India’s connected TV audience is scaling faster than most planning templates can keep up with. Ormax Media pegs the CTV audience at 206.9 million in 2026, up from 129.2 million in 2025 and 69.7 million in 2024. A separate WPP Media and The Trade Desk estimate, built with Ormax, puts reach at 207 million viewers across 62-65 million households.
That scale is changing more than reach and frequency plans. It is forcing a rethink of the oldest unit in television advertising: the single hero TVC.
Why the one-film model is under pressure
For decades, the standard playbook was to produce one hero film, buy mass reach and let media planning do the targeting. Connected TV disrupts that because it can address audiences by geography, behaviour, content consumption and other signals. The logical next question for marketers is no longer just “who gets the ad?” but “which creative does each audience see?”
As Chetan Siyal, CMO of Snitch, put it, “The idea of making one film for everyone is slowly becoming outdated.” Brands can keep one strong campaign thought while changing the hook, product, language or context by viewer.
What brands are doing differently
Snitch now plans campaigns as a system of creatives rather than one hero film with cutdowns. Modular scenes, multiple openings, product stories and CTAs are built for different audiences, cities and occasions. The goal is a reusable content bank from the same shoot, so relevance rises without production costs going up proportionately.
Axis Max Life used a similar approach for its “Bharosa Tum Ho” campaign. The core brand promise stayed consistent, but executions were adapted for different cohorts. Alongside the flagship film with Rohit Sharma and Ritika Sajdeh, the brand created a digital-first version with gaming creator Payal Gaming to reach younger audiences with different storytelling and cultural references.
For e-commerce, GoKwik co-founder and CEO Chirag Taneja says CTV allows offers, product recommendations and messaging to be aligned by segment, location and purchase behaviour. A repeat buyer in Coimbatore could see a different creative from a first-time shopper in a metro.
A modular production checklist
The shift is more about designing for variation than shooting five separate films. The patterns emerging from brand leaders include:
- Keep one core campaign idea; vary the hook, product, language or CTA by audience.
- Build modular scenes, alternate openings and platform edits into the same production cycle.
- Capture a larger asset bank in one shoot instead of creating expensive adaptations later.
- Use AI-driven creative optimization to scale and version tailored assets efficiently.
- Bring creative, data and media teams together before the master film is locked.
The agency brief is changing too
Creative agencies and production houses are increasingly being asked to deliver a creative system, not just a 30-second master. Yasin Hamidani of Media care brand solutions says a well-planned production can capture multiple hooks, languages, talent combinations, product moments and CTAs that generate several edits. The upfront cost may rise slightly, but the cost per usable creative can fall.
Gopa Kumar Menon, co-founder and COO of Theblurr, describes the move as “one production to many useful creative outcomes.” The economics work when variation is designed from day one, not bolted on after the film is complete.
What marketers should do next
The practical takeaway is to stop evaluating a shoot by the cost of one film and start evaluating it by the value of the creative assets it produces. CTV’s measurement can identify which variants perform, so teams can scale winners and retire weak assets faster.
For marketing leaders, that means revisiting the brief, production calendar and media handoff together. The brands gaining an edge will be those that treat CTV as a creative system, not just a targeting channel.
Source: ETBrandEquity.com
