India emerges as a hybrid video entertainment economy, driven by 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.