Viu Advertising in India: Everything You Need to Know About Running Video Ad Campaigns on the Viu OTT App

Fewer OTT platforms in India have built as loyal and as demographically specific an audience as Viu has — and yet, most media planners still underestimate it when drawing up their digital campaign mix. The platform's freemium model, which keeps a large chunk of its user base on the ad-supported tier, creates a genuinely captive environment for video advertising that rivals far larger platforms on pure engagement metrics. What we have found, after running campaigns across multiple OTT platforms for clients in categories ranging from FMCG to automotive, is that Viu advertising consistently punches above its weight when the target audience skews young, urban, and entertainment-hungry.

What Is Viu Advertising and How Does It Work in India?

Viu is an OTT streaming platform originally launched by PCCW Media Group through its Vuclip subsidiary, and it built its Indian footprint on a content strategy that was, frankly speaking, quite unusual for the market — a heavy investment in Korean dramas, pan-Asian content, and Viu Originals that catered to a younger, cosmopolitan audience. The platform operates on what the industry calls an AVOD model — Advertising Video on Demand — which means the majority of its content is available for free to users who are willing to watch ads. This is the structural foundation that makes Viu advertising so interesting for brands: unlike SVOD platforms where the subscriber has paid to avoid ads, Viu's free-tier users have essentially agreed to the exchange of attention for content, which creates a more receptive advertising environment than most media planners expect.

To be fair, there is a question that comes up in almost every briefing we handle at SmartAds — is Viu still operational in India? The answer requires some context. Viu did scale back its direct-to-consumer operations in India around 2021, shifting its strategic focus toward Southeast Asian markets where it holds a stronger position; however, its advertising inventory in India has remained accessible through programmatic advertising channels and through media buying partnerships. Brands looking to advertise on Viu in India today typically do so through programmatic DSP integrations or via media agencies with direct inventory relationships, rather than through a standalone Indian brand portal. This distinction matters enormously when you are planning a digital campaign, because it affects both the booking process and the rate structures you will encounter.

The AVOD model that Viu operates on is particularly well-suited to brand awareness campaigns, because the ad impressions are delivered within a content experience that the user has actively chosen — a Korean drama episode, a Viu Originals series, or a curated entertainment block — which means the viewer is in a lean-back, high-attention state when your ad appears. What a lot of people miss is that this contextual quality of attention is fundamentally different from the scroll-interrupted ad experience on social platforms, and it is one of the primary reasons why brand recall scores on OTT advertising tend to run higher than on display or social formats.

What Ad Formats Are Available on the Viu App?

The range of Viu ad formats available to advertisers covers most of what you would expect from a mature OTT platform, but the execution details are worth understanding before you brief your creative team. Pre-roll ads are the most common entry point — these are video ads that play before the main content begins, and they are available in both skippable and non-skippable versions; the non-skippable format, which typically runs between 15 and 30 seconds, commands a premium CPM because it guarantees full delivery of the ad message. Mid-roll ads, which appear during natural content breaks in longer episodes, tend to perform particularly well on Viu because the platform's long-form video content — Korean drama episodes often run 45 to 60 minutes — creates multiple natural ad insertion points that do not feel intrusive to the viewer.

Viu banner ads represent a separate inventory category, which sits alongside the video advertising formats and serves a different strategic purpose. These are display units that appear on the app's home screen, content discovery pages, and within the player interface; they are typically bought on a CPM or CPC basis and work best as a complementary layer to a video campaign rather than as a standalone brand awareness vehicle. The platform also supports interactive ads — a format that we have seen generate significantly higher ad engagement rates than standard video units, particularly for categories like consumer electronics and beauty, where the ability to tap through to a product page or a brand microsite within the ad experience creates a meaningful conversion pathway. Bumper ads, which are six-second non-skippable units, round out the video advertising inventory and are well-suited to retargeting use cases or to reinforcing a brand message that has already been established through a longer pre-roll or mid-roll campaign.

At SmartAds, we always tell our clients that the format selection decision should be driven by the campaign objective before the budget conversation begins. A brand awareness campaign for a new product launch in Mumbai and Delhi will almost always benefit most from non-skippable pre-roll ads combined with home-screen banner placements; a performance-oriented campaign aimed at driving app downloads or website visits will typically get better ROI from skippable pre-roll formats bought on a CPV or CPCV basis, because you are only paying for users who have demonstrated intent by watching through. The creative specifications for Viu video ads generally require MP4 or MOV format files, with a recommended resolution of 1920x1080 for landscape video; banner ads typically follow standard IAB dimensions, and the platform supports aspect ratios of 16:9 for video units, with file size limits that vary by format but generally sit in the range of 50MB to 200MB for video assets.

How Much Does Viu Advertising Cost in India? (CPM, CPC, and CPV Rates)

Viu advertising rates in India are not published on a public rate card the way print or radio might be, which is one of the reasons there is so much confusion in the market about what campaigns actually cost. From our experience managing OTT advertising campaigns across multiple streaming platforms, the CPM for Viu video advertising in India works out to somewhere in the ballpark of ₹200 to ₹400 for standard pre-roll inventory, which is a number that surprises many clients when they compare it to what they are paying for YouTube pre-roll at similar targeting parameters. Non-skippable pre-roll ads, which guarantee full message delivery, command a premium over skippable formats — the cost per mille for non-skippable units typically runs roughly 30 to 50 percent higher than the equivalent skippable format, reflecting the guaranteed attention value.

For Viu banner ads, the CPM tends to be meaningfully lower than video — typically in the range of ₹80 to ₹150 depending on placement and targeting — which makes display units an efficient way to extend reach within a given budget envelope without exhausting the video inventory. CPC pricing, which is available for certain interactive ad formats and banner placements, generally works out to somewhere between ₹5 and ₹20 per click depending on the category and the targeting precision applied; highly competitive categories like financial services and e-commerce tend to sit at the higher end of that range. CPV pricing for skippable video formats — where you pay only when a user watches a defined portion of the ad, typically 30 seconds or the full duration if shorter — tends to run in the ballpark of ₹0.30 to ₹0.80 per view, which compares favourably to YouTube CPV benchmarks in the same audience segments.

CPCV, or cost per completed view, is a pricing model that we recommend to clients who are running longer-form video ads and want to ensure accountability for full message delivery; on Viu, CPCV rates typically work out to roughly ₹1.00 to ₹2.50 per completed view, which sounds higher on a per-unit basis but often delivers better overall campaign efficiency because you are not paying for the 40 to 60 percent of impressions where users skip before the message lands. The minimum campaign budget to advertise on Viu in India varies depending on the booking channel — programmatic buys through DSP integrations can sometimes be initiated with budgets as low as ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh, while direct or managed campaigns typically require a minimum commitment in the range of ₹3 to ₹5 lakh to justify the setup and management overhead. These are indicative benchmarks, and actual Viu advertising cost will vary based on targeting complexity, campaign duration, format mix, and market conditions at the time of booking.

How Do You Book a Viu Ad Campaign in India?

The campaign booking process for Viu advertising in India is one area where the market has evolved significantly since the platform's early years, and understanding the current landscape will save you a considerable amount of time and budget. Because Viu's direct India operations have been restructured, the most reliable route to booking Viu app advertising today is through a media agency with established OTT inventory relationships or through programmatic advertising platforms that include Viu in their publisher network. At SmartAds, we access Viu inventory through both programmatic DSP channels and through direct publisher relationships, which gives us the flexibility to structure campaigns either as open-market buys or as more controlled, brand-safe placements depending on the client's requirements.

The practical steps for campaign booking begin with a media brief that defines the target audience, the campaign objective, the geographic focus — whether that is a national campaign or a city-specific push in markets like Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Pune — and the budget envelope. From that brief, the media plan is constructed to specify the format mix, the pricing model (CPM, CPC, CPV, or CPCV), the flight dates, and the frequency caps that will prevent ad fatigue. Creative assets then need to be prepared to the platform's technical specifications and submitted for approval before the campaign goes live; this approval process typically takes two to five business days, which is a timeline that clients frequently underestimate when they are working to a tight launch deadline.

One thing we have seen backfire when brands try to manage Viu app advertising independently is the assumption that the booking process mirrors what they are used to on self-serve platforms like Meta or Google. Viu's inventory management, particularly for premium placements like home-screen takeovers or first-in-pod pre-roll positions, requires negotiation and advance booking — sometimes four to six weeks ahead of the desired campaign start date for high-demand periods like festive season or major sports events. Working with a media agency that has an established relationship with the platform's inventory team is genuinely the difference between securing the placements you want and being left with remnant inventory that delivers reach but not the contextual quality you were planning for.

What Audience Targeting Options Does Viu Offer?

The audience targeting capabilities on Viu are, in our experience, more sophisticated than most advertisers assume when they first encounter the platform. The foundational targeting layer is demographic — age, gender, and device type — which allows advertisers to align their campaigns with the platform's core user base of millennials India-wide, particularly in the 18 to 35 age bracket that dominates Viu's registered user base. Geographic targeting is available at the city level, which means you can run a campaign that is specific to metro cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore without paying for impressions in markets where your brand has no distribution or no strategic priority; this city-level precision is particularly valuable for regional product launches or for brands that are building market-by-market.

Beyond demographics and geography, Viu supports interest-based and content-affinity targeting, which allows brands to align their ad impressions with specific content categories — Korean drama viewers, for instance, represent a distinct psychographic segment that over-indexes for certain product categories including beauty, skincare, fashion, and consumer electronics. The platform also supports what is sometimes called scene targeting or contextual targeting, where ad placements are matched to the emotional or thematic context of the content being watched; a travel brand placing mid-roll ads within travel-adjacent content, or a food delivery brand placing pre-roll ads before cooking or lifestyle content, benefits from a contextual relevance that standard demographic targeting cannot replicate. Machine learning targeting, which uses behavioural signals from the user's content consumption history to predict receptivity to specific ad categories, is available through programmatic buying channels and represents the most precise — and typically the most cost-efficient — targeting approach available on the platform.

At SmartAds, we have found that the most effective Viu advertising campaigns use a layered targeting approach: broad demographic and geographic parameters define the universe, content affinity targeting narrows to the most relevant subset of that universe, and frequency capping ensures that the same user is not seeing the same ad more than three to four times per week — a threshold beyond which our campaign data consistently shows a drop in ad engagement and an increase in negative sentiment signals. The platform's first-party data, which is derived from registered user profiles and viewing behaviour, is generally considered more reliable than third-party cookie-based targeting, which matters increasingly in a post-cookie digital advertising environment.

What Are the Benefits of Advertising on Viu's OTT Platform?

The case for Viu advertising rests on a few structural advantages that are easy to articulate but often underweighted in media planning decisions. The first is audience quality — Viu's user base in India skews heavily toward a digital-first audience of urban millennials who are difficult to reach efficiently through traditional television, and who are increasingly ad-blind on social platforms where the content feed is saturated with branded content. The second advantage is the content environment: long-form video content, particularly Korean drama and Viu Originals, creates a high-attention viewing session that is fundamentally different from the fragmented, multi-tab browsing behaviour that characterises most digital advertising contexts. Brand recall studies consistently show that OTT advertising in a lean-back content environment outperforms equivalent digital advertising in social or display contexts on unaided recall metrics.

The AVOD model that underpins Viu's business is a genuine structural benefit for advertisers, because it means the platform is economically incentivised to maintain a healthy, engaged free-tier user base — which is the inventory that advertisers are buying. Unlike platforms that have moved aggressively toward subscription models and treat advertising as a secondary revenue stream, Viu's freemium model treats advertising as a core business pillar, which translates into better inventory quality, more consistent ad product development, and a more collaborative relationship with the advertising community. On top of that, the viewability standards on OTT platforms are generally higher than on desktop or mobile web display, because the full-screen video environment eliminates the below-the-fold and tab-inactive impression problems that plague programmatic display advertising.

We worked with a consumer electronics brand that was launching a new product line targeting young urban professionals — the brief was to build brand awareness in the 22 to 32 age bracket across Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore within a six-week window. The campaign used non-skippable pre-roll ads on Viu combined with home-screen banner placements, and the brand recall lift measured at the end of the campaign was in the range of 18 to 22 percentage points above the control group — a result that was materially better than the parallel campaign running on social video platforms with the same creative assets and a comparable budget. The difference, as best we could determine, was the quality of attention in the OTT viewing environment versus the scroll-interrupted social context.

How Does Viu Advertising Compare to Other OTT Platforms Like JioHotstar and ZEE5?

This is the question that comes up in almost every media planning conversation, and the honest answer is that Viu occupies a distinct niche within the Indian OTT advertising ecosystem rather than being a direct substitute for larger platforms. JioHotstar, which commands the largest OTT advertising audience in India by a significant margin — particularly during cricket season, when its live sports inventory becomes one of the most valuable ad placements in the entire Indian media market — operates at a scale and a CPM premium that puts it in a different budget tier from Viu. A 30-second pre-roll on JioHotstar during a marquee cricket match can command a CPM that is three to five times higher than equivalent Viu inventory, which reflects the scale difference but also means the cost per quality impression is not always proportionally better.

ZEE5 and SonyLIV sit closer to Viu in terms of scale and CPM benchmarks, though both have larger active user bases in India and broader content libraries. ZEE5's strength is in regional language content, which makes it the preferred OTT advertising platform for brands targeting specific linguistic communities in markets like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, or West Bengal; SonyLIV's inventory is bolstered by its sports rights, particularly cricket, which creates premium ad inventory periods that drive up average CPMs across the platform. Viu's differentiated positioning — Korean drama, pan-Asian content, and a specific millennial demographic — means it is often most valuable as a complementary platform within a broader OTT advertising mix rather than as the primary volume platform. Voot, which focuses on youth-oriented content and reality programming, is probably the closest competitive analogue to Viu in terms of audience profile, though the content genres are quite different.

What we tell our clients at SmartAds is that the platform comparison question is best answered by starting with the audience, not the platform. If your target is urban millennials aged 18 to 35 who over-index for Korean drama and pan-Asian entertainment — a segment that is surprisingly large and commercially valuable in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune — then Viu advertising delivers a contextual precision that no other Indian OTT platform can replicate for that specific audience. The CPM may be comparable to ZEE5 or Voot, but the content-audience alignment creates a qualitative advantage that shows up in engagement and brand recall metrics. For a campaign that needs raw scale above all else, JioHotstar is the default answer; for a campaign that needs audience precision and content contextual alignment, Viu earns its place in the media plan.

Is Viu Advertising Brand Safe for Advertisers in India?

Brand safety is a concern that has moved from a secondary consideration to a primary one for most serious advertisers over the past few years, and OTT platforms generally — and Viu specifically — have a structural advantage over open-web programmatic advertising in this regard. The content on Viu is curated and professionally produced: Korean dramas, Viu Originals, and licensed entertainment content from established studios represent a fundamentally different brand safety environment from the user-generated content landscape on YouTube or the algorithmically assembled feed on social platforms. There is no equivalent on Viu to the brand safety nightmare scenarios that have affected advertisers on open platforms — no extremist content, no misinformation, no user-generated material that could place a brand's ad adjacent to objectionable material.

The platform's content moderation and curation standards are consistent with what you would expect from a professionally managed streaming platform backed by PCCW Media Group, which has operated in regulated broadcasting markets across Asia and maintains content standards that align with advertiser expectations. For categories that are particularly sensitive about brand environment — financial services, healthcare, children's products, luxury goods — the curated content environment of Viu advertising represents a meaningful risk reduction compared to open-market programmatic advertising, and this brand safety premium is something that we factor into our recommendations when clients are weighing OTT against other digital channels.

One practical consideration worth noting is that programmatic advertising buys, which are the most common route to Viu inventory in the current market, do introduce some variability in placement context — even within a curated platform, a programmatic buy may not guarantee specific content adjacency. For clients where brand safety requirements are extremely precise, we recommend a managed or direct campaign approach that specifies content category whitelists; this typically adds a small premium to the effective CPM but provides the control and reporting transparency that brand safety-conscious advertisers require.

How Do You Measure the Performance of a Viu Ad Campaign?

Campaign measurement on Viu follows the standard OTT advertising metrics framework, but the specific combination of metrics that matter most will depend on the campaign objective, and we have seen a lot of campaigns where the measurement framework was not aligned with the objective from the outset — which makes post-campaign evaluation essentially meaningless. For brand awareness campaigns, the primary metrics are ad impressions, reach (unique users exposed to the campaign), frequency, and brand recall lift measured through post-campaign surveys; viewability is also tracked, and OTT advertising on Viu consistently delivers viewability rates in the range of 90 to 95 percent, which compares very favourably to the industry average for programmatic display advertising.

For performance-oriented campaigns, the measurement framework shifts toward engagement metrics — video completion rate (VCR), which measures the percentage of ad impressions where the user watched the full video; click-through rate (CTR) for interactive and banner formats; and downstream conversion metrics like app installs, website visits, or purchase events that can be attributed to the campaign through pixel tracking or attribution partners. CPCV campaigns are inherently self-measuring in terms of delivery accountability, since payment is only triggered on completed views; but even CPCV campaigns benefit from a fuller measurement framework that tracks what happens after the view, which requires integration with the brand's analytics infrastructure. The GroupM TYNY Report and the FICCI-EY Media Report both highlight OTT advertising measurement as an area of active development in the Indian market, with improving cross-platform attribution capabilities expected to make ROI measurement more precise over the next two to three years.

A retail client in Pune that we ran a Viu advertising campaign for — a mid-market fashion brand targeting women aged 20 to 32 — used a combination of brand recall surveys and UTM-tracked website traffic to measure campaign performance. The video completion rate on their 30-second non-skippable pre-roll campaign came in at around 94 percent, which was above the platform average; website traffic from the OTT advertising campaign showed a 28 percent uplift in the target demographic during the campaign flight period, and the cost per incremental website visit worked out to roughly ₹12, which was significantly more efficient than the parallel paid social campaign running against the same audience. That kind of cross-channel comparison is exactly the data that helps justify OTT advertising budget allocations in internal planning conversations.

Who Are the Target Audiences for Viu Advertising in India?

The Viu audience in India has a demographic profile that is unusually well-defined compared to most OTT platforms, which makes it particularly useful for advertisers who have a clear picture of their target consumer. The core user base skews toward millennials India-wide — specifically the 18 to 35 age bracket — with a meaningful concentration in metro cities and Tier 1 urban centres; Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune consistently represent the highest-density markets for Viu viewership in India, which aligns well with the geographic priorities of most national consumer brands. The gender split on Viu leans slightly female, which is directly connected to the platform's content positioning — Korean drama has a well-documented female-skew audience globally, and the Indian viewing pattern mirrors this trend.

Device-wise, the Viu app audience in India is overwhelmingly mobile-first, with smartphone viewing accounting for the large majority of total viewing time; connected TV (CTV) viewing is growing on the platform, particularly in higher-income households in metro cities, and CTV advertising on Viu commands a CPM premium over mobile inventory — typically in the range of ₹350 to ₹600 per thousand impressions — because the larger screen format and the lean-back viewing environment deliver a qualitatively superior ad experience. The digital-first audience profile of Viu users means they are typically higher-educated, higher-income, and more brand-aware than the average Indian OTT viewer, which makes the platform particularly well-suited for categories like premium FMCG, beauty and personal care, consumer electronics, fashion, financial services, and travel.

What a lot of people miss about the Viu audience is the cultural specificity that Korean drama viewership creates. Users who are watching Korean drama content on Viu are not just consuming entertainment — they are part of a culturally engaged community that actively follows Korean beauty trends, Korean fashion aesthetics, and Korean lifestyle products; this creates a uniquely receptive audience for brands in the beauty and skincare category, and we have seen this play out in campaign performance data where beauty brands advertising on Viu against Korean drama content consistently outperform their category benchmarks on both engagement and conversion metrics.

What Is Viu's Dual-Revenue Model and Why Does It Matter for Advertisers?

Viu operates what is commonly described as a freemium model — or more precisely, a dual-revenue model that combines AVOD (free, ad-supported) and SVOD (paid, subscription) tiers within the same platform. The majority of Viu's content is available on the AVOD tier, which is free to users and monetised through advertising; a premium subscription tier (Viu Premium) removes ads and unlocks additional content, which is the SVOD component. For advertisers, the structural implication of this model is important: the free-tier user base, which is the audience available for advertising, is large and actively maintained because it is a core revenue stream for the platform — not an afterthought.

This is meaningfully different from the advertising model on platforms that have added ad-supported tiers as an afterthought after building primarily around subscription revenue. On those platforms, the ad-supported tier often gets inferior content, slower feature development, and a user experience that is subtly designed to nudge users toward the paid tier; the result is an ad-supported audience that is either price-sensitive or temporarily on the platform before converting to paid. Viu's freemium model, by contrast, treats the AVOD audience as a primary constituency, which means the content quality and user experience on the free tier is maintained at a level that keeps users engaged and returning — and that sustained engagement is what makes the advertising inventory genuinely valuable.

Frankly speaking, the AVOD model is having a moment in the Indian OTT market right now, and the FICCI-EY Media Report has noted the growing importance of ad-supported streaming tiers as a revenue driver for OTT platforms across the market. As subscription fatigue sets in among Indian consumers who are managing multiple OTT subscriptions simultaneously, the AVOD proposition — premium content for free, in exchange for watching ads — becomes increasingly attractive, which means the addressable audience for OTT advertising across platforms like Viu is likely to grow rather than contract over the medium term.

Can Small Businesses Advertise on Viu in India?

The honest answer is yes, but with some important caveats about how the campaign needs to be structured to be viable at smaller budget levels. The minimum budget threshold for a meaningful Viu advertising campaign in India — one that will generate enough ad impressions to produce measurable brand awareness impact — is roughly in the range of ₹1 to ₹3 lakh for a short-burst campaign, which puts it within reach of many small and medium businesses, particularly those in urban markets targeting the platform's core millennial demographic. Below that threshold, the reach generated is typically too limited to produce statistically meaningful brand awareness lift, though a very tightly geo-targeted campaign — a single city, a narrow demographic band — can sometimes deliver useful results at lower spend levels.

The more significant barrier for small businesses is not the minimum spend but the creative production requirement. Viu video ads require professionally produced video assets to meet the platform's technical specifications and to perform adequately in the high-quality content environment that Viu's audience is accustomed to; a low-production-quality ad placed before a Korean drama episode creates a jarring contrast that can actually damage brand perception rather than build it. At SmartAds, we have helped small business clients navigate this by recommending that a portion of the campaign budget be allocated to creative production — even a modest but professionally executed 15-second video ad will outperform a longer but poorly produced one in terms of both completion rate and brand recall.

One automotive accessories brand we worked with — a Bangalore-based company with a relatively modest digital advertising budget — ran a three-week Viu app advertising campaign targeting young male car enthusiasts in Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad, with a total budget of around ₹2.5 lakh including creative production. The campaign used 15-second non-skippable pre-roll ads placed against automotive and lifestyle content, and delivered roughly 8 to 9 lakh ad impressions over the campaign period; the cost per thousand impressions worked out to approximately ₹280, which was within the expected range for that format and targeting combination, and the brand reported a measurable increase in website enquiries from those three cities during the campaign flight. That kind of result is achievable for small businesses, but it requires the right format selection, realistic expectations about reach at that budget level, and a creative asset that is genuinely fit for the OTT environment.

Frequently Asked Questions About Viu Advertising in India

Q: Is Viu still available in India for advertisers?

Viu scaled back its direct-to-consumer brand presence in India around 2021, shifting its primary operational focus to Southeast Asian markets where it has a stronger competitive position; however, Viu's advertising inventory in India has remained accessible through programmatic advertising channels and through media agency partnerships that have direct relationships with the platform's inventory management. Brands looking to advertise on Viu in India today should work through a media agency or a DSP with confirmed Viu inventory access, rather than expecting to find a standalone Indian advertiser portal. The platform's content is still accessible to Indian users through the Viu app, and the registered user base — while smaller than at the platform's India peak — remains a commercially valuable, demographically specific audience for the right advertiser categories.

Q: How much does it cost to advertise on the Viu app in India?

Viu advertising cost in India varies by format, targeting parameters, and campaign duration, but as a general benchmark, pre-roll video advertising CPM rates run somewhere in the range of ₹200 to ₹400 for standard skippable formats, with non-skippable pre-roll commanding a premium of roughly 30 to 50 percent above that. Viu banner ads are more affordable on a CPM basis, typically running in the ₹80 to ₹150 range depending on placement. CPV pricing for skippable video formats works out to roughly ₹0.30 to ₹0.80 per view, while CPCV rates for completed views are typically in the ballpark of ₹1.00 to ₹2.50. Minimum campaign budgets for a meaningful campaign generally start around ₹1 to ₹3 lakh, with managed or direct campaigns typically requiring ₹3 to ₹5 lakh as a minimum commitment.

Q: What ad formats are available for Viu advertising in India?

The Viu ad formats available to Indian advertisers include pre-roll video ads (both skippable and non-skippable), mid-roll video ads for long-form content, bumper ads of six seconds, interactive video ads with clickable elements, and Viu banner ads in standard IAB display sizes. Video formats are available in 15-second, 30-second, and 60-second durations, with non-skippable formats capped at 30 seconds on most inventory. Connected TV advertising is also available through the Viu app on smart TV devices, with separate CPM benchmarks that reflect the premium screen environment.

Q: What is the minimum budget required to run a Viu ad campaign?

The practical minimum budget for a Viu advertising campaign that will generate meaningful reach and measurable brand awareness impact is roughly ₹1 to ₹3 lakh for a short-burst campaign of two to four weeks; programmatic buys can sometimes be initiated at lower thresholds, but below ₹1 lakh the reach generated is typically too limited to produce statistically significant results. For managed campaigns with dedicated account support and premium placement guarantees, the minimum commitment is typically in the range of ₹3 to ₹5 lakh. These figures are indicative and will vary based on targeting complexity, geographic scope, and market conditions.

Q: How do I book an ad campaign on the Viu app in India?

Campaign booking for Viu app advertising in India is most reliably done through a media agency with established OTT inventory relationships or through a programmatic DSP that includes Viu in its publisher network. The process involves submitting a media brief defining the target audience, campaign objective, geographic scope, budget, and flight dates; the agency or DSP then constructs the media plan, negotiates placement and pricing, and manages creative asset submission and approval. The creative approval process typically takes two to five business days, and premium placements should be booked four to six weeks in advance during high-demand periods.

Q: What targeting options does Viu offer for advertisers in India?

Viu offers demographic targeting (age, gender), geographic targeting at the city level, device targeting (mobile, tablet, connected TV), content affinity and contextual targeting aligned to specific content categories, and behavioural targeting based on viewing history. Machine learning targeting is available through programmatic channels, using first-party user data signals to optimise ad delivery toward users most likely to engage with a specific ad category. Frequency capping is also available to control the number of times a single user is exposed to a campaign within a defined time period.

Q: What is the difference between CPM, CPC, and CPV pricing on Viu?

CPM (cost per mille) pricing means you pay a fixed rate for every one thousand ad impressions delivered, regardless of whether users click or complete the video; this is the standard pricing model for brand awareness campaigns where reach and frequency are the primary objectives. CPC (cost per click) pricing means you pay only when a user clicks on the ad, which is typically used for interactive banner formats and performance-oriented campaigns where driving traffic to a website or app is the goal. CPV (cost per view) pricing means you pay when a user watches a defined portion of your video ad — typically 30 seconds or the full duration if shorter — which aligns spend with demonstrated viewing intent. CPCV (cost per completed view) is a more stringent version of CPV where payment is only triggered on full video completion, which provides the highest level of delivery accountability for video advertising campaigns.

Q: How does Viu advertising compare to advertising on JioHotstar or ZEE5?

JioHotstar operates at a significantly larger scale than Viu in India, with CPM rates that can be two to five times higher during premium inventory periods like live cricket; it is the default choice for campaigns that require maximum national reach. ZEE5 has a broader content library and stronger regional language content, making it better suited for regional campaigns. Viu's competitive advantage is its specific audience — urban millennials with a strong affinity for Korean drama and pan-Asian content — which makes it the most precise platform for reaching that demographic segment, often at a more efficient CPM than larger platforms. The