India's OTT advertising market crossed ₹8,000 crore in estimated revenue in 2025, according to industry projections, and is growing at approximately 25% annually. For brand managers and media planners, this growth has created both opportunity and confusion — a proliferation of platforms, formats, and rate cards that makes systematic planning difficult.
This is a practical breakdown of where OTT advertising in India actually stands in 2026.
The three platforms that matter at scale
JioHotstar dominates OTT advertising in India during cricket season with an audience that no other platform approaches for scale. IPL live streaming on JioHotstar draws peak concurrent viewers in the range of 30-35 million — a number that exceeds most primetime broadcast audiences and represents the single most valuable digital advertising window in the Indian calendar.
JioHotstar, also remains a premium platform with a strong urban subscriber base and established advertiser relationships. Its sports inventory outside cricket — Pro Kabaddi, football, and international cricket — offers mid-tier reach at reasonable CPMs.
Amazon Prime Video launched its ad-supported tier in India in 2024, bringing a high-value, high-income subscriber base into the AVOD ecosystem for the first time. CPMs on Prime Video are among the highest in Indian OTT advertising, reflecting the platform's premium audience demographic.
YouTube remains the largest video platform in India by total watch time and monthly active users, with over 450 million monthly users as of 2025. It is not conventionally categorised as an OTT platform, but for advertising purposes it functions as one — offering pre-roll, mid-roll, masthead, and bumper formats at scale across every language, device, and demographic in India.
Formats and what they deliver
Pre-roll and mid-roll video ads of 15-30 seconds remain the dominant format across all platforms. Skip rates vary significantly — unskippable 6-second bumper ads on YouTube deliver high completion but limited message depth, while 30-second unskippable pre-rolls on JioHotstar during live IPL matches deliver both reach and attention at premium cost.
Connected TV advertising — buying OTT inventory specifically on smart TV screens rather than mobile — is the fastest-growing format in Indian OTT advertising. CTV viewers in India now number approximately 50 million according to industry estimates, and CTV CPMs command a 40-60% premium over mobile OTT inventory, reflecting higher attention and a lean-back consumption context comparable to traditional television.
What works and what does not
OTT advertising in India works best for brands with strong visual creative, clear product demonstration needs, and audiences concentrated in urban and semi-urban markets. It underdelivers for brands requiring mass rural reach, regional language depth beyond Hindi, or sustained frequency at low cost.
The brands consistently winning on Indian OTT are those treating it as a premium television replacement rather than a digital extension — investing in longer creative formats, contextual placement around relevant content, and CTV-specific production that optimises for the living room screen.
The mistake most brands make is running the same 15-second performance creative on OTT that they run on Instagram. The platforms, the audience mindset, and the creative requirements are fundamentally different.