Media gets a reality check as Kantar maps India’s new viewing habits

undefined

Media gets a reality check as Kantar maps India’s new viewing habits

Media Compass tracks 87,000 Indians to decode the nation’s cross-platform behaviour.

Kantar

MUMBAI: In a world where content is king and attention spans are currency, India’s media playbook is in desperate need of an update and Kantar just handed the industry a fresh set of rules. With the launch of Media Compass, the insights giant has dropped a data bomb, charting a 360-degree view of how Indians are consuming media across TV, print, digital, and even influencer content in 2025.

The numbers are as revealing as they are disruptive. Based on a rolling sample of 87,000 consumers with quarterly reporting, Media Compass throws a spotlight on emerging behaviours that marketers can no longer afford to ignore. For starters, a staggering 23 per cent of Indians are now digital-only, they’re online but off the TV grid entirely. Even more surprising: 74 per cent of these digital-only users live in rural India, upending the long-held urban-tech stereotype.

While 58 per cent of Indians still watch linear TV every month, the small screen’s dominance is being nibbled away at by the rise of Connected TV (CTV). With 35 million new viewers, CTV has quietly become a premium battleground, especially among NCCS A households and younger male audiences. In fact, CTV viewership now splits evenly between urban and rural India, proving that the shift is not just a metro phenomenon.

Age remains a clear divider. Viewers aged 15–34 are tuning in to digital (55 per cent), OTT (55 per cent), and social media (57 per cent), while the 45 plus demographic still prefers the comfort of linear TV (44 per cent). Meanwhile, both CTV and digital-only audiences skew 57 per cent male, signalling a need for more inclusive programming and targeting.

Perhaps the most quietly revolutionary insight? Digital is not just democratising entertainment, it’s also redrawing the socio-economic map. Digital-only consumption is over-indexed among lower NCCS groups, showing that smartphones and cheap data are bridging access gaps once thought insurmountable.

“We’ve gone nearly five years without a formal, holistic view of Indian media consumption,” said Kantar director of specialist businesses and insights division for South Asia Puneet Avasthi. “Media Compass is here to fix that. In a fractured landscape, we’re giving advertisers the clarity and precision they’ve been craving.”

With quarterly updates and multi-platform granularity including cross-media interactions and influencer reach Media Compass doesn’t just raise the bar for media research in India. It torches the old one.