Smytten PulseAI study finds India's OTT Economy Is Rewarding Trust, Not Fame

20 March 2026: Smytten PulseAI today launched an OTT Talent Tracker, a first-of-its-kind nationwide study measuring leading film actors across India on Total Awareness, Intent to Watch, and Subscribe to Watch. It has been found that India's streaming leaderboard looks nothing like its theatrical one. In the North, Salman Khan's 22.8% top-of-mind awareness (the highest in the dataset) converts to 49.3% subscription intent, while Manoj Bajpayee, at 0.7% recall, records 56.8% Subscribe to Watch and a 96% conversion rate from watch intent to paid commitment, the highest figures in the entire study. In the South, Samantha Ruth Prabhu leads the composite OTT ranking with a score of 69, placing her above Vijay, Prabhas, Jr NTR, and Mahesh Babu, with a fame-to-subscription gap of just 13 points against Vijay's 27 and Prabhas's 28.

The pattern holds across both regions and across genders: subscription pull (the willingness to actually pay for a platform to watch an actor) is increasingly decoupled from fame. In India's OTT economy, trust is outperforming recognition, and the gap between them is widening in ways that have direct commercial consequences for how platforms commission, cast, and value talent.

Star Visibility and Subscription Pull Tell Two Different Stories

Across both regions, awareness shows limited alignment with subscription behaviour. In the North, actors often seen as critically acclaimed but not commercially strong are consistently outperforming bigger stars where it matters most to platforms' revenue:

Manoj Bajpayee: 56.8% Subscribe to Watch, 96% conversion rate from watch intent to paid (against 0.7% top-of-mind recall)
Ayushmann Khurrana: 55% subscription intent, near-zero spontaneous recall
Pankaj Tripathi: 54.5% subscription pull, 1.9% top-of-mind awareness
Salman Khan: 22.8% top-of-mind awareness (highest in North dataset), yet only 49.3% subscription intent

The gap is equally visible in aggregate: the North's leading mass stars differ by 16.1 percentage points in awareness yet by less than 5 points in subscription intent. In the South, Dulquer Salmaan (71% awareness, 60% subscribe) outperforms both Vijay (85% awareness, 58% subscribe) and Prabhas (83% awareness, 55% subscribe) on paid pull.

South OTT Star Power Ranking Surfaces a New Streaming Hierarchy

The composite OTT Star Power ranking for South India is led by Samantha Ruth Prabhu (composite score 69), ahead of Vijay, Prabhas, Jr NTR, and Mahesh Babu. Her fame-to-subscription gap is 13 points; Vijay's is 27, Prabhas's is 28. The top 7 actors fall within a 7-point score band, compared to an 18-point spread in the North, making the South a genuinely competitive streaming ecosystem where audience trust, not theatrical scale, determines who leads.

Female Actors Show Stronger OTT Engagement in the South than in the North

Female actors hold 40% of the top 10 OTT positions in South India, double the 20% in the North. Samantha leads the entire South composite chart; Sai Pallavi (64), Rashmika Mandanna (63), and Nayanthara (60) sit within the top 10 alongside the region's biggest male names. In the North, Alia Bhatt records 55.4% subscription pull and a 94% conversion rate from watch intent to paid behaviour, among the highest in the study. Across both regions, female-led content is consistently among the strongest subscription drivers on the leaderboard.

Actors With Low Visibility Are Emerging as High-Value Subscription Drivers

The study identifies Silent OTT Power Players: performers whose subscription pull significantly outpaces their mainstream visibility.

North India:

Kay Kay Menon: ~0% top-of-mind recall, 53.7% Subscribe to Watch
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: ~0% top-of-mind recall, 52.3% Subscribe to Watch
Ayushmann Khurrana: ~0% top-of-mind recall, 55% subscription intent

South India:

Tovino Thomas: 52% awareness, 49% Subscribe to Watch
Fahadh Faasil: composite #8 in South overall ranking
Aishwarya Rajesh: 48% awareness, 46.7% Subscribe to Watch
Ashok Selvan: 45% awareness, 44% Subscribe to Watch
Aparna Balamurali: 41% awareness, 42% Subscribe to Watch

Four Distinct OTT Talent Archetypes Emerge From the Data

The study maps actors across four quadrants of awareness and subscription pull, each representing a distinct commercial role in the streaming economy.

About the Study

The findings are based on two structured quantitative online surveys covering North and South India, with a combined sample of 5000 respondents aged 18–55 years and an equal gender split. The North study spanned 14 states, including Delhi, Maharashtra, and Punjab, while the South covered Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. A total of 86 actors and actresses were evaluated across both studies on three key metrics: total awareness, intent to watch, and willingness to subscribe, with subscription intent carrying the highest weight in the composite index.

About Smytten PulseAI

Smytten PulseAI is India's next-generation consumer-intelligence and market-research platform powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our solutions help brands decode real-time shopper sentiment, unearth behavioural drivers, test concepts, track brand equity and drive growth-strategy decisions with speed and precision. With access to high-intent data from millions of consumers, and a suite of visual tools that turn insights into action, SmyttenPulseAI enables marketers to go beyond what consumers say to understand what they actually do. Headquartered in New Delhi, the platform serves innovative brands across FMCG, auto, tech, retail and beyond, helping them transform products, communications and campaigns by leveraging the power of behaviour-led, AI-enabled research.

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User :- Shrasti Salgia

Email :-shrasti@mycommsglobal.com