Advertising channels are the places where a digital ad appears: inside a free app, on a smart TV, on a shopping app or on a doctor's screen. Each channel has its own software for selling ad space, and its own way of choosing who sees an ad. Most channels now sell their space through the same automatic auctions that websites use.
The largest channel in India is the phone. A mobile ad network collects ad space inside thousands of free apps and games, and sells it to advertisers. Many of those advertisers are app makers themselves, who pay for each new install of their own app. Location-based advertising chooses who sees an ad by the places a phone has been, such as a mall or an airport. Location is personal data, so using it needs the person's consent under data protection law, such as India's DPDP Act.
Television is the second channel. A smart TV is connected to the internet, so its ads can be sold like web ads. This is connected TV (CTV) advertising. It covers the TV's home screen and the ad breaks in streaming apps and in FAST channels, which are free channels paid for by ads. Addressable TV advertising goes one step further on cable and satellite TV. It shows different ads to different homes that are watching the same programme at the same moment.
Shops are the third channel. Online marketplaces, quick-commerce apps and supermarkets sell ad space on their own sites and apps. This is a retail media network. A retailer knows what its shoppers search for and buy, so a brand can place its ad at the moment a shopper is choosing a product.
Some channels reach a narrow audience. Point-of-care advertising shows messages about medicines to doctors, inside the software that they use to write prescriptions. Employers use programmatic job advertising to place each job opening on many job sites at once.
In every channel, advertisers usually pay for each thousand showings of an ad, which are called impressions, or for each click or each install. And in every channel, some showings are fake. Programs that pretend to be people create views and clicks in order to collect advertisers' money. This is called ad fraud, and every channel has to guard against it.