India Media Sector: Money follows eyeballs: What are the latest trends in streaming/advertising in India?

Research evidence excerpt

India Media Sector: Money follows eyeballs: What are the latest trends in streaming/advertising in India?

Powered by Lab Global24 JuneResearch2026ab Evidence UBS YES

India Media Sector Equities

IndiaMoney follows eyeballs: What are the latest

trends in streaming/advertising in India? Media

Aditya Chandrasekar

Analyst

aditya.chandrasekar@ubs.com

Average weekly TV ad insertions down 4% MoM in May'26 +91-22-6155 6056

Data from BARC shows the average weekly TV ad insertions by the top 10 advertisers Navin Killa

were down 4% MoM in May'26 (down 8% YoY, vs +8% YoY in Apr'26). The average Analyst

weekly ad insertions are 27% below peak levels of the past 2.5-3 years in May'23, navin.killa@ubs.com

showing a continued decline during this period. Refer Figure 2AverageweklyTVadinsertionsbytop10advertisersdecreased7%MoMinAug'25(-10%YoY)AverageweklyTVadinsertionsbytop10advertisersincreased4%MoMinJune'25(-5%YoY +852-2971 7594

Heenal Gada

JioHotstar dominates across the board Associate Analyst

App usage (top OTTs): UBS Evidence Lab data on app usage shows JioHotstar heenal.gada@ubs.com

retaining its dominant market share, with MAU share down 50bps MoM to 54% +91-22-6155 6076

in May'26. MAU share of MX Player (10%), Zee (4%) and JioTV (2%) remained

largely stable (Figure 4JioHotstar'sMAUsharewasflatMoMat52%inAug'25). Zee5 (4%) and SonyLiv's (3%) were also stable in May'26.

Download share: JioHotstar witnessed a 10pp MoM decrease in download share

to 46%, while MX player, JioTV and SonyLiv saw 1-2pp MoM increase to 11%, 6%

and 4% respectively. Others witnessed a 7pp MoM increase to 33% (Figure 5JioHotstar'sdownloadshareincreasedby5pinAug'25).

Time spent: Share for JioHotstar decreased MoM to 75% in May'26, a 3pp

downtick. Share of MX Player increased 1pp MoM to 8%.