How CTV emerged as a leader in 2025 and took control of India's video economy

By the end of 2025, India’s video landscape no longer revolves around mobile alone. It revolves around the living room. Connected TV has quietly but decisively become the country’s most powerful screen, reshaping how Indians watch, pay, and respond to content. What was once a premium, urban accessory is now a mass medium, cutting across cities, incomes and age groups. And at the centre of this transformation sits not just streaming platforms, but YouTube itself.

According to MiQ’s Advanced TV Report India, India’s active CTV base has surged 87% year-on-year since 2024, reaching 129.2 million users across 60 to 70 million CTV homes. Indians now spend 2.8 hours daily across OTT and linear TV, while 67% plan to increase streaming subscriptions, signalling a market that has moved from experimentation into structural habit.

Subscription stacking becomes the norm

The rise of CTV in 2025 is inseparable from the maturing streaming economy.

MiQ’s report finds that 44% of Indian viewers pay for three to four streaming platforms, with the average viewer subscribing to three services and spending over ₹1,360 per month. Crucially, this behaviour is no longer restricted to metros. As adoption deepens in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, paid video is becoming a standard household expense.

Yet India’s audience remains fiercely multi-screen. 93% of viewers watch video on mobile, while 71% continue watching on TV screens, creating a layered ecosystem where CTV anchors long-form, lean-back viewing while mobile drives discovery, interaction and commerce.

This is where CTV’s leadership becomes visible. Viewers are not just watching. They are acting.

MiQ finds 91% of Indian viewers engage with ads while watching content, often triggering immediate second-screen behaviour such as browsing, shopping or adding products to wishlists. In 2025, video is no longer upper-funnel branding. It is full-funnel commerce.

YouTube becomes the new television

Within this transformation, YouTube has emerged as the dominant CTV platform.

Connected TV is now YouTube’s fastest-growing screen in India for the last five years. By April 2025, YouTube reached over 75 million Indians aged 18+ on CTV, with more than half of watch time on the platform now spent on content longer than 21 minutes. This signals a behavioural shift from scrolling to scheduled, immersive viewing traditionally associated with television.

YouTube’s growing CTV presence is also expanding into new markets. The platform’s introduction of rural–urban ad targeting in India allows brands to run distinct campaigns for rural audiences, potentially reshaping media planning. Industry leaders note that while rural India has historically been the domain of television and vernacular print, falling data costs and smartphone penetration are rapidly changing that equation.

The result is a screen that carries television’s emotional gravity, digital’s precision, and mobile’s commerce layer all at once.

Hardware makes the leap affordable

CTV’s scale would not be possible without the collapse of hardware barriers.

MiQ reports that sales of 55-inch and larger smart TVs jumped 43% in 2024, while broadband homes and sub-₹10,000 smart TVs together now account for 46 million homes. The market is expanding simultaneously at the premium and entry levels, pushing CTV beyond aspirational status into mainstream utility.

Industry observers now estimate that CTV households could surpass 60 million by end-2025, overtaking India’s shrinking pay TV base, which stood at 59.91 million DTH subscribers as of September 2024, according to TRAI.

Advertisers follow behaviour, not nostalgia

As audiences consolidate around CTV, budgets are rapidly rebalancing.

MiQ says CTV ad spends in India have more than tripled since 2022, reaching ₹1,500 crore in 2024. Varun Mohan, Chief Commercial Officer India at MiQ, notes that advertisers are accelerating investments into CTV and outcome-driven formats as the medium’s effectiveness becomes undeniable.

Independent projections reinforce this shift. PwC estimates CTV advertising in India could reach ₹3,500 crore by 2027, while overall CTV revenues may hit ₹4.26 lakh crore by 2029, equivalent to 45% of traditional broadcast TV advertising.

The automotive sector illustrates this shift vividly. A 2025 festive season study by VDO.AI, analysing over 200 campaigns, found that CTV delivered a 93% Video Completion Rate, well above the industry benchmark. Remote-enabled CTV became the dominant format for auto brands, while interactive Display supported discovery and recall.

The new television order

Pay TV is not disappearing, but it is being structurally downgraded.

Experts expect pay TV’s decline to slow in 2025 as rural and semi-urban markets stabilise the base, but CTV will increasingly dominate urban and semi-urban viewing. The future, they argue, is a hybrid television ecosystem, where linear TV coexists with on-demand and connected formats.

What makes 2025 different is that every curve crossed at once: subscriptions matured, screens became cheaper, broadband deepened, advertisers demanded measurable outcomes, and YouTube transformed from a mobile-first platform into the country’s most powerful television network.

Read more: 2025><2026: The Year That Was And The Year Ahead