Media and entertainment in India: advertising, OTT, and digital disruption

The anatomy of India's media industry

India's media and entertainment (M&E) sector historically comprised several distinct sub-segments — television broadcasting, print media, filmed entertainment, radio, OTT (over-the-top streaming), digital media, and gaming — each with its own business model, competitive dynamics, and growth trajectory. Unlike many other sectors where a single financial model describes most listed companies, M&E requires understanding multiple different revenue mechanisms before any individual company can be properly analysed.

India's total M&E industry size was estimated by FICCI-EY research at approximately ₹2.1–2.3 lakh crore as of the early 2020s, with digital media and OTT growing at a significantly faster rate than television and print. The industry was deeply influenced by India's unique demographic profile — a young population with growing smartphone penetration and rapidly falling mobile data costs (the Jio effect post-2016) — and by the country's linguistic diversity, which meant no single national platform could dominate the way a Netflix or YouTube might in a linguistically homogeneous market.

Television: the largest screen

Television remained India's largest single advertising medium through most of the 2010s and into the early 2020s, with an estimated 850–900 million viewers and over 900 registered satellite channels. The TV industry is segmented by language (Hindi national channels, regional language channels), by genre (general entertainment, news, movies, sports, kids, devotional), and by distribution mode (cable, DTH — direct-to-home satellite, IPTV).

How TV broadcasters earn revenue

Television broadcaster revenue came from two streams: advertising revenue and subscription revenue.

Advertising revenue was driven by ratings — specifically by BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council of India) data on viewership. BARC operated a panel of TV homes equipped with audience measurement devices (peoplemeter systems) across urban and rural India and published weekly TRP (Television Rating Point) data for each channel and time slot. Media buyers used TRP data and the derived CPRP (Cost Per Rating Point) metric to plan and buy TV advertising. A channel with consistently high prime-time ratings commanded higher CPRP from advertisers — it was literally more valuable per unit of audience attention.

Subscription revenue came from distribution platform fees. Cable operators and DTH platforms (Tata Sky, Dish TV/Videocon D2H — now merged as Dish TV, Airtel Digital TV) paid broadcasters carriage fees for the right to carry their channels. The subscriber count of DTH and cable platforms, combined with the per-subscriber fee negotiated, determined a broadcaster's subscription income.

Sun TV Network illustrated the power of regional language dominance. As the leading broadcaster in Tamil Nadu and a strong player across the south Indian languages (Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam), Sun TV historically generated higher EBITDA margins than most national Hindi GECs because its dominance in regional markets gave it pricing power with both advertisers (who needed to reach southern consumers) and distributors. Regional language dominance proved a more defensible competitive position than national generalentertainment, where the top Hindi GECs competed intensely for similar advertiser budgets.

The TRAI New Tariff Order

TRAI's New Tariff Order (NTO), initially implemented in February 2019, was a regulatory intervention designed to give consumers more choice and transparency in channel selection. Before NTO, cable and DTH operators typically sold bundled packages — subscribers paid a fixed monthly fee for a set of pre-determined channels regardless of what they actually watched. Under NTO, subscribers were given the option to select individual channels and pay individual channel MRPs, or select from smaller network bouquets.

The NTO's implementation had mixed consequences. Some consumers rationalised their channel subscriptions, reducing the overall subscription revenue base for smaller channels. There were also legal challenges and subsequent TRAI amendments that softened some of the original framework. Subscription revenue trends for broadcasters remained more volatile in the NTO era than in the preceding fixed-bundle regime.

OTT streaming: the disruptive layer

The OTT segment — streaming video delivered over the internet to connected devices — grew from negligible scale to a strategically critical industry segment over the period from roughly 2016 to 2024. The catalyst was Reliance Jio's entry into the telecom market in 2016, which drove mobile data prices to among the lowest in the world within 12–18 months and enabled hundreds of millions of Indians to stream video on their smartphones for the first time.

The content spend arms race

OTT platforms competed primarily on content — the breadth and quality of their content libraries determined subscriber acquisition and retention. Netflix entered India with its global library but invested heavily in Indian original productions (Sacred Games, Delhi Crime, and others) to build local relevance. Amazon Prime Video similarly commissioned Indian originals while leveraging its existing Prime membership base. Hotstar (later Disney+ Hotstar) combined Disney's global content with local Star India productions and critically, held digital streaming rights to the IPL cricket tournament — which delivered massive concurrent viewership.

JioCinema entered aggressively when it secured IPL digital rights from Disney+ Hotstar for the 2023 season and made the content available for free to non-subscribers. This decision — streaming the world's most-watched cricket property free on OTT — was a structural event for the Indian streaming market. It demonstrated that the free advertising-supported model (AVOD) could generate advertising revenue at large scale even for premium sports content, and it posed a fundamental challenge to subscription-first OTT platforms competing for mass-market attention.

The telco bundling dynamic further complicated subscriber metrics. Hotstar was bundled with Airtel plans; JioCinema was available free to Jio subscribers. This meant nominal subscriber or user numbers for these platforms could not be directly compared to a purely paid-subscription platform like Netflix.

Key OTT metrics

Analysts tracked OTT platforms on Monthly Active Users (MAU), ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) for subscription platforms, content spend as a percentage of revenue, subscriber growth, and ultimately the path to profitability. Content spend was the dominant operating cost for most OTT platforms — acquiring or producing content that attracted subscribers required large upfront investments that were amortised over the content's useful life. A platform spending aggressively on content but growing subscribers slowly was burning cash; one growing subscribers rapidly while managing content costs per subscriber was approaching sustainable economics.

Print media: structural decline

India's print media market — particularly English-language national newspapers and regional-language dailies — had historically been more resilient than print in developed markets, partly because newspaper literacy and readership grew through the 2000s and 2010s as education levels rose in smaller towns. Hindi and regional language print maintained circulation well into the 2010s, supported by distribution networks reaching rural and semi-urban readers.

However, the structural shift in advertising budgets from print to digital was unmistakable from the mid-2010s onward. Advertisers valued digital's measurability (impressions, clicks, conversions tracked in real time), its targeting precision (reaching specific demographic and behavioural profiles), and its efficiency. Print advertising offered broad reach and brand association but could not offer click-level attribution. As marketing departments became more data-driven and performance-accountable, print's share of advertising budgets declined progressively.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 accelerated this decline sharply. Physical newspaper distribution was severely disrupted during lockdowns, accelerating reader migration to digital news sources. Print advertising budgets — already under pressure — were slashed across categories as companies conserved cash. While print partially recovered in 2021–22, the structural damage to advertising budgets was widely seen as permanent in many categories.

Filmed entertainment: the theatrical and digital window

India's film industry is the world's largest by number of films produced annually (across Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, and other languages). Revenue for a film is earned across sequential windows: theatrical box office, satellite rights (sale of broadcast rights to TV channels), and digital/OTT rights. The theatrical window — box office — was historically the primary window, accounting for the largest share of a film's commercial success or failure.

The multiplex industry in India — dominated by PVR INOX (formed by the merger of PVR Cinemas and INOX Leisure in 2023) and Cinepolis India — earned revenue from ticket sales, food and beverage (F&B), and screen advertising. F&B was a particularly high-margin revenue stream for multiplexes — historically contributing 20–25% of revenue at margins significantly above the ticketing business. The key operating metric for multiplex operators is occupancy rate— the percentage of available seats sold across all shows — which determines revenue per screen day.

The OTT platforms' willingness to pay large amounts for OTT rights to major films — and in some cases to finance films directly for OTT-first release — created both an opportunity and a disruption for the theatrical model. The theatrical window became more concentrated around big-budget event films; smaller and mid-budget films increasingly found their primary audience on OTT rather than in theatres.

Digital advertising: the Google-Meta duopoly

India's digital advertising market grew rapidly through the 2010s and early 2020s, driven by smartphone adoption, cheap data, and the migration of consumers to digital platforms. By the early 2020s, digital had become the second-largest advertising medium after television in India by revenue.

The dominant players in digital advertising globally — and in India — were Google (through Search and YouTube) and Meta (through Facebook and Instagram). These two platforms historically captured approximately 70–75% of global digital advertising revenue, and their share in India was similarly dominant. Google's search advertising was the most measurable and performance-driven: an advertiser paying for a search keyword paid only when a user clicked on the ad (CPC — Cost Per Click), with direct attribution to sales. Meta's social media advertising used CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) or CPC models and offered audience targeting based on user profile and behaviour data.

Indian digital platforms — news portals, regional content aggregators, digital-native media companies — competed for the residual advertising budgets after Google and Meta took their share. This structural reality made it difficult for most Indian listed media companies with digital advertising revenue models to achieve the growth rates that their international comparables suggested were possible in digital. Nazara Technologies, a listed Indian gaming and esports company, operated in an adjacent digital segment — mobile gaming and esports tournaments — which was relatively insulated from the Google-Meta advertising dynamic because its primary revenue model was in-app purchases and event management rather than display advertising.

Major players and their distinctive business positions

Zee Entertainment Enterpriseswas historically one of India's largest television broadcast networks, with channels across Hindi, English, and regional languages. The company went through a prolonged period of corporate governance concerns and then a complex proposed merger with Sony Pictures Networks India that was ultimately called off in early 2024 after Sony exercised termination rights. The aborted merger left Zee in a significantly weakened strategic position.

Sun TV Network maintained its position as the dominant regional language broadcaster in south India through the period, benefiting from high EBITDA margins (historically in the 60–70% range) driven by its content library, distribution reach, and the absence of credible competition in the Tamil general entertainment segment.

Network18 / TV18 — the television and digital media business of the Reliance Industries-backed network — operated news channels (CNN-News18, CNBC-TV18) and entertainment channels (Colors TV) alongside digital news properties (News18). Its integration with the broader Reliance digital ecosystem provided distribution advantages through JioTV.

Nifty 500 companies in this sector

The Nifty 500 universe includes several listed media and entertainment companies across television, OTT, filmed entertainment, and gaming. Explore their financial profiles, metrics, and historical data in the media and entertainment stocks section of our stocks directory. Notable listed names included Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Sun TV Network, PVR INOX, TV18 Broadcast, Network18 Media & Investments, Nazara Technologies, and Hathway Cable & Datacom.

To understand the advertising revenue model in a quantitative framework, see our P/E ratio explainer for context on how media companies' cyclical advertising revenues affect earnings multiples.

This primer is educational only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or research under SEBI (Research Analysts) Regulations, 2014. All historical figures and examples are illustrative and reflect past conditions; media businesses carry advertising cyclicality, content, regulatory, and competitive disruption risks. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making any investment decision.