The smartphone may have powered India’s first streaming wave, but the next round is set to play out on the living-room television, including those far beyond the metros—in smaller cities and towns and even villages.
Connected TV (CTV) or smart television is no longer an urban phenomenon, with a recent report by Kantar estimating that one in three CTV users lives in rural India. Entertainment industry experts say audiences in smaller towns are spending longer sessions on connected TV, watching live sports, regional entertainment, movies and family programmes together, making these high-consideration categories for content studios and streaming platforms. This creates an opportunity for both vernacular content as well as brands reaching out to aspirational audiences.
According to the latest Ficci-EY media and entertainment report, India's overall CTV base reached 68 million unique sets connecting to the internet each month in 2025, of which aroud 40 million connected weekly, up from 30 million in 2024. Active connected TV homes are expected to rise to 67 million by 2028, as broadband access increases steadily to over 90 million homes over the period.
“Connected TV is rapidly evolving from a premium platform into a true mass-reach medium. Our latest findings show that more than 60% of CTV viewers who do not watch linear television are from smaller towns and rural markets, highlighting the medium's expanding reach beyond India's metros,” said Puneet Avasthi, director, specialist businesses, South Asia, Kantar.
The way consumers engage with CTVs also varies by market, Avasthi added. In metro cities, viewing is typically characterized by established streaming habits, multiple OTT subscriptions and more personalized consumption. In contrast, in smaller towns and rural India, CTV is often the first large-screen digital viewing experience, possibly with family co-viewing playing a bigger role. Much of thee small-town viewing is focused on linear TV shows and regional movies. In urban areas, web series are more popular.
Russhabh R. Thakkar, founder and chief executive office at Frodoh, an ad tech company estimates around 32-37% penetration of connected TVs in tier-2 and -three towns with bigger TV sizes, given that living spaces are often larger in such cities. “The advent of regional OTT platforms that create content appealing to a certain dialect and celebrity-led movies makes this a natural shift,” he added.
To be sure, the rapid growth of CTV in India is being fuelled by a combination of structural and consumer-led factors. Rohit Dalmia, chairman and managing director, CineNow, an entertainment financing platform said affordable smart televisions, improving broadband, low-cost data and bundled entertainment packages are driving adoption. There is also a clear shift from individual mobile viewing to shared living-room consumption. Regional content, sports and free streaming services are helping accelerate this transition across smaller towns and rural markets.
According to Saurabh Srivastava, chief operating officer, digital business at Shemaroo Entertainment, CTV consumption across the company’s YouTube ecosystem has witnessed over three-digit percentage growth.
“Technology alone isn’t doing all the work. The actual trigger, more like the real catalyst, is relevant content. Today, consumers want entertainment that matches their language, their culture, their tastes, not some one-size-fits-all catalogue,” Srivastava added.
The economics playout
Mobile phones and traditional television had distinct content. However, content creation has changed since the introduction of CTVs, agreed Radha Govind Indwar, assistant professor (marketing) at IMI Kolkata. “The TV first strategy has replaced the mobile first ethos. This has undoubtedly provided content makers with a chance to produce long-form, regional, family-friendly, and ad-supported material," Indwar said. "The fast expansion of regional programming and FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channels catered to India's growing non-metropolitan and rural population is perhaps the biggest emergent possibility, rather than a totally new genre.”
Industry experts believe brands increasingly see smart television as the medium that combines the emotional impact of television with the precision and measurability of digital. It offers the immersive, lean-back experience of the big screen, where audiences are more engaged, spend longer watching content and deliver higher attention levels for advertisers.
This premium viewing environment is also reflected in stronger CPMs (cost per mille, where advertisers pay a set fee for every 1,000 times an ad is displayed), making CTV an increasingly attractive platform for brands looking to drive both impact and measurable outcomes.
According to Arjit Sachdeva, co-founder of advertising tech company VDO.AI, while the metros continue to account for the highest delivery volumes and record view completion rates (VCRs) of 95-96%, audiences in smaller towns consistently deliver VCRs of around 85%. More importantly, such campaigns rarely see VCRs drop below 80% in tier-two and tier-three markets. Nearly 40% more brands are actively looking to include CTV in their media mix, than they were a year ago, particularly in categories with broad consumer appeal such as fast moving consumer goods, consumer durables, home appliances and automotive, Sachdeva added.
“The sharpest shift is vernacular-first creative built for CTV specifically, not repurposed from TV or digital. Brands are increasingly running genuinely different creative for rural versus metro audiences on the same CTV inventory, rather than one national ad running everywhere,” said Amit Dhawan, co-founder at Crack'd & Vibetheory.AI.
“Categories that were traditionally linear-TV-first for reaching non-metro India—financial services, consumer durables, auto—are the ones showing up more deliberately on CTV plans now. That's the ‘new mass brands’ story: it's less about brand-new entrants and more about traditionally mass-reach categories treating CTV as a serious non-metro channel rather than a metro-only premium buy,” Dhawan added.
The rise of streaming has extended the reach of traditional television soaps, with audiences increasingly watching familiar shows on digital platforms, rather than abandoning them for newer formats.
According to media consulting firm Ormax, television staples such as Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah (4.9 million views) and Anupamaa (3.1 million views) ranked among India's 10 most-watched OTT properties during the week of 13-19 July.
Industry executives say the migration is reshaping how shows are written and distributed, even as broadcasters remain constrained by the economics of daily television.