As we begin the New Year, we spoke to industry leaders to reflect on the shifts that shaped 2025 and the forces expected to define 2026. For Russhabh R Thakkar, Founder and CEO, Frodoh, 2025 marked the moment Connected TV firmly claimed its place as India’s primary premium screen, reshaping how brands think about attention, measurability, and brand safety.
Reflecting on the year gone by, Thakkar notes: “2025 was the year CTV in India finally transitioned from ‘emerging screen’ to ‘primary screen.’ With premium OTT time spent eclipsing mobile video and Tier-2/3 households accelerating smart-TV adoption, brands shifted budgets toward high-attention, lean-back environments. The parallel rise of data-backed targeting and programmatic CTV pipes created true measurability, making CTV the fastest-growing and most brand-safe digital channel of the year.”
Looking ahead, Thakkar believes the coming year will fundamentally recalibrate how creativity, technology, and consumer attention intersect.
“2026 will see AI move from experimentation to real deployment across planning, creative versioning, and optimisation. Agencies and brands will shift from ‘AI-assisted’ to ‘AI-orchestrated’ workflows, enabling personalised creatives mapped to attention signals, device context, and regional nuance. Creative effectiveness will become measurable like media, and AI-generated variants will finally outperform legacy static assets.
With digital noise at an all-time high, 2026 will be defined by paid attention rather than paid reach. Brands will prioritise environments where consumers voluntarily spend time such as high-quality video, gaming, live sports, streaming audio, creator-first platforms, and privacy-safe premium inventory. Expect attention guarantees, outcome-based buying, and creative effectiveness measurement to become mainstream, as advertisers shift budgets to contexts that deliver genuine cognitive impact.
The next 100 million premium digital consumers will come from Bharat, not metros. In 2026, Tier-2/3 India will drive the majority of growth in categories like auto, finance, personal care and electronics. These users display metro-level purchasing power but expect regional-first storytelling, simplified journeys, and trust-led communication. Brands will rewire media mixes, creative stacks, and even product positioning to treat Bharat not as a segment, but as the centre. Regional CTV viewership will grow at 2× metro pace, making living-room targeting more democratic. For brands, CTV becomes the premium, fraud-proof, high-intent front door to Indian households.”
(As told to Ruchika Jha)
