How brands can win India's Connected TV opportunity

Harnessing the explosive growth of India's Connected TV ecosystem to drive measurable, full-funnel impact in the living room

Rajiv Rajagopal

WPP Media

The Indian living room has undergone a radical transformation. With 207 million viewers across up to 65 million households now tuning in via Connected TV (CTV), the big screen has experienced a staggering threefold growth since 2022. This is no longer a niche or metro-centric phenomenon, as rural CTV audiences have grown significantly in last 12 months to reshape the national media landscape.

The stakes are exceptionally high for brands trying to navigate this fragmented viewing ecosystem. Traditional linear television alone can no longer guarantee the mass reach it once did, making CTV an essential foundation for any modern media plan. Brands must urgently rethink how they connect with consumers on the biggest screen in the house to secure their competitive advantage.

The hidden multiplier of shared viewing

Connected TV retains the immersive storytelling power of traditional broadcasting while introducing the addressability of digital media. More than 80 per cent of CTV sessions are shared household activities, whether it is a family gathering for live cricket or millennial couples streaming a web series.

For marketers, this means a single CTV impression reaches an average of 2.5 people. Brands must move beyond one to one based metrics and leverage WPP Media’s advanced household level identity solutions to accurately measure reach and reduce unnecessary ad repetition across devices.

Transforming passive viewers into active consumers

The big screen demands undivided attention and holds the room captive. Whether it is premium audiences spending three hours a day on CTV or Gen Z seamlessly consuming content across multiple screens, this environment is highly immersive. Crucially, this attention translates directly into commercial intent, with 83 per cent of CTV viewers searching for more information after seeing an ad.

This high level of ad responsiveness requires brands to integrate CTV into a cohesive omnichannel strategy. Marketers must ensure their search, social and AI-driven discovery channels are primed to capture the immediate intent generated by big-screen exposure.

Navigating the cord-cutting reality

The migration away from traditional linear television is accelerating rapidly. More than a quarter of India's CTV homes have severed their cable or DTH connections entirely, and this trend is spreading as household budgets tighten. These audiences are leaning into OTT-first consumption, making them increasingly difficult to reach via legacy media plans.

Advertisers can no longer rely on linear TV to deliver national scale. Brands must shift the reach budget that linear can no longer fulfil into CTV and use targeted platform buys to rebuild the frequency these homes have quietly removed from traditional media plans.

How to win in India's new prime time

  • Plan Total TV for premium and urban audiences: with ~70% of NCCS A homes and 47% of urban TV homes already on CTV – while 68% still maintain linear – make CTV your base and layer in specific linear shows to capture incremental reach across your highest-value households
  • Count reach at the household: apply the co-viewing multiplier to your measurement frameworks to ensure you capture the true value of your impressions
  • Segment by linear relationship: build a total TV strategy that uses CTV to explicitly reach the light viewers and cord-cutter households that traditional television misses
  • Gen Z has arrived on the big screen: with close to 3.1 hours spent daily on CTV across two screens, build targeting and creative strategies that actively engage this growing, highly attentive audience in the living room

The future of television in India is not a choice between linear and connected viewing, but a mandate to unify them. By embracing AI-led intelligence, household-level precision and shoppable formats, brands can transform the big screen into a highly measurable engine for growth. The audience has already arrived, and it is crucial to ensure your media strategy is ready to meet them.

To discover exactly how these shifts impact your planning, download The Connected TV Era: India's New Prime Time report.