India’s connected TV (CTV) advertising market is set to match traditional television advertising by 2027, said Vivek Couto, co-founder, CEO and executive director of Media Partners Asia, at FICCI FRAMES 2026. He said India has around 65 million active CTV households, with CTV advertising at roughly $850 million, and expects the segment to reach TV’s scale by next year.
The shift is visible in the shrinking paid-TV base. Couto said subscriptions have fallen from around 125 million before the pandemic to 80 million today, as broadband, streaming and CTV gain ground. Online video is expected to reach about $10 billion by 2031, with premium video making up around 20% of the market.
Overall content investment has stayed broadly flat at around $5 billion, but its mix has changed. Online video content investment has almost tripled since 2021 to $2.6 billion, overtaking television last year. Entertainment’s share of content spending has slipped to around 57% from roughly 75% a few years ago, while sports has taken a bigger share on the back of major sporting cycles and rights renewals. Couto noted that TV investment is largely flat, and most incremental entertainment growth is coming from streaming platforms and emerging categories such as microdrama.
Despite this growth, he said India’s screen economy remains under-monetised. Screen spending is around 0.3% of GDP, compared with 0.8% across the US, Japan and Korea. Per capita, India spends around $8, against nearly $900 in the US. For Couto, this gap points to the larger opportunity: a huge audience base with far lower spending per viewer.
