Understanding where your numbers stand relative to the industry is crucial for setting realistic optimization goals. Here's what we're seeing across Indian publisher verticals in early 2026, based on data from our RevenueRx audits and industry reports.
Display CPMs by Vertical (India)
Finance and business publishers continue to command the highest CPMs in India, ranging from ₹80-180 for premium desktop inventory. News publishers see ₹40-90, while entertainment and lifestyle sites typically range from ₹25-60. These numbers are for programmatic display. Direct deals and sponsorships can be 2-5x higher.
Mobile CPMs remain 30-50% lower than desktop across all verticals, though the gap is narrowing as advertisers shift budgets to mobile-first campaigns.
Fill Rates
The average fill rate we see across Indian publishers is 75-85% for desktop and 65-75% for mobile. Publishers with header bidding consistently achieve 5-10% higher fill rates than those relying solely on Google Ad Manager's built-in exchange. The best-performing publishers in our database hit 90%+ fill rates through a combination of header bidding, dynamic floor pricing, and unfilled impression fallback strategies.
Viewability
Industry average viewability in India hovers around 50-55%, meaning nearly half of all served ads are never actually seen by users. Top-performing publishers achieve 65-75% viewability through strategic ad placement (above-fold sticky units, in-content placements) and lazy loading that only requests ads when they're likely to enter the viewport.
Higher viewability directly correlates with higher CPMs. Advertisers increasingly bid based on viewable impressions, so a publisher with 70% viewability will attract significantly more demand than one at 50%.
Header Bidding Adoption
In our audits of top Indian publishers, about 60% have implemented some form of header bidding, but only about 30% have it properly configured. Common issues include running outdated Prebid versions, having too few bidders, and using suboptimal timeout settings. Publishers with well-configured header bidding see 20-40% higher programmatic revenue compared to those without.
How to Benchmark Your Site
Run a RevenueRx audit to get your scores across all categories. Compare your header bidding score, ad placement score, and viewability metrics against these benchmarks. Our audit report includes specific recommendations ranked by estimated revenue impact, so you know exactly what to fix first.