CTV Advertising Insights

CTV Sticker Shock Is Real, and It’s Holding Back Performance Advertisers From Entering the Channel Most digital marketers underestimate just how wide the pricing gap is between traditional linear TV and Connected TV. Performance advertisers who have run linear campaigns know their historical CPMs (which are typically significantly lower than CTV) and conversion rates. When they first see CTV CPMs, they do the back-of-the-napkin math and think: “For this to hit my CPA goals, CTV would have to outperform linear by a huge margin.” That realization alone turns many off before they even start. Now layer in the well-documented fraud and inventory waste challenges across CTV and the equation looks even worse. In my experience, when marketers run both channels side by side, CTV rarely beats linear on cost-per-outcome, even today, as linear viewership steadily declines. Here’s the kicker: the big networks selling both linear and CTV know this discrepancy exists. But bringing CTV pricing closer to linear is far from simple. - Linear and digital sales teams often operate in silos, barely communicating. - Meanwhile, media buyers tend to keep performance data close to the chest. Without transparent feedback, actual CPA, ROAS, and conversion numbers, publishers have no ammunition to take to their leadership and argue for more competitive CTV pricing. My challenge to media buyers: - Stop treating performance data like a trade secret. - Share results against key metrics and where appropriate, benchmark them across publisher partners in a blinded fashion. Networks are eager to collaborate and sharpen their offerings, but they need concrete performance proof to justify lowering CTV rates or creating more advantageous packages. Pricing is not a pure science, it’s a negotiation. Right now, media buyers have the leverage to push for better value. Use it and we might further narrow the gap that’s keeping CTV from realizing its full potential.

Confessions of a Media Auditor. Part 2. We are regularly asked by brand leaders to audit their streaming investments. Almost every time, we see the same pattern: platform dashboards look outstanding while brand search, site sessions, and sales remain flat. This isn’t conspiracy — it’s the byproduct of a persistent information gap in streaming buys. Fragmented supply, fuzzy definitions of “CTV,” and incentive-driven metrics combine to tell a story of success that doesn’t match business reality. Too often, this gap is reinforced by agencies—sometimes masquerading “ad tech platforms” with managed-service offerings—that fail to educate clients on the true variability of inventory. Whether through omission or oversimplification, that lack of clarity amounts to obfuscation. The outcome is predictable: smart brands, lured by the promise of cheap CPMs, eventually conclude: CTV doesn’t work. But before we accept that conclusion, we ask five questions: 1. What inventory are you actually buying? 2. Which devices are your ads truly delivered on? 3. What % of impressions reached your primary audience? 4. Did you budget enough reach to separate signal from noise in your leading indicators? 5. Did you deliver enough frequency to command attention? Today, let’s start with #1. Here’s a real client report excerpt (redacted). Look closely: - “RON” and generic labels (e.g., “OTT Sports”) → broad, exchange-based supply where exact programming is unknown. - CPMs under $6 → far more likely a mix of mobile/desktop/app video and long-tail FAST channels than true large-screen CTV. - Attractive CPAs. Useful in lower-funnel harvesting, but as a north star for CTV it’s a vanity metric. It flatters platforms because it rewards clicks from users already in-market, inflates performance with cheap placements (often mobile/app units), and says little about incremental brand impact. What to prioritize instead: ➡️ Share of impressions on large-screen CTV (not just “OTT”). ➡️ On-target % against your primary audience. ➡️ Reach & frequency sufficiency for that audience. ➡️ Incremental branded search/site-visit lift (vs. baseline). 👉 If your CTV CPMs are in the single digits, you’re not buying CTV.

The Future of CTV Ad Growth: A Tale of Two Markets There’s a growing debate about where the next wave of CTV ad spend is coming from—and more importantly, how buying and selling CTV inventory will evolve. One side argues that CTV will look like linear TV, with supply constrained and dominated by big-brand, awareness-driven advertisers. This makes sense for the top 5-10 publishers (Netflix, Hulu/Disney, Warner Bros., etc.), who command premium content and high demand. The other side believes CTV will mirror the digital world, with more supply than demand, leading to an influx of digital-native, performance-driven advertisers shifting budgets from paid social and display. Here’s my take: For most publishers, the second scenario isn’t just likely—it’s inevitable. Beyond the top 10, fill rates tell the real story. Publishers outside the top 75? They’re already in a digital-like market, struggling with 25-50% fill rates (with some exceptions for niche, high-demand content). Torso publishers (ranked 10-50, think Fubo, Plex, etc.) may have slightly higher fill rates, but many still have significant unsold inventory. Meanwhile, the top 5-10 can afford to play the linear TV game, but that’s not the reality for the rest of the ecosystem. What this means for publishers: If your fill rates are below 75%, waiting for big-brand TV dollars to save you is a mistake. The economics of CTV are bifurcating, and publishers outside the top tier need to start actively supporting digital-native advertisers—buyers who think in terms of ROAS, conversions, and data-driven decision-making, not just brand awareness. This means: - Making it easier for smaller, performance-driven advertisers to buy inventory. - Offering better transparency, targeting, and measurement options. - Embracing self-serve and automation to scale beyond traditional ad sales. CTV isn’t a monolith—the economics will differ based on whether you’re a head, torso, or tail publisher. If you’re outside the top 10 and you aren’t adapting for digital-native buyers, you’re leaving money on the table. The question isn’t if CTV will evolve—it’s whether publishers will evolve with it. What do you think? Will CTV follow the digital model, or will supply constraints keep it looking like linear TV? #CTV #StreamingAds #AdTech #DigitalAdvertising #Programmatic #SelfServe #CTVAdvertising #Marketing

We spent a decade criticizing YouTube for opacity. CTV is now worse. Buyers have been asking the same question in every CTV review I've sat in: what exactly did we just buy? 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 Publishers sell cultural relevance and passionate audiences in every direct meeting. Programmatically, that same inventory lands as an anonymous app bundle with a genre label attached. 𝗬𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝘆𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘂𝗺 Publishers hide show-level data to prevent cherry-picking their best content. The unintended result: their inventory becomes interchangeable with every other CTV supply - and price becomes the only lever. 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱 Amazon and Spectrum both offer show-level reporting. Budgets are consolidating toward them. When buyers can see performance, they commit. When they can't, they hedge or leave. Publishers think withholding content signals protects their yield. It actually makes their inventory impossible to defend at renewal. The publishers who open content-level data first will capture a disproportionate share of 2026 budgets. The ones who don't will compete on price and lose. #AdTech #CTV #Programmatic David Nyurenberg | InterMedia Advertising AdExchanger

Streaming Advertising Is Becoming a Market of Scarcity, Not Just Scale For years, digital advertising rewarded scale. More inventory usually meant lower prices, broader reach, greater efficiency. Streaming is steadily rewriting that logic. The latest CPM ranking illustrates a market that has become far more differentiated. Netflix leads with a $37 CPM, followed by Max at $32, Peacock at $32, Prime Video at $28, the AVOD/SVOD Average at $26, then Disney+ at $25. Further down the ranking are The Roku Channel at $18, the FAST Average, Hulu, Tubi at $17, Pluto TV at $14, while YouTube closes the list with $9. That represents roughly a fourfold pricing gap between the highest priced platform and the lowest. CPM measures the cost of delivering one thousand impressions. It does not measure attention, viewer engagement, purchase intent, creative effectiveness, brand suitability, incremental reach, conversion efficiency, customer lifetime value, or commercial return. Those factors determine whether media investment generates business impact. Take: streaming platforms are developing different economic models rather than simply charging different prices. Services such as Netflix, Max, Peacock, Prime Video, also Disney+ have built advertising environments around premium content, controlled ad loads, carefully managed viewing experiences, limited inventory. Scarcity itself has become part of the product. Higher CPMs therefore reflect more than audience size. They also represent the value assigned to limited availability. Meanwhile, YouTube, The Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto TV, as well as many FAST services operate with substantially larger pools of advertising inventory. Greater supply naturally creates more competitive pricing, allowing advertisers to maximise reach while maintaining considerable flexibility across campaign budgets. Interestingly, year over year CPM changes remain remarkably modest across nearly every platform. That stability suggests the streaming advertising market is entering a more mature phase, where pricing is becoming increasingly predictable despite continuing investment in advertising supported streaming. Digital advertising traditionally competed on efficiency. Premium television competed on context. Streaming now occupies both worlds simultaneously. Advertisers are no longer choosing between television or digital. They are evaluating different combinations of scale, attention, environment, audience composition, measurement capabilities, inventory scarcity. Success therefore depends less on identifying the cheapest CPM, nor automatically paying the highest one. The objective is understanding which environment best supports a specific business goal, because the most valuable impression is not necessarily the least expensive, nor the most costly. One small correction to the accompanying text: Max is correctly listed at $32 CPM, not HBO Max at $33. Source of the data: eMarketer. Graphic created by Screen Wars Media.

I listened to Michael Shields Next in Media episode with Nick Fairbairn and Andy Schonfeld. Smart people. Honest operators. Good conversation. But here’s what’s missing. And it matters quite a bit. The episode tells a hopeful story about “performance TV” finally arriving. Precision. Identity. Dashboards. Scale. Momentum. Awards. What it doesn’t say out loud is where the structural friction actually lives. First: “identity-resolved CTV” is still mostly a marketing phrase. No open-market CTV platform is doing true one-to-one deterministically at scale. Household graphs are stitched. Matches are probabilistic. Determinism lives inside walled gardens. If someone claims otherwise, the missing slide is always the same: where the identity comes from, how it’s matched, and who can audit it. That slide rarely appears. Second: performance TV is still modeled, not closed-loop. Tatari does strong work, but let’s be honest about the mechanics. Spike analysis, lift studies, MMM inputs, survey overlays. Useful. Directional. Not digital-grade truth. There is still no native chain of custody from CTV exposure to conversion. We’re inferring outcomes, not observing them. Third: platform incentives quietly shape the story. Media sellers measuring their own effectiveness while earning more as spend increases is not neutral. The dashboards provide comfort, not courtroom-level evidence. That doesn’t make them wrong. It does make them biased. Fourth: premium #CTV is locked away. Netflix. YouTube. Prime Video. Disney. Hulu. Closed ecosystems. Limited transparency. Limited third-party optimization. “Open market CTV” largely means mid-tail inventory. Big moments still trade on relationships and insertion orders. Scale is not the same thing as premium scale. Fifth: the economics don’t really math. $35–$60 CPMs plus modeled lift plus frequency inefficiencies rarely outperform Meta or Google on pure performance. Andy even admits the ceiling. Performance TV works in pockets, often under arbitrage conditions. It does not scale infinitely without turning into brand spend. Sixth: AI creative hype ignores the plumbing. Hundreds of dynamic TV creatives sound great until you meet trafficking timelines, rights management, QA, ad servers, and compliance reality. The idea is ahead of the infrastructure. And finally, the quiet part: “Performance TV” is also an investor narrative. It reassures DTC marketers looking for the next growth engine and VCs looking for monetization stories. Awards, categories, and dashboards help that narrative travel faster than the operational truth. None of this means CTV doesn’t work. It does. It means it works differently than digital, under tighter constraints, with messier math, and with incentives that deserve more daylight. The future of #TV isn’t fake. But it’s not as clean, deterministic, or scalable as the story suggests either. That tension is the real conversation we should be having.

CTV Advertising Costs: Why Looking at Just CPMs Misses the Bigger Picture Too often, advertisers ask one question about Connected TV: What’s the average CPM? The truth is, CPMs alone don’t tell you much. A $15 CPM could be a bargain or a waste depending on what inventory and deal structures are behind it. Here’s what really matters: 📺 Inventory Source Are you buying premium, brand-safe placements on Fire TV, Hulu, or Disney+? Or are you in long-tail apps with low engagement? Premium CPMs may look higher, but the quality and impact justify the price. 🤝 Deal Type Direct PG and PMP deals on Amazon DSP often unlock better rates, guaranteed delivery, and curated placements. Open auction inventory might appear cheaper, but performance and brand safety can vary widely. 📊 Cost Beyond CPM Amazon DSP: Lower CPMs often come paired with unique retail data and outcome-based measurement so you know if impressions are driving sales. Other DSPs: CPMs might trend higher, but without the same level of attribution, the “true cost” of conversions is harder to pin down. The real takeaway? Don’t chase the lowest CPM. Chase the right CPM for the right inventory, in the right environment, with the right attribution. Advertisers who understand the nuance of inventory quality and deal types consistently see stronger ROI than those who just benchmark against averages. 👉 When you evaluate CTV buys, do you dig into deal structures and inventory mix or do you still compare only by CPM?

CTV WEEKLY INSIGHTS: The smartest money in media is quietly re-engineering their TV budgets to capitalize on a $10 billion market inefficiency. So why is the broader ad industry still undervaluing—or mis-investing in—CTV? In 2026, while CTV ad spend is projected to reach approximately $38 billion (per EMARKETER), the industry’s capital allocation reveals a structural misalignment. Where streaming now captures 47.6% of all U.S. TV viewing time (per Nielsen), current CTV ad spend only constitutes 44.2% of the total TV ad spend pool. While this gap between audience attention and spend continues to shrink, every single percentage point of that disconnect represents a direct tax on an advertiser’s ROI. Or, to put it another way: it is value in plain sight and a massive opportunity for advertisers and investors alike. This issue is the remnant of a 100-year-old linear gravitational pull—a force that is finally slowing due to the inevitable shift to CTV. Ad buyers remain trapped by safe, legacy buying habits, even as audiences have moved on to new ecosystems ranging from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to Tubi and Samsung TV Plus. Brands that continue to prioritize linear impressions over CTV reach are essentially paying a premium for a shrinking audience that they cannot actually and effectively measure. Smart, modern brands are doing two things: 1. Fuse actual consumer behavior into their buys, rather than blindly following legacy patterns. 2. Take advantage of the current market inefficiency. As a whole, CTV CPMs remain depressed, despite the platform providing massively improved targeting, granular measurement, and now direct-purchase opportunities. When compared directly to linear TV, the reality is clear: better functionality, better pricing. CTV remains the greatest opportunity in this entire evolution of media. However, the window is closing on the imbalance. Savvy operators will keep their heads out of the sand and use this to their advantage. #CTV #digitalmedia #MediaStrategy #MediaInvesting #PrivateEquity Samsung Ads

Everyone is chasing premium CTV Roku is quietly going the opposite way Lower cost More supply Less friction And it’s working Most buyers I speak to want: “Premium inventory” “High-impact placements” “Top-tier content” But when campaigns go live: CPMs spike Budgets cap out early Frequency collapses We saw this on a recent CTV plan: $40 CPM deals <30% scale achieved Fill looked “premium” but revenue didn’t move That’s the gap. High CPM ≠ high revenue. Roku is playing a different game They’re positioning as a lower-cost alternative in CTV with massive reach across devices and their own inventory Not the most premium But - easier to buy - easier to scale - easier to fill Here’s what’s non-obvious: In CTV, access beats quality more often than we admit Because An unfilled premium slot = $0 A slightly cheaper filled slot = revenue We tested this shift: Lowered floor on select CTV inventory Opened to broader demand Accepted slightly lower CPMs Result: Fill rate up ~22% Overall revenue up ~14% Same inventory. Different philosophy. The mistake most operators make: Optimizing for CPM instead of monetization Those are not the same Roku understands this They’re not trying to win the “premium” narrative They’re trying to win the transaction If your CTV stack is stuck at low fill, do you need better demand or just more accessible supply?