India's CTV Graduates to Core Video Budgets—Measurement Lags Behind

India's CTV has crossed the scale threshold—129.2 million users and a Rs 3,000 crore ad market mean the medium has graduated from experimental inventory to core video planning. But the absence of a unified cross-screen currency means advertisers cannot confidently deduplicate reach across linear TV, OTT apps, OEM environments, and walled gardens, creating real budget inefficiency. As brands shift from asking whether to invest in CTV to how much video budget to allocate, the measurement gap becomes the binding constraint on growth. Watch whether BARC | Nielsen ONE Ads and TAM-VTION's CTV Ad Pulse—both launched in 2026—can achieve sufficient broadcaster and platform adoption to function as a true cross-screen currency.

The measurement race has accelerated sharply in 2026. BARC India and Nielsen launched BARC | Nielsen ONE Ads, a cross-media solution combining BARC's linear TV data with Nielsen ONE Ads' digital measurement across mobile, CTV, and desktop. The system applies deduplication methodology to prevent counting the same viewer across platforms, and JioHotstar became the first premium digital platform to adopt it during the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026 (per Economic Times, June 2026). Separately, TAM Media Research and VTION introduced CTV Ad Pulse during IPL 2026, combining TAM's ad monitoring with VTION's passive measurement panel of over 100,000 smartphones to link CTV ad exposure with actual viewing behavior (per BestMediaInfo, June 2026).

India's CTV growth continues to outpace projections, though the numbers themselves illustrate the measurement problem. The 2026 FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment report pegged CTV ad revenues at ₹9,900 crore for 2025, up 42% year-on-year, projecting ₹16,400 crore by 2028 (per Storyboard18, 2026). The same report counted approximately 68 million CTV households with 40 million active weekly users. Meanwhile, Comscore data placed India's CTV audience at 96 million as of May 2026, growing 34% year-on-year—making India one of the largest CTV markets globally, ahead of Brazil at 91 million (per BestMediaInfo, 2026). The wide gap between Comscore's 96 million figure, FICCI-EY's 68 million household count, and Ormax's 129.2 million user base underscores the very measurement fragmentation advertisers are demanding be resolved.

Regulatory pressure is also mounting. India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has acknowledged that the existing TRP system does not fully capture viewing through smart TVs, mobile apps, and online streaming platforms, and does not track connected TV device viewership despite it becoming a major consumption trend (per BestMediaInfo, 2026). With BARC, Nielsen, TAM, and platform-level measurement solutions all vying for adoption, the market will likely see competing currencies before any consolidation occurs.