For the longest time, digital advertising ran on a quiet assumption: more data meant better decisions. Third-party cookies made that belief easy to sustain. They followed users across the internet, stitched together behaviour, and gave marketers a sense—sometimes real, often exaggerated—that they knew exactly who they were talking to.
That comfort is now disappearing.
As privacy regulations tighten and browsers steadily shut the door on third-party tracking, Indian brands are being pushed into unfamiliar territory. The shift isn’t dramatic in the way headlines make it sound—it’s slower, messier, and far less certain. But it’s happening. And in CTV, it’s forcing marketers to rethink not just how they target, but what targeting even means when the old rules no longer apply.
CTV, in many ways, was already built for this moment. Unlike the open web, it doesn’t depend heavily on cookies. It operates within logged-in environments—OTT platforms, smart TVs, device ecosystems—where data is controlled, structured, and, importantly, limited. That sounds like a strength, and in some ways it is. But it also removes a layer of visibility marketers had quietly come to rely on.
You can’t follow users around in the same way. You can’t build endless retargeting loops. You can’t always connect exposure to action with the kind of certainty performance teams are used to.
So the question becomes: what replaces that?
For many brands, the first instinct has been to fall back on what they own. First-party data is no longer just a buzzword—it’s become a necessity. CRM systems, app data, loyalty programmes—these are now doing the heavy lifting that cookies once handled. In CTV, this often means onboarding audience segments into platform ecosystems and hoping the match rates are strong enough to be useful.
But here’s the catch: not every brand is built for this. Large platforms and consumer-heavy categories have an advantage. Everyone else is still catching up, trying to make fragmented data sets behave like something cohesive.
And that’s where things get interesting.
Because as the industry leans harder into data it controls, it’s also rediscovering approaches it had once moved away from. Contextual targeting, for instance, is quietly finding its way back into the conversation. Not in its old, keyword-driven form—but in a more nuanced way. On CTV, context is tied to content, mood, and viewing behaviour. A live cricket match carries a very different energy from a late-night thriller or a weekend family film. Brands are starting to think in those terms again—not just who the audience is, but what they’re watching, and why that moment matters.
It’s less precise. But in some cases, it’s more intuitive.
At the same time, the balance of power is shifting towards platforms. OTT players and device ecosystems now sit at the centre of the data exchange. They decide what can be targeted, how it can be measured, and how much of that information is shared back. For marketers, this creates a slightly uncomfortable dynamic. You’re investing more, but often seeing less.
Which is why trust has become a bigger factor than most people admit.
Conversations around CTV planning now include questions that weren’t as prominent before: How is this data sourced? What does “audience targeting” actually mean on this platform? How much visibility do we really have? These aren’t always easy questions to answer—and not every platform answers them equally well.
Still, brands are adapting. Some are leaning into clean rooms and data partnerships. Others are experimenting with cohort-based targeting or AI-led modelling. None of these solutions are perfect. In fact, most of them feel like workarounds rather than replacements. But they’re moving the industry forward, even if slowly.
What’s becoming clearer, though, is that the real shift isn’t just technical—it’s behavioural.
For years, digital marketing was obsessed with the individual. The closer you could get to a person—their habits, their intent, their likelihood to convert—the better your campaign was supposed to perform. Without cookies, that level of proximity becomes harder to achieve, and maybe harder to justify.
CTV reflects that change quite naturally. It’s a shared screen more often than not. It’s lean-back viewing, not active browsing. The idea that every impression needs to be hyper-personalised starts to feel slightly out of place in that environment.
Instead, relevance is being redefined. It’s less about “this exact person” and more about “this kind of moment.” That shift sounds subtle, but it changes how campaigns are planned, how success is measured, and even how creative is approached.
One marketer described it in a way that stuck: “We’re not losing targeting—we’re losing the illusion of perfect targeting.”
And that’s probably the most honest way to look at it.
Because the truth is, cookies didn’t just enable precision—they created a sense of control that wasn’t always real. What’s happening now is a correction. A slightly uncomfortable one, yes, but also a necessary one.
CTV sits right at the centre of this transition. It forces marketers to operate with less noise, fewer signals, and more reliance on judgment. That can feel like a step back, especially in an industry that prides itself on optimisation. But it also opens up space for better thinking—more intentional planning, more meaningful context, and, perhaps, more realistic expectations.
The road ahead won’t be clean. Measurement will continue to lag behind ambition. Platforms will evolve at different speeds. And brands will keep experimenting, often without clear benchmarks to guide them.
But that’s the nature of this phase.
The privacy reckoning isn’t a single moment—it’s a gradual reset. And in that reset, CTV isn’t losing its edge. It’s simply being forced to prove it in a different way.
Without cookies, targeting doesn’t disappear.
It just stops pretending to be perfect.
