Digital video ad spends in India are poised to surpass television ad spends as early as next year, according to Karan Bedi, Director and Head at Amazon MX Player.
While speaking at the MMA Global Impact 2025, he noted that this shift represents a significant inflection point, one that has already occurred in nearly every major market worldwide.
Bedi emphasised that AVOD has essentially become the core consumption medium for the Indian masses. The largest share of time spent on the internet in India today is on streaming. In fact, 83% of internet users in the country stream some form of audio or video content, with video making up the bulk of this activity.
This trend isn’t limited to the top 10 or 20 cities, it extends deep into the market, with over 50% of consumption coming from rural areas. Streaming is now the leading digital activity in India, far surpassing others like online learning, which accounts for just 3%, and communication, which stands at 75%. At nearly 85%, streaming has emerged as the dominant behaviour online.
“Given this, streaming is now the mainstream way for brands to talk about their product or service to different audiences. For years, we’ve discussed at various forums how streaming is on its way to becoming the mainstream of TV, and I believe we can now definitively say that it has. The effectiveness of advertising on streaming video has outpaced that of both television and user-generated content (UGC),” Bedi said.
“Streaming also delivers the best long-term ROI among all available media options. While TV, radio, and audio each hold their own, streaming video, distinct from digital video or UGC, has consistently demonstrated the highest ROI across multiple parameters over the past five years. Whether it’s brand recall, awareness, recognition, or uplift, investments in streaming are yielding the most impactful returns,” he added.
Furthermore, he went on to say that digital consumption has already surpassed TV. And now, marketers are accelerating their shift in spends from traditional TV to digital video.
“By as early as next year, total digital video ad spends in India are expected to overtake television ad spends. This marks a significant inflection point, one we’ve seen in nearly every major market globally. It may have taken a little longer in India, but that shift is now firmly underway,” Bedi added.
Bedi highlighted that while many platforms offer free content without premium entertainment, and others offer premium content at a cost, the real magic lies in combining both.
“That’s exactly what we aim to do, deliver premium free entertainment, backed by Amazon’s trust and safety, and available across all Amazon platforms. Our business is built on three core pillars: differentiated reach, differentiated content, and differentiated ads,” Bedi said.
“The MX app has nearly 1.5 billion downloads, making it not just one of the largest apps in India, but one of the largest globally. We have 250 million monthly active users who engage with our content and can be reached by various brands in meaningful ways. We’re integrated across all Amazon services. Our content is accessible not only through the MX mobile and connected TV apps but also via the Amazon Shopping app, Amazon Fire TV, and Amazon Prime Video, reaching a significant portion of the top 20 million households in India. So our content doesn’t just scale across the mass of those 50 million users but also taps into the top of the consumption funnel,” he added.
Bedi mentioned that content is what India loves- drama. While they offer a wide range of genres, drama continues to be the heartbeat of Indian entertainment. For years, television in India adhered to a particular format. OTT changed that, it sparked an explosion of genres and diversified what viewers could watch. Today, genres like comedy and mindset-focused narratives are thriving. Even documentaries, once absent from mainstream Indian television, are now gaining traction online.
“We cater to this demand with a rich and varied slate- drama, romance, comedy, and reality. Our offering is not limited to the scale of a single TV channel, we deliver what an entire TV network would. From blockbuster tentpole drama series like Ashram, the most watched show across any OTT platform in India, and arguably one of the most viewed globally, to being one of the largest sources of reality content on any video service in the country, we’re redefining what premium free entertainment looks like,” he added.
