

A budget too small to be seen twice. CTV inventory is cheaper than broadcast, not free. A budget that cannot afford enough impressions to build real frequency in its target area is better spent on a channel where a smaller rupee amount still buys a meaningful footprint — which outside the metros is often exactly what makes other digital reach so efficient.

A product with no reason to be seen, only searched for. CTV is a brand-building and awareness format. It plants an idea in a household; it does not catch someone mid-search the way a Google ad does. A business whose entire problem is capturing existing demand gets more from search than from a screen ad nobody can click.

Anyone without patience for a slower measurement story. CTV's numbers look more like traditional brand advertising than performance marketing — reach, frequency, completion rate — and less like a dashboard of clicks and conversions. That is an honest trade, not a flaw, but it needs to be the trade a business actually wants.

The dealer-network version of this

For a brand that sells through distributors rather than direct to consumer, CTV's real value is upstream of any single sale: it is what makes a dealer's own local presence worth something, by putting the brand in front of the household before anyone walks into a showroom. It is demand creation, and it only pays off where the distribution to capture that demand already exists — the same discipline behind any digital marketing spend aimed at a network rather than a single storefront.

Questions people ask

What is connected TV advertising?: Advertising shown on a television through an internet-connected app or device — a smart TV's own apps, a streaming stick, or a set-top box — rather than through a traditional broadcast signal. It looks like a normal television ad to the viewer, but is bought and targeted the way a digital ad is.
How big is the CTV audience in India right now?: Kantar's Media Compass report measured 166 million connected TV viewers in India in the first quarter of 2026, a 23% increase year on year, with a growing share of that audience watching exclusively through connected platforms rather than broadcast.
Is CTV advertising affordable for a regional or smaller business?: It can be, and this is the main shift from broadcast television. CTV inventory can be bought against a specific city or platform without the scale commitment traditional TV required, which brings a large-screen presence within reach of budgets that broadcast television never suited.
Should a performance-marketing business try CTV?: Only alongside its existing search and social spend, not instead of it. CTV builds awareness and household-level familiarity; it does not catch someone actively searching for a solution. The two do different jobs and are usually most effective together, awareness feeding the search behaviour it helps create.
How is CTV advertising measured, compared with a Google or Meta campaign?: Primarily through reach, frequency and completion rate, closer to how traditional television advertising is judged than to a click-through dashboard. It is not built to report a cost-per-click figure, and expecting that kind of measurement from it usually leads to the wrong conclusion about whether it worked.