India has hundreds of millions of people who stream content online. But reaching the right viewers, those who are most likely to pay for a subscription has always been the hard part for OTT platforms. Most platforms end up spending heavily on broad audiences, only to see high cost-per-acquisition and low subscription conversion rates.
This case study looks at how Kentrix’s Persona 360, a high-intent audience targeting platform, helped a leading Indian OTT platform cut its subscriber acquisition costs to a fraction of the industry average. This was done by targeting viewers based on the language they speak, not just the city they live in.
The Challenge – High Costs, Low Precision
The OTT platform wanted to grow its paid subscriber base in two specific regional language markets. The challenge was that standard digital targeting, based on age, gender, location, or interest categories wasn’t delivering efficient results. The platform was spending between ₹25 and ₹40 per thousand impressions (CPM), which is typical for the OTT industry in India, and each new subscription was costing ₹150 to ₹250.
The core problem was that most audience targeting tools couldn’t identify language-native audiences with enough precision. Targeting all users in West Bengal for Bengali content, or all users in Maharashtra for Marathi content, meant reaching millions of people who had no real interest in subscribing to regional language OTT.
Persona 360, Audience Targeting Using Language-Native Audience Cohorts
Persona 360 is Kentrix’s audience intelligence platform. It is built on data from over 920 million Indian consumer profiles, with 545 million+ digitally addressable MAIDs (Mobile Advertising IDs). Unlike platforms that use broad demographic buckets, Persona 360 segments audiences based on lifestyle affinity, economic tier, geographic precision down to the residential building level. For this campaign, we developed an audience cohort using language and cultural identity.
For this OTT campaign, Kentrix built two distinct language-native audience cohorts:
- Bengali-speaking consumers across urban and semi-urban areas
- Marathi-speaking consumers in urban Maharashtra
These weren’t just location-based segments. They were built by combining language affinity signals, content consumption behaviour, subscription propensity, and income tier data, so the ads reached people who were genuinely likely to pay for regional language content.
The campaign was activated on Meta using Persona 360 custom MAID audiences directly loaded into Meta ads manager.
The Numbers and What the Campaign Delivered?
The results were striking. The platform achieved a CPM of just ₹9.04, roughly 3.5 times below the OTT industry average. At ₹72 per subscriber, the cost was less than half of what most OTT platforms pay for new paid subscribers in India.
In under 8 days, the campaign delivered 1,959 new subscriptions, a volume that most platforms achieve over a much longer campaign window.
Why Did This Work? The Logic Behind Language Targeting
Traditional digital campaigns targeting OTT audiences often use interest-based segments like “entertainment lovers” or “movie watchers”, categories that are broad and contested by every advertiser in the space. This drives up CPMs and reduces relevance.
Persona 360 takes a different approach. By identifying people whose language identity and cultural affinity are matched to the content being promoted, the platform delivers higher ad relevance, better click-through rates, and ultimately, lower cost at every stage of the funnel.
In this campaign, the Bengali and Marathi cohorts were built using Kentrix’s household-level consumer data. The audience wasn’t just language matched, it was also verified based on income and lifestyle segments and subscription-propensity scored, which is why the click-to-subscription conversion was efficient enough to bring the cost-per-subscriber down to ₹72.
What This Means for OTT Platforms in India?
India’s OTT market is increasingly regional. Subscribers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are growing faster than metros, and the next 100 million paid subscribers for any platform will largely come from people who prefer content in their mother tongue. Yet most targeting audience intelligence tools still treat India as English or Hindi language digital market.
This campaign demonstrates that language-native targeting is not just a creative strategy, it is a media efficiency lever. When audiences are correctly matched to content by language and cultural affinity, platforms spend less per impression, less per click, and significantly less per subscriber.
Persona 360’s vernacular audience cohorts, covering Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi Belt, Gujarati, and Punjabi communities — are now a standalone, commercially available targeting product for OTT platforms, FMCG brands, regional BFSI players, and any advertiser trying to reach language-specific audiences at scale in India.
Key Takeaways
- Language-native targeting can deliver CPMs 3-4X lower than standard OTT audience buys.
- Persona 360 audiences are built on 920M+ Indian consumer profiles with language, income, and lifestyle signals, not survey extrapolations.
- The campaign delivered 1,959 paid subscribers in 8 days at ₹72 each, against an industry average of ₹150–250.
- This approach is directly applicable to any OTT platform, FMCG brand, or regional advertiser looking to reach specific language communities in India at scale.
FAQs
How is audience targeting with Persona 360 different from standard Google or Meta targeting?
Meta and Google build audiences from data and in-app behaviour which is based on what user clicks, what they like, what they share, and what they search for. Persona 360 adds a layer of offline verified data like income, household spend behaviour, lifestyle segment, language identity and much more. All of this is mapped to individual MAIDs. This richer signal produces more sharper, qualified audiences which is why Persona 360 campaigns deliver lower CPMs and CPLs compared to platform-native targeting alone.
What makes Persona 360 the best audience intelligence tool for performance marketing?
Effective audience targeting in India requires more than standard demographic filters. Tools like Persona 360 by Kentrix are built specifically for the Indian market, combining 920 million+ consumer profiles, income-tier segmentation, and MAID-based digital activation. Unlike generic targeting tools, Persona 360 delivers pre-verified audiences directly into Meta, Google DV360, and The Trade Desk, and has demonstrated CPMs 30–75% below industry averages across BFSI, OTT, Auto, and Real Estate campaigns.
How do data driven audience intelligence tool like Persona 360 reduce CPL and CPM in digital campaigns?
Data-driven segmentation reduces wasted impressions by ensuring ads reach only the most qualified audience. Persona 360 uses income-verified, lifestyle-matched segments rather than broad interest categories to improve signal quality on Meta and programmatic platforms. Across live campaigns in India, this approach has reduced CPL by 45–70% and CPM by 30–75% compared to industry benchmarks.
