As brands prepare for India’s festive season in 2025, the media landscape is no longer about selecting mobile , CTV or DOOH, it’s about stage managing all three. The magic lies in convergence: a coordinated dance across screens of media to drive awareness, engagement and conversion. Here’s a glimpse into some of the inspiring marketers who are converging mobile, CTV and DOOH – and why this is more important than ever.
Why this trifecta matters more in 2025
1.The share of digital is growing rapidly: Digital media overtook traditional TV as the largest advertising spend category in India in FY24 (digital share rose from 36% to 41%, Ipsos).
2. CTV is growing rapidly: In 2024, CTV advertising spend in India grew by more than USD ₹1,500 crore, representing ~1.5% of total digital ad spend, and ~40% growth rate yearly (Storyboard18).
3. DOOH’s digital area is booming: The India digital OOH market was valued approximately USD 2.2 billion in 2024 with an estimated ~11.9% CAGR Growth rate towards 2033 (IMARC Group).
The numbers tell a clear story to the future: Audiences are diversifying across screens, and brands remaining isolated from the ‘new’ ad approaches are losing attention in this holiday surge.
How brands are blending the three channels
1. Discovery & urgency triggers are mobile-first
Festive shoppers begin their shopping journey on mobile (searching deals, browsing apps, scrolling), and brands have started to embed dynamic creatives (countdowns and alerts for flash deals) and micro-moment triggers to capture intent. In addition to the new dynamic mobile creatives, mobile app ads also have positive spillovers into organic installs, meaning that paid campaigns can actually drive organic growth, and have an impact ~7.5% greater than the paid metric suggests (arXiv).
2. CTV for Emotional Resonance + Mid-Funnel Reinforcement
CTV represents not only the top of the funnel. Brands are layering cues in this space that are mid-funnel or even shoppable in nature (for example, pause-screen prompts and QR overlays). By projecting brand storytelling on living room displays, marketers leave behind more enduring associations to the brand – which cab then be reinforced by mobile and DOOH media.
3. DOOH as the real-world touchpoint
In cities in India, DOOH media is becoming a bridge between the physical and digital world. Smart billboards in shopping malls, transit hubs, and urban corridors now support real-time creative swaps, weather triggers, time of the day triggers, and refreshed campaigns. A shopper who observes a festive CTV commercial may now see a timed and triggered DOOH display in a shopping mall that reinforces the brand memory – just before she opens her phone to shop.
Key Strategies to Integrate Them Effectively
- Plan carefully: You can move from larger CTV storytelling to DOOH reach during consumption and eventually to mobile re-targeting and offers when users are ready to act.
- Dynamic creative optimization (DCO): Utilize your programmatic capabilities to swap in language, images, offers & other elements across channels in real time – especially with regionally diverse audiences.
- Cross-screen measurement and incrementality testing: Given that measurement is always murky across screens, use behavioral attribution / experienced measurements and incrementality learning to understand what is really driving incremental response.
- Budget flexibility / in-flight optimization: Be prepared to shift a percentage of your budget between mobile, CTV, or DOOH in the middle of the holiday window based on performance signals.
