There’s a fine line between monetization and misjudgment, and SonyLIV seems to have blurred it completely.
Imagine clicking on a show marked U – Suitable for All and being greeted with a Durex ad front and center. It’s not just tone-deaf, it’s careless. When a platform goes out of its way to tag content as universally appropriate, the experience should reflect that rating across the board, not just in the episode itself but in everything surrounding it.
This isn’t about being prudish, it’s about consistency and user trust.
Parents rely on these labels when handing a phone or TV remote to their children. Viewers expect a basic level of alignment between rating and content, including the ads. If that balance breaks, so does the credibility of the entire platform.
What’s worse, SonyLIV isn’t a newcomer. It’s a major player in the Indian OTT scene. So, seeing such a basic mismatch between content rating and ad targeting isn’t just surprising, it’s baffling.
If OTT platforms want to earn the audience’s long-term trust, they need to clean up more than just their content libraries. They need to fix their ad logic too.
Because no “U” rating is complete if the experience around it isn’t safe for all.