Measurement or Mythology — What Indian Brands Actually Believe About CTV ROI

There’s a strange duality in how Indian marketers talk about Connected TV right now. In pitch rooms and panel discussions, CTV is spoken about with near certainty—the next big screen, the smarter television, the inevitable shift. But in quieter, more honest conversations, especially when budgets are on the table, the confidence softens. Questions creep in. How much of this is actually working? And more importantly, how do we prove it?

That tension—between conviction and doubt—is where the story of CTV ROI in India really sits today.

Because for all the excitement around the medium, measurement hasn’t quite kept up with the narrative. Many brands are still trying to make sense of CTV using the tools they already understand. Some approach it like television, looking for reach and scale. Others treat it like digital, expecting performance metrics, attribution clarity, and clean dashboards that tie exposure to outcomes. CTV, inconveniently, refuses to behave like either.

And that’s where things begin to blur.

A large part of the challenge is structural. India’s CTV ecosystem is still fragmented, with multiple platforms, inconsistent reporting standards, and limited third-party verification. What one platform calls “engagement” may not translate cleanly to another. Attribution models, where they exist, often rely on probabilistic assumptions rather than hard links. For marketers used to the precision of performance media, this can feel like a step backwards. For those coming from television, it can feel unnecessarily complicated.

So what happens in practice? Brands start filling in the gaps themselves.

They lean on proxies. Completion rates become indicators of attention. Premium content environments are equated with premium audiences. The logic isn’t entirely flawed—but it isn’t entirely proven either. Somewhere along the way, interpretation starts doing the heavy lifting that data cannot.

And that’s where CTV ROI begins to slip, almost quietly, into the territory of belief.

But it would be unfair to suggest that brands are blindly buying into a myth. The truth is more nuanced—and, in some ways, more interesting. Many marketers aren’t necessarily chasing perfect measurement; they’re chasing *confidence*. CTV offers something that’s increasingly hard to find elsewhere: a sense of quality. It looks better, feels safer, and carries a certain cultural weight, especially among urban, younger audiences who have already moved away from linear television.

For brands trying to signal relevance or reposition themselves, that matters.

There’s also a competitive dynamic at play. Once a few players in a category begin investing in CTV, others tend to follow—not always because the ROI is fully understood, but because not being present starts to feel like a risk. In that sense, CTV is as much about optics as outcomes. It’s media buying, yes—but it’s also brand signalling.

A senior marketer summed it up rather bluntly in a recent conversation: “Sometimes we’re not measuring CTV as much as we’re justifying it.”

That honesty is telling. It reveals an industry that is aware of the gaps, but willing to work around them.

The bigger issue, perhaps, is not the lack of measurement—but the mismatch of expectations. Performance teams often look at CTV and ask for direct attribution. Brand teams look at the same campaigns and talk about recall, salience, and long-term impact. Both are valid lenses, but they don’t always align. The result is that the same campaign can be called effective and ineffective in the same meeting, depending on who’s interpreting the numbers.

This isn’t unique to India, but the effect is amplified here because the ecosystem is still evolving. Without widely accepted benchmarks or standardised metrics, ROI becomes subjective. It bends to the narrative being told around it.

And yet, something is slowly changing.

There’s a growing recognition that CTV may not fit neatly into existing measurement frameworks—and that forcing it to do so might be the wrong approach altogether. Some of the more forward-looking brands are beginning to step back and look at CTV in context, not isolation. Instead of asking, “Did this campaign deliver ROI?” they’re asking, “What role did this play in the overall media mix?”

That shift, while subtle, is significant.

Because once you start looking at CTV as part of a broader journey—rather than a standalone performance channel—the expectations become more realistic. It’s not about driving immediate conversions. It’s about influence, reinforcement, and visibility at moments that matter. Those outcomes are harder to measure, yes—but they’re not impossible to understand.

What’s needed now isn’t just better tools, but better alignment—between teams, between platforms, and between what we expect from the medium and what it’s actually designed to do.

If there’s one way to think about CTV ROI today, it’s this: it’s still being constructed. Not discovered, not finalised—constructed. Piece by piece, campaign by campaign, interpretation by interpretation.

Or, to put it differently, CTV measurement in India today feels a bit like assembling a puzzle without the final picture on the box. You know the pieces fit together somehow—but you’re still figuring out what you’re actually building.

That doesn’t make it unreliable. It just makes it incomplete.

And maybe that’s the more useful lens to adopt going forward. Not blind faith, not outright scepticism—but a willingness to sit with the ambiguity while the ecosystem catches up. Because it will. Measurement will improve. Standards will evolve. The fog will clear.

Until then, the real question isn’t whether CTV ROI is a myth or a measurable reality.

It’s whether brands are honest enough to admit they’re still figuring it out.