India’s media mix is evolving at unprecedented speed as consumers embrace a wider array of platforms and formats, making it essential for advertisers and media planners to stay closely connected to evolving consumer behaviours to optimise their targeting and investment decisions.
Recognising the need for more frequent, up-to-date intelligence, Kantar’s Media Compass Report brings fresh insights with its third quarter 2025 update. The report is a quarterly estimator, built on a rolling sample of 87,000 consumers, providing updated reach and frequency metrics, cross-media interactions, and category-linked behaviours to help brands make sharper, data-driven media decisions.
“Since its launch in June, Kantar’s Media Compass Report has enabled marketers to navigate the complexity of India’s media ecosystem with precision. The sharp rise of digital-only audiences, now 313 million Indians, signals a decisive shift in how content is being consumed across the country,” said Kantar South Asia specialist businesses director Puneet Avasthi. “With strong growth coming from rural and younger segments, brands must rethink how they build reach and relevance. As media behaviour becomes increasingly multi-screen, Media Compass provides timely intelligence required to plan with precision, in line with shifting audience behaviour.”
Kantar Media Compass, third quarter 2025 highlights:
1. The rapid rise of digital-only audiences:
- Digital-only audiences (those who access the internet but do not watch linear TV) represents 26 per cent (313 million) of the 15 plus year old Indian population, as of Q3 2025.
- It has grown by 30 per cent in Q3 2025 from its baseline of 20 per cent in 2024.
- Interestingly, they are over-indexed among NCCS C/DE and younger age-groups.
2. Linear TV viewers are increasingly watching connected TV (CTV):
- The report estimates that linear TV viewership has seen a marginal dip from 705 million in Q1 2025 to 689 million in Q3 2025.
- While the number of viewers who are watching content on both LTV and CTV has grown to 116 million in Q3 2025 – a growth of 17 per cent over Q1 2025.
3. Digital media adoption in rural India is high and soaring:
- Three in four digital-only users reside in rural India.
- 49 per cent of the incremental CTV viewers are also from rural India.
4. The expanding digital footprint:
- 43 per cent of Indians browse online shopping platforms for discovery, research, and deal-hunting. Thus, retail media networks are increasingly shaping preferences at the top of the purchase funnel.
5. Implications for brands:
- Digital is rapidly bridging the reach gap in historically media dark geographies and cohorts of the country, making it essential for brands to build flexible plans that seamlessly balance linear and digital investments in line with campaign objectives and target audiences.
- Rethink long-held assumptions and adopt telecom-first rural strategies, tailoring creative, formats and vernacular content for mobile-led consumption which will help unlock far more precise targeting and deeper engagement in previously hard-to-reach markets.
- Treat retail platforms as vital upper-funnel environments for storytelling and influence, where strong retail media strategies and always-on, optimised content can shape consumer choices and capture demand much earlier in the journey.
The survey for Kantar Media Compass Report is conducted annually with a sample of 87,000 males and females aged 15 and above, across NCCS segments A to E, covering both urban and rural areas across India.
