How to Plan an OTT Campaign in India, From Brief to Report

What does an OTT plan have to settle before money is committed?

An OTT plan is a chain of decisions, and the order matters. Pick apps before you know the audience and you buy the biggest name instead of the right one. Pick dates before checking the sports calendar and half the budget lands in the dearest weeks of the year. We use the same eight steps for a ₹5 lakh regional test as for a national launch.

Platform facts, indicative rates and minimum spends for each app sit on our page about OTT advertising in India. This post is the process that ties them together, on every screen. Once the plan is signed off and the build moves into DV360, our guide on how to buy and measure CTV ads in DV360 takes over for the TV screen.

Step 1: What job should OTT do in this campaign?

Write one sentence that names the outcome, the audience and the time frame. "Make women aged 25 to 44 in Maharashtra and Karnataka aware of our new washable paint before Diwali" is something you can plan against. "Build the brand on OTT" is not.

OTT does the first two jobs best. If the brief is mostly leads, keep OTT as the awareness layer and put performance money elsewhere.

Step 2: Which viewers, languages and screens are you planning for?

Describe the audience the way your sales team would: where they live, the language they watch in, their age and stage of life. Then ask what that person streams on a Tuesday night and a Sunday afternoon.

The answers tend to be specific. A Coimbatore jewellery chain's buyers watch Tamil serials and films with family, mostly on the television. A Bengaluru fintech app's users stream English originals and cricket on phones and laptops.

Settle the screen split here, not later. The TV gives a full-screen ad, sound on, with several people in the room. The phone gives daily frequency and the option to tap. Most plans need both, so the question is weight: a car launch might put two-thirds of the money on TV screens, a youth app two-thirds on mobile.

Step 3: How do you shortlist OTT apps by audience fit?

Put every candidate app through four questions:

1. Does its catalogue carry the languages and genres your audience watches?
2. Does it reach them on the screen you weighted in step 2?
3. Can your budget clear its minimum spend and still leave room for the rest of the plan?
4. Will it have ad inventory on your dates? Subscription-led apps carry fewer ads.

Drop any app that fails question 3 or 4, because it cannot be booked. Drop any that fails both 1 and 2.

What survives usually fills three roles. The anchor brings scale, and around the IPL that tends to be JioHotstar, which streams it. Depth apps add a language the anchor covers thinly: a Chennai or Hyderabad brief might add Sun NXT or aha. The extender is cheap reach in the same homes, a job YouTube usually does.

Which app suits which audience is mapped on our OTT page, and each platform guide there carries that app's current rates, formats and calendar. Ignore headline user numbers: a smaller app whose viewers match yours beats a giant one where most impressions land outside your market.

Step 4: Which formats and ad lengths should each screen get?

Most OTT money buys in-stream video, pre-roll before a show and mid-roll in its breaks.

Plan the creative as a grid of length, language and screen, agreed with your creative agency before rates are final.

Now multiply by language. Two languages and three lengths make six files before any sound-off mobile versions. If production cannot cover the grid, drop a length rather than a language, because a Marathi viewer forgives a missing 30-second cut far sooner than a dubbed Hindi spot. TV file specs are in the CTV guide linked above.

Step 5: Which apps go on PG, private deals or direct booking?

Decide the route app by app, because it sets the price and how early you have to book. How each deal type behaves inside DV360 is explained in PG, PMP and open auction compared. At this stage you only need to sort the shortlist:

• Apps you need on fixed dates, such as a launch week, a match day or the run-up to Diwali, go on Programmatic Guaranteed.
• Apps you want for reach without particular dates can sit on a private deal.
• Sponsorships and branded content are booked direct with the publisher, outside DV360, so estimate their reach separately.
• Prime Video goes through Amazon's own channels, and usually Amazon MX Player does too, though for some dates a DV360 deal is available for MX Player.
• YouTube runs as auction lines inside the same DV360 campaign, as the extender.

Keeping every DV360 route under one campaign is what makes one frequency cap and one report possible.

Then decide who runs it. With a self-serve DV360 account or another seat of your own, your traders work inside DV360. With our DV360 Managed Service or a Campaign-Based Engagement, our team handles deals, setup and optimisation, and you follow results in the DV360 Reports Section without a DV360 login.

Step 6: How much should each app get, and how often should people see the ad?

Work backwards from reach, then check every line against the app's minimum. Two formulas, the same ones behind our reach and frequency calculator, do most of the work:

• Impressions = budget ÷ CPM × 1,000
• Reach ≈ impressions ÷ average frequency

Here is an illustrative six-week, ₹30 lakh plan for the paint brand from step 1. Each CPM sits inside the indicative range on that app's guide or our YouTube rate card, and none is a quote.

At an average frequency of 6 across the six weeks, that is roughly 15.5 lakh people before you allow for overlap between the three lines. Both OTT lines clear their minimums, about ₹10 lakh for ZEE5 and ₹5 lakh for Sun NXT, while a live sport line on JioHotstar, at about ₹25 lakh minimum, would swallow almost the whole budget. This flight runs into Diwali, though, when CPMs sit toward the top of each range, so the real impressions and reach will come in below these figures.

For frequency, three to five exposures a week is a sensible starting cap for awareness. Set it once, at campaign level, so YouTube and the OTT deals count against one limit. DV360 can only apply that cap to PG lines on a best-effort basis, since the publisher has already set those impressions aside, so look at frequency line by line in the first week.

Step 7: When should the campaign run around cricket and festive peaks?

Put the flight on a calendar before budgets are locked, because the same rupee buys very different volumes in different weeks.

The national peaks are predictable. The IPL, usually from late March to late May, is the priciest window on the app that streams it, Asia Cup editions bring their own spike on SonyLIV, and September to November is crowded everywhere. Regional peaks matter as much in their own states: Durga Puja in Bengal, Ganeshotsav in Maharashtra, Onam in Kerala, Pongal in Tamil Nadu and Ugadi in Karnataka and the Telugu states.

Most briefs fit one of three flighting patterns. A burst puts heavy weight into a few weeks, for launches and sales. A continuous flight runs lighter weight for months, for categories bought all year such as insurance. Pulsing keeps a low base with peaks around key dates, for seasonal categories.

If the dates are tied to a peak, book premium inventory several weeks ahead, because PG slots on match days and festive weeks sell first. If they are flexible, January to early March and the monsoon months give calmer rates for building frequency. The paint brand suits a pulsing plan: a light base from late September, then most of the weight in the fortnight before Diwali.

Step 8: How will you know the plan worked?

Fix the scorecard before launch, from the step 1 objective, and agree the report format with whoever signs off the budget.

For most OTT plans the scorecard needs five lines: unique reach and average frequency across every app, completion rate by app and screen, cost per completed view, delivery against each booking, and brand or search lift where the budget allows. Clicks do not belong on an awareness scorecard. Set review points too: a delivery check in the first few days, a weekly optimisation call and a post-campaign read for the next plan.

On TV screens, reach also has to allow for co-viewing and household counts, which the CTV guide covers. If brand lift is on the scorecard, confirm before launch that your buys qualify for a brand lift study, because not every deal type does. For managed and campaign-based clients, the DV360 Reports Section shows spend, impressions, reach, frequency and video completion on live dashboards built on DV360 data.

What does the finished plan look like on one page?

Before anything is booked, the eight decisions should fit on one sheet a client can sign.

Next step

Share your audience, languages, dates and budget when you ask for a free media plan, and we will send a first draft of this sheet and check live availability and rates on the premium inventory your dates need.