Is obsession with scale and ads diluting OTT content?

OTT, in its glory days, was defined by two things—fresh, edgy content and an ad-free experience. 

It has been seven years since we binged Sacred Games season 1 without ads on Netflix, and we are all bracing for ads on the most premium streaming platform. Ads are everywhere on OTT, almost. Majority of streaming platforms in India, barring Netflix, offer a tier that includes ads for viewers; only the most premium layer may eliminate ads (albeit not entirely). 

Shows on OTT platforms now pander to what they have decided is the lowest common denominator among Indian audiences. Lowbrow humour, cringe for the sake of cringe content, and everything in between is what’s streaming these days. There’s more content than ever before, and yet no one knows what to watch next.

Scale, scale, and scale

It was an audacious plan in the beginning. But once OTT platforms moved from the investment mindset to focussing on the bottom line, objectives changed. The streaming business could no longer do without ads. 

Netflix lost almost a million subscribers in the June quarter of 2022, and by the end of the year, introduced an ad tier. As of 2024, Netflix has 70 million subscribers in the cheaper ad tier. The company even said in a statement that “now, over 50% of new Netflix sign-ups are for the ad plan in ad-supported countries”. 

India has 547 million OTT users, of whom only 100 million are paid subscribers. This number is stagnating. A study by media research firm Ormax shows that AVoD (advertising video on demand) subscribers in India grew by 21% in 2024. During the same period, the SVoD (subscription video on demand) business which accounts for 28% of the total streaming market, degrew by 2%.  

In this mutated version, what will become of the premium positioning of streaming services and the content they serve?

Deloitte’s media and entertainment analyst Chandrashekar Mantha says that platforms won’t necessarily lose all their sheen but will sustain a small hit to their premium positioning.

“It is a trade-off between premium positioning and profitability metrics.”

Chandrashekar Mantha, Deloitte 

The aim to be profitable in India is pushing platforms to widen their audience base, and Mantha agrees that with that comes the necessity to showcase content that appeals to more than just the initial adopters of OTT—the cord cutters. 

The shift in landscape is not the only big change in the India market. The coming together of Reliance with Star marks the beginning of a new era of sorts in media and entertainment. Where scale is front and centre from the get-go. Remember how JioCinema made IPL free in its first year?

Content with content?

Maansi S Darrbaar, a media and entertainment advisor who was part of the founding team at AltBalaji, has seen priorities change over the last seven years. JioStar media behemoth wants one thing: to create a high volume of content for the masses at an affordable price. 

“If one produces content with that lens, what you will get is content that is television plus kind of content,” she says. 

Darrbaar makes a distinction between premium OTT content and TV+ content, which is not necessarily the typical saas-bahu fare but not Mirzapur either. Citing examples of shows from ALTBalaji that fell in the TV+ category of content, she names shows such as Kehne Ko Humsafar Hain and Karle Tu Bhi Mohabbat.    

Ask Devendra Deshpande, CEO of Friday Filmworks, the factors that work in favour of shows being greenlit or generating high viewership on OTT, and he will tell you that family-friendly content is in much demand. Khakee: The Bihar Chapter a Netflix show, Deshpande says, was bold and gritty but steered clear of vulgar language and wasn’t sexually explicit either. This show has since been renewed for a second season. 

"Platforms are banking on stories from the heartland and creators who they believe can create shows that will draw audiences."

Devendra Deshpande, Friday Filmworks

The heartland focus is also explained by the penetration of OTT in India. 

Speaking to afaqs! in 2023, Ormax Media’s founder Shailesh Kapoor had emphasised "the need for more mass content, in terms of treatment, genre and storytelling, so that it can become more relatable to the smaller towns”. He said it would be important to grow subscriptions because metro cities had saturated, with more than 79% OTT penetration. 

The claim with budgets is that an established creator with a promising vision gets truckloads of money, whereas a newbie with a fresh idea gets a tiny budget to work with. In reality, showrunners say that budgets for mid-tier shows are shrinking while those for shows starring celebrities or helmed by well-known filmmakers are getting greater budgets.

"OTT platforms have slashed budgets for shows by as much as 30%" 

Maansi S Darrbaar, media and entertainment analyst

And yet, Netflix hardly promoted Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper, a show written by the creator of Mirzapur, Puneet Krishna, starring consummate actors such as Manav Kaul and Tilottama Shome. 

Its theme was possibly too risqué for Indian audiences. Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper follows the story of a banking executive who takes up sex work to make ends meet. Or the platform felt the show creators couldn’t attract viewers. 

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar unsurprisingly won the marketing lottery at Netflix. This disparity in promoting shows has irked show creators. 

Creator woes

An OTT showrunner says streaming platforms in the initial days targeted India’s moviegoing audience that did not resonate with HBO-like American shows or Indian soap operas. “They wanted to target a new audience,” says the creator of a popular OTT crime drama.

Another filmmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity explains what OTT did for creators. “OTT was meant to free us from censorship and box office pressures.”

OTT, he adds, allows people to discover content at their pace. “But we have not given people the time to get used to this new medium.” Priorities changed quickly, and OTT is metamorphosing into TV before you can say TV. 

A filmmaker who has worked on some of India’s earliest OTT shows, on platforms such as Netflix and Prime Video, says OTTs are splurging on hiring celebrities for some shows, hoping that would pull viewers to platforms. 

The filmmaker cites the example of Shahid Kapoor, who reportedly took home Rs 30 crore for Amazon Prime Video’s Farzi. “This is Bollywood-ising OTT and that impacts storytelling. Because now you have to think about how to present the actor, how he is introduced, etc.” 

Number pressures, self-censorship, and casting troubles are back.

The disdain for OTT executives is palpable when the showrunner informs, “Platform execs look at Instagram to cast actors.” OTT turned into the stuff of nightmares for creators. 

A scriptwriter who has worked on shows for Prime Video, Sony LIV, and Disney+ Hotstar attributes interference from platform executives to the declining quality of shows on OTT. Streaming platforms, which gave showrunners a free hand to conceptualise shows, are now down to micromanaging the process. 

“We are back to the dark ages. Platform executives now look at scripts and tell us what should happen in the third act or the hero’s journey. Their approach is pedantic,” says the filmmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

In the early days, American executives at Netflix and Prime Video worked with their Indian counterparts. “Now, increasingly, you have Indian television show executives helming projects at OTT platforms,” and as a result, sensibilities began changing. 

OTT has been corporatised, and now it is risk averse.

2025 will be a defining year for how OTT streaming in India shapes up, and 547 million pairs of eyes are watching.