Most D2C growth advice in India still assumes two channels really matter: paid social and search. Everything else is a rounding error. That assumption was fair a couple of years ago. In 2026, the numbers say it's out of date — because a channel that used to belong only to big FMCG brands with crore-sized TV budgets has quietly opened up to D2C.
Connected TV crossed 166 million monthly viewers in India in the first quarter of 2026, up 23% year-on-year, and Kantar's Media Compass report (July 2026) now calls it mainstream. WPP Media projects CTV ad spend near USD 1 billion — roughly ₹6,800–8,000 crore — in 2026, growing about 22% (This Year Next Year, December 2025). This is a real audience, buyable programmatically, and most of your competitors are ignoring it. Here's how to use it without falling into the trap that kills most CTV experiments: judging brand reach by a performance yardstick.
Why CTV crossed over in 2026
The audience got big — and unreachable elsewhere
The headline is scale, but the detail is where it bites. Of those 166 million monthly viewers, Kantar reports that about 59 million — 36% of the CTV audience — watch only on connected TV, with no linear TV consumption at all. That's the number that should change your media plan: more than a third of this audience is literally unreachable through traditional television. If your brand ever considered TV and balked at the cost and the waste, CTV is the version that reaches the cord-cutters you couldn't touch before.
It's premium and rural at the same time
CTV in India breaks the usual "premium equals metro" assumption. Kantar reports that 60% of CTV viewers come from NCCS A households — the most affluent segment — and 46% are aged 25–44, squarely in prime D2C buying years. Yet roughly one in three viewers is rural, pushed there by affordable smart TVs and ad-supported streaming tiers. So CTV is simultaneously a premium-audience channel and a tier-2/tier-3 reach channel, which is a rare combination and a genuinely useful one for a brand trying to grow beyond its existing metro base.
Where CTV fits in a D2C funnel
CTV is an upper-funnel channel. Its job is to build awareness and consideration among people who aren't searching for you yet — not to close a sale in the next ten minutes. Getting that straight is the whole game, because pointing last-click ROAS at CTV is how good campaigns get killed for the wrong reason.
| Meta / Google performance | Connected TV | |
|---|---|---|
| Funnel role | Capture existing demand | Create new demand |
| Buyer intent | Mid-to-high | Low (yet) |
| Right metric | ROAS, CPA | Reach, completion, incrementality |
| Closes where | On-platform | Later, often on mobile |
| Kills it | Wrong targeting | Judging it by last-click ROAS |
Read the two columns as partners, not rivals. CTV fills the top of the funnel your performance channels then harvest — which is exactly why measuring it in isolation, on a performance metric, misses the point.
Make CTV close on mobile
The old knock on TV was that you couldn't act on it. CTV fixes that with formats built to bridge the gap to the device already in the viewer's hand. QR-code ads let a viewer scan straight to your Shopify store; pause ads surface an offer the moment they stop the show. In a mobile-first market like India, that TV-to-phone handoff is the mechanic that makes CTV feel less like a billboard and more like a channel.
On the buying side, D2C brands can reach CTV inventory through ad-supported tiers on platforms like JioHotstar, Amazon Prime Video, SonyLIV and Zee5, and programmatically via demand-side platforms. You don't need a linear-TV budget to start — you need a reach objective, a clear creative, and a way to bridge to mobile. Structuring that upper-funnel layer so it actually feeds your performance channels, rather than floating disconnected from them, is the kind of full-funnel planning our growth marketing team builds for D2C brands.
Creative that earns the big screen
CTV creative is not a resized Instagram ad, and treating it like one wastes the channel. A phone ad is watched with the thumb hovering over "skip"; a CTV ad plays on a large screen, often with the sound on and the family in the room. That changes what works. Your logo and product should read clearly from across a living room, your story has to hold for the full spot rather than front-load a three-second hook, and your call to action needs a bridge to the phone — a QR code held on screen long enough to scan, or a pause ad that surfaces an offer when the viewer stops.
For a D2C brand, the practical move is to shoot or edit a dedicated CTV cut rather than uploading a vertical performance asset. Keep it simple: who you are, what you make, why it matters, and a clean way to act. You don't need a film-crew budget — a well-lit product story with legible branding and a scannable prompt outperforms a slick spot that forgot the viewer is holding a phone. The creative's job here isn't to close the sale on screen; it's to make your brand familiar enough that the mobile ad or the search result later feels like a name they already know.
Measure it honestly or don't run it
The fastest way to waste money on CTV is to measure it like Meta. It won't show you a neat last-click ROAS, and if that's your only lens, you'll conclude it doesn't work and switch it off — right before it would have paid back through channels you do measure. Judge CTV on the terms that fit an awareness channel:
- Incrementality. Run a holdout — does adding CTV lift total conversions versus a market or audience that didn't see it? That's the real question.
- Marketing mix modelling. CTV is exactly the upper-funnel spend MMM exists to value, since it influences sales it never gets last-click credit for.
- Brand-search lift. Watch whether branded search and direct traffic rise while CTV runs.
- Completion and reach. Standard CTV signals — did people finish the ad, and how many unique households did you reach.
- Shoppable response. QR scans and pause-ad taps give you a more direct read than a pure awareness buy would.
A sensible first move
You don't need to bet big to learn whether CTV works for your brand. Size a test budget — money you're comfortable measuring as a reach experiment, not a performance line. Point it at your core buyer with a clear, mobile-bridging creative, ideally ahead of a demand moment like a festive window when awareness compounds into sales. Then measure it with incrementality and brand lift, and let those results — not a last-click dashboard — decide whether it graduates from test to core.
The takeaway
Connected TV stopped being a big-brand luxury in 2026. With 166 million monthly viewers in India, more than a third of them unreachable on linear TV, and spend heading toward ₹6,800–8,000 crore, it's a real growth channel that most D2C brands are still ignoring — which is precisely the opportunity. Treat it as upper-funnel reach that closes on mobile through QR and pause ads, buy it programmatically without a crore-sized TV budget, and measure it with incrementality and MMM rather than last-click ROAS. Do that, and CTV becomes the demand-creation layer your performance channels have been missing.
Sources: Kantar Media Compass (via Social Samosa, MediaNews4u and Adgully, July 2026 — 166 million CTV viewers, 23% YoY, 36% CTV-only, NCCS A and rural splits); WPP Media This Year Next Year report (via BestMediaInfo, December 2025 — CTV spend and growth projections). Some projections are industry forecasts; treat spend figures as estimates.
Frequently asked questions
Is CTV advertising big enough in India to matter for D2C?
Who actually watches connected TV in India?
How do you measure CTV when there's no click?
Should a small or early-stage D2C brand invest in CTV yet?
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