India witnesses shifting audience preferences

India is emerging as a hybrid video entertainment economy where audience preferences are increasingly shaping content formats, business models and distribution strategies.

As consumer attention fragments across screens and platforms, entertainment companies are moving beyond the traditional subscription-versus-advertising debate to embrace a mix of subscriptions, advertising, commerce and transactional revenues, industry executives said.The shift marks a departure from models that rely predominantly on either subscriptions or advertising.

Instead, India is developing a multi-format, multi-screen ecosystem spanning premium long-form content, creator-led videos and emerging micro-dramas, distributed across television, connected TVs, snd mobile devices.Also read: Critical Stage: India's concert boom has a venue problemAshish Pherwani, leader for the Media & Entertainment sector at EY India, said the pace of change in the industry is being driven by shifting audience behaviour powered by technological disruption."Audiences have democratised the M&E sector.

They are deciding the content formats, monetisation models and screens on which they want to consume, when they want to consume and how they want to consume," he said.The transformation is visible across the video entertainment value chain.

Business models are expanding beyond advertising and subscriptions to include commerce and transaction-led revenues.Content formats are evolving from professionally produced long-form programming to short-form creator content and micro-dramas, while distribution is becoming increasingly digital through connected TVs, IPTV and broadband, even as mobile remains the dominant screen.The convergence of content, commerce and technology is increasingly shaping industry strategy for companies such as JioStar, Prime Video and YouTube.YouTube, India's largest video aggregation platform across mobile and connected TV, is positioning itself as a prime-time destination that combines creator-led content with premium entertainment.Also read: JioStar sees AI, commerce and interactivity shaping entertainment's future"YouTube has collapsed the distance between different video formats and entertainment ecosystems, bringing them all onto India's largest screen," said Gunjan Soni, managing director of YouTube India.While on-demand viewing continues to fragment audiences across platforms, live sports remain one of the few content categories capable of aggregating audiences at scale."Content supply across traditional and social media is infinite, and there are very few properties that can aggregate audiences at the scale that live sports can," said Ishan Chatterjee, chief executive of sports at JioStar.JioStar's sports business continues to expand.

The company said IPL 2026 crossed 1.2 billion viewers, while JioHotstar recorded a peak global digital concurrency of 72.5 million viewers for the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026 final.The record audiences for IPL and ICC events underscore how rare large-scale audience aggregation has become outside marquee properties.As a result, entertainment companies are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence, personalisation and interactivity to deepen engagement and unlock new revenue streams.Kevin Vaz, chief executive of entertainment at JioStar, said the company increasingly views itself as a technology-led entertainment business.

"Storytelling will always be at the core of everything that we do.

It drives engagement, fandom and cultural impact," he said.Streaming platforms are also broadening their monetisation strategies.

Prime Video, long positioned as a subscription-led service, is seeking greater scale in India by combining its advertising-supported and subscription businesses following the integration of Amazon MX Player with Prime Video."In India, we are broadening our offering on Prime Video, including AVOD alongside our existing SVOD, TVOD and add-on subscription offerings," said Gaurav Gandhi, vice president, APAC and ANZ, Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. ...