CTV adoption rises, but agencies struggle with control, overlap and consistency

New Delhi: As Connected TV cements its position at the centre of video planning, the industry is grappling with a contradiction it can no longer ignore. CTV is being planned like digital, bought like television, and measured like neither. The result is a medium that commands growing budgets but still struggles with coordination, consistency, and control.

On the surface, CTV’s rise looks straightforward: audiences have moved to the living room, platforms have followed, and advertisers have responded. But beneath that growth story lies a more complex reality: CTV’s challenges are no longer technological or inventory-led. They are organisational, operational, and largely agency-driven.

The audience shift itself is not in question. “From the audience perspective, more people bought connected TVs and used mostly apps to watch TV content,” said Prabhvir Sahmey, CEO & Founder, Stratpulse Techlabs. As consumption patterns changed, platforms were quick to accelerate the shift. “India saw some key publishers pushing the CTV agenda. Noticeably, platforms like YouTube, JioAds, and JioHotstar launched some exclusive propositions on their CTV offerings.”

Scale followed naturally. What was once a niche channel began to resemble a mass medium. “CTV also saw the total scale of devices go up from an average of 10–15m devices in 2024; it went up to 20- 30 mn devices on a monthly basis. Content availability also jumped,” Sahmey added.

From the advertiser’s point of view, the proposition was compelling. “CTV stopped being optional and became foundational,” said Russhabh R Thakkar, Founder and CEO, Frodoh. “For advertisers, CTV offered something rare in digital video: scale with intent. It delivered television-like reach while retaining digital control,” he added. 

Yet this dual identity, television's reach with digital logic, is precisely where the friction begins.

CTV today is expected to behave like digital. Advertisers demand frequency control, targeting discipline, and brand-safe delivery. But the systems buying it are still deeply rooted in legacy television structures. According to Sahmey, agencies are struggling to reconcile this mismatch. “CTV is a platform/publisher-led narrative; the agencies have plenty of changes to deal with across the ecosystem.”

Traditional agencies, in particular, are carrying forward old operating models into a fundamentally different medium. “For traditional agencies, they are still focused on the old way of running TV, and have created specialised teams to run connected TV campaigns. These teams are disconnected internally,” Sahmey explained. The result is fragmentation within agencies themselves, even as they attempt to solve fragmentation in the market.

Digital-first agencies, meanwhile, face a different problem. “Agencies that have been digital first need to ramp the steep curve of learning how TV behaves with the audiences and how to track impact,” Sahmey underscored. In trying to apply digital frameworks wholesale, they often underestimate the nuances of shared-screen viewing and contextual exposure.

This structural confusion feeds directly into CTV’s most debated weakness: measurement.

“There aren't any standard measurement standards for CTV yet,” Sahmey said. “You can measure Mind Metrics like TOMA, brand recall, etc., using trusted partners like Nielsen and Kantar. Full-scale measurement, i.e., the level of digital, is still broken.”

Audience measurement is equally fragmented. “Audience measurement doesn't exist as of now. Each publisher has their own methods of classifying audiences; however, not all support audience-based targeting or campaigns,” he added. 

Yet advertisers have not walked away. In fact, many continue to double down. Thakkar believes that brands have reset expectations rather than withdrawing trust. “CTV exposed overlaps, attribution gaps, and reporting inconsistencies, but instead of eroding trust, it clarified expectations.” As he put it, “Brands accepted that every scaled medium has imperfections, and CTV still shows the strongest link between exposure and outcome.”

That belief has kept CTV positioned as a “sweet spot,” even as its mechanics lag behind its promise. “It may not offer instant dashboard gratification, but it delivers dependable business impact,” Thakkar added.

However, as CTV budgets grow, tolerance for poor execution is shrinking. Amit Relan, CEO and Co-founder, mFilterIt, pointed out that the conversation has shifted decisively. “As CTV matures into a core line item for advertisers, the strategic focus is shifting from scale to control.”

Premium content alone no longer guarantees confidence. “Premium environments alone are no longer enough; what matters is whether frequency caps, targeting logic, and brand-safety settings are actually being honoured,” Relan said. What was once considered an operational issue is now strategic. “When a campaign is planned with a frequency cap of three, enforcing that cap consistently becomes a strategic requirement, not an operational detail,” he added.

This is where agency accountability becomes unavoidable. The tools exist, platforms are opening up, and advertisers are asking the right questions. “This is why leading advertisers are prioritising independent verification, log-level transparency, and content-level ID controls in CTV,” Relan explained. “Platforms are increasingly open to measurement; the next step is unified standards and device-level transparency.”

Budget behaviour further underscores the contradiction. For some advertisers, CTV remains exploratory. “CTV remains for many advertisers as a ‘trial’ platform,” Sahmey noted, adding that large-scale commitment will follow only when reach expands further. “It is only once CTV crosses the 100 million active devices a month mark that planning starts to become more contribution-driven.”

At the same time, other categories are already reallocating decisively. “Depending on the category, around 15–25% of video budgets are moving into CTV,” said Thakkar. The motivation is clear: “stronger reach efficiency, lower wastage, and consistent delivery on brand and mid-funnel metrics.”

What emerges from these seemingly conflicting realities is not a medium in crisis, but a market in transition. As Thakkar succinctly put it, “Fragmentation itself is not the issue. Uncoordinated buying is.” The solution, he argued, lies in changing how agencies approach the channel. “Agencies need to stop planning CTV app by app and start planning exposure by exposure.”

This requires a shift in mindset from platforms to households, from impressions to incremental reach. “That means focusing on households instead of platforms, managing overlap intentionally, and measuring success through incremental reach and frequency.”

Sahmey believes scale will eventually force this reckoning. “We have to cross that 100m active devices base to really start to take CTV seriously.” Until then, agencies are balancing multiple pressures. “Agencies in particular have a bigger elephant in the room called. AI and Agents along with automation.” 

CTV’s identity crisis, then, is not about whether the medium works. Advertisers already believe it does. The crisis lies in who owns its outcomes. As CTV becomes too big to be treated as an experiment and too complex to be managed like traditional TV, the onus is shifting squarely onto agencies to unify planning, enforce control, and align execution with intent. In 2026, CTV does not need more belief. It needs better stewardship.