Eros Now Advertising: A Media Planner's Guide to OTT Video Ads, CPM Pricing, and Bollywood Audience Targeting in India

Most brands that come to us asking about OTT advertising India have already made up their minds about Disney+ Hotstar or JioCinema — and they are leaving serious money on the table by ignoring Eros Now. The platform sits on one of the deepest Bollywood content libraries in the world, which means its audience is not just large but genuinely passionate about Indian entertainment in a way that translates directly into ad engagement metrics that outperform category averages.

At SmartAds, we have run campaigns across virtually every major streaming platform operating in India, and the consistent surprise for our clients is how efficiently Eros Now advertising delivers against a Bollywood-affinity audience that other platforms simply cannot replicate at the same cost point.

What Is Eros Now Advertising and How Does It Work?

Frankly speaking, Eros Now is one of the most underestimated digital advertising destinations in the Indian OTT space — which is a strange thing to say about a platform that has been operating since 2012 and carries a content library of over 12,000 films, 200,000 music videos, and thousands of original web series. The platform, operated by Eros Digital, a division of Eros Media World (formerly Eros International), functions on a dual-revenue model that combines subscription income from its SVOD tier with advertising revenue from its AVOD tier; this dual structure is precisely what makes it interesting for media planners who are trying to reach an engaged, entertainment-hungry audience without paying the premium CPM rates that the larger platforms charge.

The way Eros Now advertising works in practice is that brands can access the platform's ad inventory either through a direct buy arranged via the Eros Digital sales team or through programmatic channels — primarily through the InMobi exchange, which handles a significant portion of the platform's programmatic advertising supply. When a user on the free, ad-supported tier of Eros Now starts streaming a film or a music video, they encounter pre-roll ads before the content begins and mid-roll ads at natural break points during longer content; these are the primary video ad placements that most advertisers are buying. On top of that, there are display-format options including banner ads and overlay ads that appear during the viewing experience, which are typically used for retargeting or brand recall reinforcement rather than as primary awareness drivers.

What a lot of people miss is that Eros Now's AVOD tier has expanded significantly over the past few years, partly through its association with Mzaalo, the blockchain-based rewards platform developed by Xfinite, which added a new dimension to the platform's free content strategy. The result is a streaming platform that reaches a meaningful slice of India's connected population — particularly users in Tier-2 cities and Tier-3 cities who have access to affordable data plans through Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and BSNL — and who are consuming Bollywood content on mobile devices and, increasingly, on smart TV screens through connected TV setups.

What Ad Formats Are Available on Eros Now?

The ad formats available on Eros Now cover most of what a brand would need for a video-first digital campaign, though the mix is somewhat different from what you would encounter on a platform like YouTube. Pre-roll ads are the workhorse format here — these are the video ads that play before the content starts, and they come in both skippable and non-skippable variants; the non-skippable ads, which typically run to fifteen or thirty seconds, tend to deliver significantly higher ad completion rates than their skippable counterparts, which is why we generally recommend them for awareness-phase campaigns where message delivery is the priority. Mid-roll ads follow a similar logic but are placed at content break points during films and longer episodes, which means the viewer is already invested in the content and less likely to abandon the stream — a nuance that matters enormously when you are optimising for cost per completed view.

Beyond video, the platform supports banner ads that appear in the app interface and on the web player, as well as overlay ads that surface during content playback without interrupting it entirely; these formats are better suited to performance objectives like click-through and app download rather than brand-building. What we tell our clients is that the real creative opportunity on Eros Now lies in the combination of a non-skippable pre-roll ad paired with a companion banner, which creates a dual-touchpoint experience that reinforces brand recall in a way that a single format cannot achieve on its own. The platform also supports in-app advertising placements within the mobile application, which is particularly relevant given that a substantial majority of Eros Now's viewing happens on Android and iOS devices rather than on desktop browsers.

On the connected TV front, Eros Now is available on smart TV platforms including those distributed through Tata Play (formerly Tata Sky), which means CTV advertising on Eros Now is a real option for brands that want to reach the living-room screen. CTV advertising on the platform delivers in a larger-screen environment where ad completion rates tend to be higher and where the brand impression carries more visual weight; the CPM for CTV inventory is naturally higher than mobile, sitting somewhere in the range that reflects the premium viewing context, but for categories like automobiles, real estate, and consumer durables, the CTV placement often justifies the incremental cost. Creative specifications for video ads on Eros Now generally follow the IAB standard — MP4 format, H.264 encoding, a minimum resolution of 1280x720 for HD delivery, with a recommended aspect ratio of 16:9 for landscape viewing and 9:16 for mobile vertical placements.

How Much Does Advertising on Eros Now Cost? (CPM and Rates)

This is the question that every media planning conversation eventually arrives at, and the honest answer is that Eros Now advertising rates are not published on a fixed rate card — they are negotiated based on campaign volume, targeting parameters, and inventory availability, which is standard practice across the OTT advertising India ecosystem. That said, we have enough campaign data from our own bookings to give you a realistic picture. For standard pre-roll video ads on the mobile AVOD tier, the CPM works out to roughly somewhere between ₹200 and ₹350 per thousand impressions, which is a number that tends to surprise clients who are used to paying ₹80-120 CPM on social media platforms — but the comparison is not quite fair, because the viewing context, the content affinity, and the ad completion rate on a streaming platform are fundamentally different from a scroll-past environment.

Non-skippable video ads carry a premium over skippable formats, and the CPM for non-skippable inventory on Eros Now tends to sit in the ballpark of ₹300 to ₹450 depending on the targeting layers applied; add demographic targeting, geo-targeting to specific cities, or behavioral targeting based on content consumption patterns, and the CPM moves upward accordingly. For CTV advertising on Eros Now, the rates are higher — in the range of ₹500 to ₹800 CPM — which reflects both the premium of the large-screen environment and the relatively tighter supply of connected TV inventory compared to mobile. Cost per completed view, or CPCV, is an alternative pricing model that some advertisers prefer because it eliminates the risk of paying for impressions where the ad was skipped or abandoned; on Eros Now, CPCV rates typically work out to somewhere between ₹0.80 and ₹1.50 per completed view, depending on ad length and targeting.

The minimum ad spend to run a managed campaign directly with Eros Digital is generally in the range of ₹3 to ₹5 lakh for a campaign, though programmatic buys through InMobi can be initiated at lower thresholds — sometimes as low as ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh for a test campaign, which is a meaningful entry point for mid-market brands that want to evaluate the platform before committing to a larger ad spend. At SmartAds, we typically recommend that first-time advertisers on Eros Now start with a two-to-four-week test campaign with a budget of around ₹2 to ₹3 lakh, which generates enough impressions and campaign performance data to make an informed decision about scaling. To be honest, the brands that get the most out of Eros Now advertising are those that commit to a campaign duration of at least four to six weeks, because brand recall on a streaming platform builds cumulatively across multiple exposures rather than spiking from a single burst.

Who Is the Eros Now Audience in India?

The Eros Now audience is, at its core, a Bollywood audience — which sounds obvious but has specific strategic implications that are worth unpacking. The platform's content library skews heavily toward Hindi language films and music, with a strong catalogue of regional language content including Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, and Marathi titles; this means the audience is broadly pan-India in geographic spread but has a particularly strong index among Hindi-speaking markets in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and the National Capital Region. According to data trends referenced in the FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report, the OTT advertising India market has been growing at a compound rate that reflects increasing penetration in Tier-2 cities and Tier-3 cities — and Eros Now, with its freemium AVOD model, is particularly well-positioned to capture this audience segment because free access removes the subscription barrier that limits SVOD platforms.

Demographically, the Eros Now audience skews toward the 18-to-44 age bracket, with a particularly strong concentration in the 25-to-35 segment — which is the sweet spot for categories like FMCG, fashion, financial services, and consumer electronics. The gender split is roughly balanced, though the platform's Bollywood content library tends to attract a slightly higher female index compared to sports-heavy platforms; this is a nuance that matters for brands in categories like personal care, jewellery, and lifestyle. Mobile is the dominant viewing device, accounting for the majority of streaming sessions, though smart TV viewing has been growing as connected TV penetration increases in Indian households — a trend that the GroupM TYNY Report has flagged as one of the structural shifts reshaping the OTT advertising landscape.

One dimension of the Eros Now audience that is genuinely underappreciated by Indian advertisers is the diaspora segment — the platform has a significant user base among the Indian diaspora in the UAE, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which makes it a rare opportunity for brands that want to reach NRI audiences at scale. For categories like gold jewellery, real estate in Indian cities, and financial remittance services, the ability to target Bollywood-affinity audiences outside India through a single ad campaign is a capability that very few digital advertising platforms offer in a contextually relevant environment.

How to Book and Launch an Ad Campaign on Eros Now

The booking process for Eros Now advertising has two primary routes, and the right choice depends on your budget, your targeting requirements, and how much control you want over the campaign setup. The direct route involves contacting the Eros Digital sales team — which can be reached through the platform's official advertising inquiry page — and working with an account manager to define your target audience, select your ad formats, agree on CPM or CPCV pricing, and submit your creative assets; this route gives you access to premium inventory, custom targeting packages, and the option of sponsored content integrations that are not available through programmatic channels. The managed campaign process typically takes five to seven business days from brief to launch, assuming creative assets are ready and meet the platform's technical specifications.

The programmatic route, which runs primarily through InMobi and can also be accessed via demand-side platforms like DV360 (Google Display and Video 360) and Amazon DSP, is faster to set up and offers more granular real-time bidding control over where and when your ads appear; this is the preferred route for performance-focused campaigns where the media buying team wants to optimise CPM and CPCV in real time based on campaign performance data. The trade-off is that programmatic buys on Eros Now may not always access the same premium placements — particularly homepage takeovers and branded content integrations — that are reserved for direct-sold inventory. At SmartAds, our media buying team uses a hybrid approach for most campaigns: we secure the premium placements through a direct buy and use programmatic advertising to extend reach and frequency at a more efficient CPM, which gives clients the best of both worlds.

For brands that are new to OTT advertising India and are approaching Eros Now for the first time, the onboarding process is relatively straightforward — you will need to provide your brand category, campaign objective, target geography, and a brief on your audience; the Eros Digital team or your programmatic DSP will then generate a media plan with projected impressions, reach, and cost estimates. One practical tip from our experience: submit your creative assets at least three to four business days before the campaign launch date, because the platform's ad operations team needs time to review and traffic the ads, and last-minute submissions are the most common cause of delayed campaign launches.

Eros Now AVOD vs SVOD: What Advertisers Need to Know

The distinction between AVOD and SVOD on Eros Now is not just a pricing model question — it is a fundamental audience segmentation question that should shape how you think about the platform's value for your brand. The SVOD tier, which is the paid subscription model, gives users an ad-free viewing experience; this means that SVOD subscribers are, by definition, not accessible to advertisers through standard ad inventory. The AVOD tier, which is the free, ad-supported model, is where all the advertising inventory lives — and this audience is, in many ways, more commercially interesting than the paid subscriber base because it is larger, more price-sensitive, and more likely to be in the active consideration phase for the categories that most advertisers are targeting.

What we have found in our campaigns is that the AVOD audience on Eros Now tends to be younger and more geographically distributed than the SVOD subscriber base, which skews toward urban, higher-income households that have already made the decision to pay for entertainment. The AVOD audience, which is accessing premium Bollywood content for free in exchange for watching ads, is a genuinely captive viewing audience — they have made an implicit exchange, and the ad completion rates reflect that; on non-skippable pre-roll formats, we have seen completion rates consistently above 85 percent, which is significantly higher than what most brands achieve on social media video placements. This is the core argument for Eros Now advertising as part of a digital advertising mix: the viewing context creates a level of attention that ad-supported social platforms simply cannot replicate.

The freemium model that Eros Now operates — where a portion of the content library is free with ads and premium content requires a subscription — also creates an interesting middle ground where some users are on the AVOD tier not because they cannot afford a subscription but because they prefer the flexibility of free access; this segment is often more engaged with the content than purely cost-driven free users, which has positive implications for ad receptivity. The FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report has consistently highlighted AVOD as the fastest-growing revenue segment within the Indian OTT market, which signals that the ad inventory supply on platforms like Eros Now is expanding even as the overall streaming audience grows.

Programmatic Advertising on Eros Now via InMobi

The InMobi partnership is one of the more strategically important but least-discussed aspects of Eros Now advertising from an advertiser's perspective, and it is worth spending some time on it. InMobi, which is one of India's most significant mobile advertising technology companies, serves as a key programmatic advertising partner for Eros Now — meaning that a portion of the platform's AVOD ad inventory is made available through the InMobi exchange, which can be accessed by advertisers using DSPs that have InMobi integrated as a supply-side partner. This opens up Eros Now inventory to a much broader set of advertisers than those who have a direct relationship with the Eros Digital sales team, which is particularly valuable for mid-market brands and performance advertisers who are running always-on digital campaigns across multiple publishers.

Through the InMobi exchange, advertisers can access Eros Now ad inventory using real-time bidding, which means the CPM you pay is determined by auction dynamics rather than a fixed rate card; in a competitive auction environment, this can work in your favour if you are targeting a niche audience segment that other bidders are not competing for, or it can drive CPM upward if you are going after a high-demand audience like urban 25-34-year-olds in Mumbai during a major film release window. The behavioral targeting capabilities available through InMobi's data layer add another dimension to what is possible on Eros Now — beyond the platform's own first-party audience data, InMobi brings mobile behavioral signals from across its publisher network, which allows advertisers to layer in audience attributes like app usage patterns, purchase intent signals, and content consumption history.

One automotive brand we worked with used the InMobi programmatic route to run a connected TV campaign on Eros Now targeting smart TV households in six Tier-1 cities, with a behavioral targeting layer that identified users who had been researching vehicles online in the preceding thirty days; the campaign delivered a cost per completed view of roughly ₹1.10, which was meaningfully more efficient than what the same brand was achieving on other OTT advertising India placements, and the brand recall lift measured in a post-campaign survey was in the range of twelve percentage points — a result that justified a significant increase in the Eros Now allocation in the next campaign cycle.

Targeting Capabilities: Geo, Demo, and Behavioral Options

Audience targeting on Eros Now is more sophisticated than most advertisers expect from a platform of its size, and it is an area where the gap between what is theoretically possible and what most brands actually use is quite wide. Geo-targeting is the most straightforward capability — campaigns can be targeted at the national level for PAN India reach, or narrowed to specific states, cities, or even pin codes, which is particularly useful for regional product launches, retail brands with city-specific distribution, or service businesses that operate in defined geographies. Demographic targeting allows advertisers to define their audience by age, gender, and device type, which are the foundational parameters for most brand campaigns; these parameters are applied using a combination of Eros Now's own registration data and InMobi's mobile identity graph.

Behavioral targeting is where things get genuinely interesting — and where we have seen the most significant improvements in campaign performance for our clients. The platform's content consumption data is a rich signal: a user who regularly watches Tamil-language films is a demonstrably different audience than one who primarily streams Hindi romantic comedies, and those differences in content preference correlate with meaningful differences in purchase behaviour, household income, and lifestyle category. Regional language targeting is a capability that deserves specific mention here; brands targeting Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, or Maharashtra can activate language-specific audience segments that align their ad campaign with content that the audience is emotionally invested in — which is a fundamentally different proposition from generic demographic targeting.

On top of that, retargeting capabilities allow advertisers to re-engage users who have previously interacted with their ads or visited their website, which is a standard performance marketing tactic that works on Eros Now in much the same way it does on other digital advertising platforms. What we tell our clients is that the most effective targeting strategy on Eros Now combines a broad geo-demographic base with a behavioral content-affinity layer — for example, targeting women aged 22-38 in Maharashtra and Gujarat who have been watching romantic drama content in the past thirty days is a far more precise audience brief than simply targeting women in that age group, and the campaign performance data consistently bears this out.

Eros Now Advertising vs Disney+ Hotstar, Zee5, and SonyLIV

This is a comparison that comes up in virtually every media planning conversation we have about OTT advertising India, and the honest answer is that the platforms are not really competing for the same advertising budget — they serve different strategic roles in a well-constructed digital advertising plan. Disney+ Hotstar (now JioHotstar following the Reliance-Disney merger) is the dominant platform by both reach and ad revenue, with a CPM that reflects that dominance; for major national campaigns where reach at scale is the primary objective, particularly during cricket events like the IPL, Hotstar is genuinely in a different category. But that scale comes at a price — CPMs on Hotstar can run three to five times higher than what you would pay on Eros Now for a comparable audience, which means the cost-per-reach calculation often favours a multi-platform strategy over a Hotstar-only approach.

Zee5 and SonyLIV are more direct comparisons to Eros Now in terms of scale and pricing, and the differentiating factor is content affinity. Zee5's strength is in Zee Network's television content library and regional language originals, which makes it the stronger choice for advertisers targeting audiences with a strong regional television consumption habit; SonyLIV's content mix, which includes Sony's sports rights and its original series catalogue, skews toward a slightly more urban, premium audience. Eros Now's differentiator is its Bollywood content depth — the platform's film library is one of the most extensive in the Indian OTT market, which creates a specific audience affinity that is difficult to replicate on other streaming platforms. For categories like fashion, lifestyle, personal care, and entertainment marketing, the Bollywood content environment on Eros Now creates an ad context that is genuinely more relevant than a general entertainment platform.

MX Player, which operates a large-scale AVOD model similar to Eros Now, is perhaps the closest structural comparison — both platforms rely on ad-supported video-on-demand to monetise a free audience, and both compete for similar advertiser budgets. MX Player has a larger total user base, but Eros Now's audience has a higher content-affinity index for Bollywood and Indian entertainment, which translates into longer average session durations and higher ad completion rates for entertainment-adjacent brand categories. At SmartAds, our recommendation for most mid-market brands is to treat Eros Now as a complementary buy alongside one of the larger platforms rather than an either-or choice — the incremental reach it delivers at an efficient CPM makes it a logical addition to any OTT advertising India plan that has already covered the primary platforms.

Benefits of Advertising on Eros Now for Indian Brands

The case for Eros Now advertising is built on three pillars that we come back to consistently when advising clients: content affinity, cost efficiency, and audience quality. The content affinity argument is straightforward — when a user is watching a Bollywood film they have specifically chosen to stream, their emotional engagement with the content is high, and that emotional state is known to increase receptivity to advertising; this is not a theoretical claim but a well-documented finding in advertising psychology, which the platform's above-average ad completion rates reflect in practice. Brand recall on streaming platforms consistently outperforms brand recall on social media video placements in studies referenced by the BARC viewership data and TAM AdEx reports, which track advertising effectiveness across Indian media channels.

The cost efficiency argument is particularly compelling for brands that have been priced out of the premium OTT platforms or that are looking to extend their digital advertising reach without proportionally increasing their ad spend. The CPM on Eros Now, which works out to roughly a third to half of what the largest OTT platforms charge for comparable inventory, means that a given budget goes significantly further in terms of total impressions and reach — and when you layer in the higher ad completion rates that the platform delivers, the cost per completed view becomes genuinely competitive with any digital advertising channel available in India. A retail client in Pune that we worked with ran a three-week Eros Now advertising campaign for a festive season promotion with a budget of ₹4 lakh; the campaign delivered over 1.8 million completed video views, which worked out to a CPCV of approximately ₹2.20 — a number that compared favourably against the ₹4.50 to ₹6.00 CPCV they were achieving on other OTT advertising India placements at the same time.

On top of that, the growing connected TV audience on Eros Now represents a premium inventory opportunity that is still relatively underpriced compared to CTV advertising on larger platforms; brands in categories like home appliances, automobiles, and financial services, which benefit from the large-screen viewing context, can access this inventory at CPM rates that are meaningfully lower than what the same placement would cost on a platform with higher CTV demand. The combination of mobile reach, smart TV presence, and a deeply engaged Bollywood content audience makes Eros Now a more versatile advertising platform than it is typically given credit for.

Branded Content and Sponsored Integration Opportunities

Beyond standard ad formats, Eros Now offers branded content and sponsored integration opportunities that allow advertisers to embed their brand within the platform's content environment in a more organic way — and this is an area where, frankly speaking, most brands are not yet taking full advantage of what is available. Sponsored content integrations can take several forms: a brand can sponsor a specific film or series on the platform, with its logo appearing on the content page and in pre-roll bumpers; a brand can commission a branded content short film or web series produced in association with Eros Digital, which is then distributed on the platform as native content; or a brand can integrate its product into an original production through a product placement arrangement negotiated with the Eros Digital content team.

The economics of branded content on Eros Now are structured differently from standard ad inventory — rather than paying a CPM for impressions, the brand is typically paying a sponsorship fee for exclusivity and association with a specific piece of content, which means the ROI calculation is based on total views of the sponsored content rather than individual ad impressions. We have seen this model work particularly well for brands in the lifestyle, fashion, and personal care categories, where the association with aspirational Bollywood content creates a brand positioning benefit that goes beyond what a thirty-second pre-roll ad can deliver. One FMCG brand we worked with sponsored a short film series on Eros Now that generated over 2.5 million organic views over six weeks, with a cost per view that was significantly lower than what a comparable paid video advertising campaign would have cost — and the brand integration within the content created a level of brand recall that standard video ads rarely achieve.

Sponsored content on Eros Now also has the advantage of longevity — a sponsored film or series remains on the platform and continues to accumulate views long after the sponsorship period ends, which means the brand gets ongoing exposure without ongoing ad spend. This is a meaningful difference from standard digital advertising, where the impressions stop the moment the campaign budget is exhausted; for brands that are thinking about long-term brand building rather than short-term performance metrics, the sponsored content model on Eros Now deserves serious consideration as part of the media planning process.

How to Measure ROI and Track Campaign Performance on Eros Now

Campaign performance measurement on Eros Now follows the standard OTT advertising India metrics framework, but the specific benchmarks and the tools available for tracking them are worth understanding in detail before you launch. The primary metrics that Eros Digital reports for video ad campaigns are impressions delivered, ad completion rate, cost per completed view, and click-through rate for campaigns with a performance objective; these are reported through a campaign dashboard that is accessible to advertisers and their agencies, and the data is updated on a near-real-time basis during the campaign. For programmatic campaigns running through InMobi, the reporting is available through the DSP interface, which typically offers more granular breakdowns by device, geography, and time of day — analytics that are genuinely useful for optimising the campaign mid-flight.

Brand lift measurement is available for larger campaigns — typically those with a minimum ad spend that justifies the incremental cost of a survey-based study — and involves a pre-and-post survey methodology that measures changes in brand awareness, brand recall, and purchase intent among exposed versus unexposed audience segments. We have run brand lift studies on Eros Now campaigns for clients in the financial services and consumer durables categories, and the results have consistently shown brand recall lifts in the range of eight to fifteen percentage points for non-skippable pre-roll campaigns with sufficient frequency; these are numbers that compare well against industry benchmarks published in the FICCI-EY Media Report for OTT advertising effectiveness. The viewability standards applied to Eros Now inventory follow the IAB and MRC guidelines, which require that at least fifty percent of the ad is visible for at least two seconds for an impression to be counted — a threshold that is met at a higher rate on streaming platforms than on social media or display networks, because the full-screen video environment inherently maximises viewability.

The thing is, the brands that get the most meaningful ROI data from their Eros Now advertising campaigns are those that connect their campaign performance data to downstream business metrics — website traffic, app downloads, store visits, or sales lift — rather than treating impressions and completion rates as the end point of the measurement conversation. At SmartAds, our media planning team works with clients to set up attribution frameworks before the campaign launches, so that the connection between ad exposure and business outcome is measurable rather than assumed; this is the difference between a campaign that generates a report and a campaign that generates a decision.

Frequently Asked Questions About Eros Now Advertising

Q: How much does it cost to advertise on Eros Now in India?

The cost of Eros Now advertising depends on the ad format, targeting parameters, and whether you are buying directly or through programmatic channels. For standard pre-roll video ads on the mobile AVOD tier, the CPM works out to roughly ₹200 to ₹350 per thousand impressions for a direct buy, with non-skippable formats commanding a premium that pushes the CPM toward the ₹350 to ₹450 range. CTV advertising on Eros Now sits higher, in the ballpark of ₹500 to ₹800 CPM, reflecting the premium of the large-screen environment. If you prefer a CPCV model, rates typically land somewhere between ₹0.80 and ₹1.50 per completed view depending on ad length and targeting. The minimum campaign budget for a managed direct buy is generally in the range of ₹3 to ₹5 lakh, though programmatic campaigns through InMobi can be initiated at lower thresholds — sometimes ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh for a test run. These are indicative benchmarks based on our campaign experience; actual rates will vary based on demand, seasonality, and the specific inventory package negotiated.

Q: What ad formats are available on Eros Now for brands?

Eros Now supports a range of ad formats across its AVOD inventory. Pre-roll ads — both skippable and non-skippable — are the primary video format and are available in fifteen-second and thirty-second durations. Mid-roll ads are placed at natural break points within longer content like films and series. Banner ads and overlay ads provide display-format options for brands that want to complement their video campaign with persistent visual presence. In-app advertising placements are available within the mobile application, and CTV advertising placements are available for smart TV viewers. For larger campaigns, sponsored content integrations and branded content co-productions are available through a direct arrangement with the Eros Digital content and sales teams.

Q: How do I book an advertisement on Eros Now?

There are two primary booking routes. The direct route involves contacting the Eros Digital advertising sales team through the platform's official inquiry process; this is the appropriate route for managed campaigns, sponsored content, and any campaign that requires custom targeting or premium placement. The programmatic route, available through InMobi and DSPs like DV360 and Amazon DSP, is better suited for performance campaigns, real-time bidding, and advertisers who want granular control over CPM optimisation. For brands that are new to the platform, working with a media buying agency that has an existing relationship with Eros Digital — and with the programmatic supply chain — will typically result in better inventory access, more competitive rates, and a smoother onboarding process.

Q: What is the audience size and demographics of Eros Now in India?

Eros Now has a registered user base in the tens of millions across India, with the AVOD tier representing the largest and most advertiser-accessible segment. The audience skews toward the 18-to-44 age bracket, with a strong concentration in the 25-to-35 segment; the gender split is roughly balanced, with a slight female index driven by the platform's Bollywood romantic drama content. Geographically, the audience is pan-India with strong representation in Hindi-speaking markets — Maharashtra, UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and the NCR — as well as meaningful reach in Tier-2 cities and Tier-3 cities where the AVOD model removes the subscription barrier. The platform also has a significant diaspora audience in the UAE, UK, and USA, which is a targeting opportunity that is unique to Eros Now among Indian OTT platforms.

Q: Can I run programmatic ads on Eros Now?

Yes — Eros Now's AVOD inventory is accessible programmatically through the InMobi exchange, and this inventory can be reached via DSPs including DV360 and Amazon DSP that have InMobi integrated as a supply partner. Programmatic advertising on Eros Now enables real-time bidding, which gives advertisers dynamic control over CPM and the ability to optimise campaign performance mid-flight based on analytics. The programmatic route also allows advertisers to layer in third-party audience data from InMobi's mobile identity graph, which extends the targeting capabilities beyond what Eros Now's own first-party data can deliver. For performance-focused campaigns, the programmatic route is generally more efficient; for brand campaigns that require premium placements or sponsored content, a direct buy is the more appropriate approach.

Q: What is the difference between AVOD and SVOD advertising on Eros Now?

SVOD — the paid subscription tier — is ad-free, which means it is not accessible to advertisers through standard inventory. All advertising on Eros Now runs against the AVOD tier, which is the free, ad-supported segment of the platform. The AVOD audience is generally larger than the SVOD subscriber base and is particularly strong in Tier-2 and Tier-3 city markets where the subscription model has lower penetration. The AVOD model creates an implicit value exchange — users receive free access to Bollywood content in exchange for watching ads — which contributes to the higher ad completion rates that the platform delivers compared to interruptive advertising formats on social media.

Q: How does Eros Now advertising compare to Hotstar or Zee5?

Eros Now advertising is most competitive on cost efficiency and Bollywood content affinity; Disney+ Hotstar (Jio