In the early days, securing a prime-time ad slot was the ultimate goal for media buyers. Ad space was limited, and missing that coveted 30-second spot on a top-rated TV show often meant missing the chance to make an impact. This was the world of traditional linear TV. But with the arrival of Connected TV (CTV), the landscape transformed, kicking off a new era in 

 and fundamentally reshaping the advertising industry. According to a recent

, CTV has captured an impressive 83% of ad views in the U.S. for the first half of 2024, showing how deeply it has penetrated the advertising world.

CTV has done more than change our viewing habits; it's redefined how advertisers connect with audiences, offering unparalleled precision and personalization that traditional TV could never match. The era of "one-size-fits-all" ad buys is over. Today, advertisers navigate a complex ecosystem of streaming platforms, where reaching viewers means mastering a fragmented world of smart TVs, streaming services, and apps.

This evolution has been driven by technology and our shifting interactions with content, making CTV's impact on advertising revolutionary. This timeline will walk through the critical stages of CTV's development and how it continues to shape the future of advertising.

, initially designed in 1988 to protect VHS rental histories, has had some unintended impact on the yet-to-emerge streaming services industry, making it more challenging for advertisers to gain transparency into audiences' watching habits. The law prevents sharing personally identifiable information linked to viewing behavior, forcing brands to rethink their strategies regarding personalization.

But there's still a way for advertisers to reach their audiences while staying compliant. Brands can tap into broader content-level metadata, like the type of show or genre. For instance, if someone is streaming a comedy, advertisers can deliver ads for lighthearted products that match the mood. This keeps the content relevant without crossing privacy lines.

," refers to delivering video content via the Internet, bypassing traditional broadcast and cable systems. Despite the buzz, Connected TV and OTT are more than just different names for the same thing. Think of it this way: CTV is your smart TV or console device through which you watch on the largest screen in the house. OTT is the delivery method that bypasses traditional cable for internet-driven content.

 started making strides in display and digital video. Initially developed for banners, programmatic had yet to reach CTV fully. During this period, most CTV transactions still occurred through direct insertion orders (IOs), and programmatic transactions were sparse. However, as technology developed, programmatic began to hint at its potential for targeting and efficiency in CTV.

 (ACR) started in the early 2010s with Shazam, a platform famous for identifying songs. ACR technology would later advance into video fingerprinting, laying the foundation for TV applications. By recognizing audio and video frames, ACR opened up new targeting and measurement possibilities for advertisers, enabling insights into what viewers were watching and setting the stage for the CTV-specific applications.

Early interactive ads and VPAID standards

The early 2010s saw attempts at interactive ads, primarily through VPAID (Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition) standards, which enabled limited user interactivity within desktop video environments. Despite its potential, VPAID was quickly deprecated as publishers found it prone to exploitation, with advertisers using it to re-run auctions and boost profits. Though this early innovation didn't fully take off, it hinted at the potential for interactive advertising in CTV.

Digital video personalization and its challenges

During this stage, digital video advertisers experimented with basic personalization on desktop and mobile. But, without today's advanced tools, creating personalized ads for different audiences was costly and cumbersome. Publishers resisted handling multiple ad variations, setting the stage for more streamlined solutions that would emerge in the coming years.

Stage 2: Growth and maturation (2015 - 2020)

Programmatic expansion and the rise of private marketplaces

By 2015, programmatic technology matured, expanding into the CTV space. Although most CTV transactions still occurred manually through direct IOs, programmatic guaranteed deals and private marketplaces started gaining traction. Advertisers favored these direct deals and private marketplaces with trusted partners to avoid fraud and improve quality control compared to the risks of the open market.

ACR technology moved from its music recognition roots into the TV world, enabling CTV platforms to track what viewers watched and analyze behavior patterns. Alternative measurement providers began leveraging ACR to enhance targeting, measurement, and verification. This technology allowed advertisers to understand content engagement better and helped fuel data-driven targeting strategies within CTV.

's early experiments with interactive formats, such as the "choose your ad" model that allowed viewers to select the type of ad they wanted to see, Hulu later introduced new interactive ad formats, including "choose your own adventure" ads that gave viewers more control over their ad experience. This approach set the stage for shoppable ads, a more advanced form of interaction that soon became popular in streaming TV.

Personalization challenges and opportunities

Personalization continued to grow in importance, though it still faced hurdles. VPAID was never accepted into the CTV world, and was deprecated by the IAB, which meant that advertisers would have to create different .mp4 files for each creative variant they wanted to produce -- each encapsulated within their own unique 

. Creating multiple variations of video ads and trafficking numerous VAST tags was complex, labor-intensive, and expensive, which deterred many publishers from adopting it at scale. However, the rise of data-driven insights fueled a more significant demand for personalized CTV advertising, pushing the industry toward tools and platforms that could streamline this process.

Server-side ad insertion and growth of CTV users' base 

Server-side ad insertion (SSAI) is a technology that stitches together ads within a video stream before the stream loads on a user’s device.
From 2015 to 2020, server-side ad insertion gained significant traction in the Connected TV (CTV) market. As CTV adoption snowballed, SSAI emerged as a preferred method for delivering seamless ad experiences. During this period, the technology matured, offering benefits such as improved user experience, ad-blocking prevention, and increased viewability. By 2020, SSAI had become a crucial component in the CTV advertising ecosystem, with the CTV user base reaching 203 million in the United States alone. 

Stage 3: Acceleration and transformation (2020 - Present)

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of CTV, with audiences flocking to streaming services for at-home entertainment. As traditional TV viewership declined, streaming platforms surged, prompting publishers to launch their own streaming apps and, years later, self-serve ad platforms. This shift made CTV a crucial avenue for advertisers to capture fragmented audiences. 

 reports noted an overall increase in CTV ad views and ad spending as a direct result of the pandemic-driven boom in streaming.

AI-driven creative and dynamic personalization

The rise of AI in the 2020s has revolutionized ad personalization. With tools like Waymark, Veed.io, and HeyGen, advertisers can now produce ad variations for different audience segments in minutes. AI-driven ads allow brands to test and optimize campaigns in real-time, customizing elements like visuals, language, and tone to suit various demographics. As noted in the FreeWheel report, this adaptability has made dynamic creative personalization achievable and economically viable for advertisers aiming to maximize engagement.

The emergence of shoppable ads and enhanced interactivity

Interactive ads have taken an interesting turn with the introduction of shoppable ads, designed to make it easy for viewers to engage directly with products on-screen through QR codes or clickable elements. However, while these ads are heralded as innovations that “blur the line between entertainment and retail,” there’s reason to approach them with a critical eye. The concept may feel fresh, but it’s more of an evolved take on the age-old shopping channel model than a groundbreaking shift. As the retail media space matures, the true advantage of shoppable TV will come from aligning online and in-store experiences seamlessly. This approach has proven effective for retail giants like Walmart. Today’s shoppable ads go beyond novelty, turning passive viewers into active consumers and becoming essential components of a CTV campaign, but only when they’re executed with real audience value in mind.

Programmatic advancements and the shift to private marketplaces

As advertisers increased their CTV budgets, programmatic technology became more sophisticated, with a clear shift towards private marketplaces and programmatic guaranteed deals. According to 

 2024 Video Marketplace Report, programmatic views increased by 15% in the U.S. and 41% in Europe, underscoring the growing adoption of automated ad buying across CTV and other video platforms. This movement toward programmatic buying has allowed advertisers to target audiences precisely while minimizing fraud and maximizing ad quality.

ACR technology has become integral to CTV, enabling advertisers to glean real-time insights into what viewers are watching. With 

 and planning tools, ACR has created a privacy-compliant framework that gives advertisers hyper-relevant insights for planning and competitive analysis. The rise of ACR has elevated targeting capabilities, allowing advertisers to engage viewers based on content and behavior without violating privacy regulations.

At Simulmedia, we leverage enriched ACR data to offer 

advanced media planning and intelligence tools

, enabling advertisers to make data-driven decisions with greater confidence and precision.

The challenges with SSAI’s structure and ad fraudsters

Since 2020, Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) has become a fixture in the CTV market, delivering seamless ads with high viewability and completion rates. However, SSAI’s structure makes it an attractive target for fraudsters, with ad fraud impressions surging by 220%. Schemes like ParrotTerra exploit SSAI’s benefits to siphon ad spend, creating challenges for verification due to SSAI’s layer between the tech stack and the viewer’s device. The industry is intensifying its defenses, employing advanced fraud detection, IAB standards, and cybersecurity partnerships to safeguard ad integrity. While challenges persist, SSAI’s value remains pivotal in the CTV landscape.

The evolution continues: where CTV is headed next

In the heyday of TV’s golden age, advertising success meant throwing your brand in front of the masses, hoping some of it would stick. You’d pay top dollar to land a spot during 

 betting on prime time to make prime impressions. Fast forward to 2024, and Connected TV has turned this model on its head, with precision so sharp it’s practically surgical.

Today, a winning CTV ad doesn’t need millions of eyeballs; it needs the right ones. In minutes, AI can generate a custom spot that speaks directly to your ideal viewers—people interested in your offering. And thanks to real-time data, we’re no longer stuck watching from the sidelines. We’re adapting, testing, and optimizing on the fly.

The game has shifted from grand gestures to smart strategy, and it’s a landscape that rewards bold moves and quick pivots. The world of TV advertising is changing at the speed of streaming, and if you’re tuned in, you’re already halfway to winning. So, let’s stay sharp, stay agile, and keep our fingers on the pulse—because the future of TV is here, and it’s just getting started.

Explore CTV's evolution: from OTT’s start to today’s AI-driven, interactive ads—a timeline of tech shaping the future of targeted TV advertising.

Rewriting TV Advertising: A Historical Overview of the CTV Industry

 has been the gold standard for TV ratings for decades, guiding media buyers and advertisers in tracking audience performance. However, 

 Global’s recent decision to move away from Nielsen in favor of VideoAmp signals a significant shift in TV ad measurement—and it could reshape the industry.

While TV networks have explored alternative measurement providers like iSpot, Comscore, and VideoAmp, these tools have mostly been used alongside Nielsen. Paramount’s decision, however, represents one of the first instances where a major network has chosen to operate without Nielsen—at least for now fully. This could set the stage for alternative measurement tools to compete more directly with Nielsen, offering networks and advertisers more flexibility in how they track and value audience engagement.

Paramount’s decision came after contract negotiations with Nielsen broke down over pricing issues. John Halley, Paramount’s Chief Advertising Officer, explained that Nielsen’s costs had "quintupled over significant parts of [their] business," making the current pricing model unsustainable. This echoes a broader sentiment across the industry: many networks have grown frustrated with the rising costs and perceived limitations of Nielsen’s services.

While Paramount has expressed a willingness to resolve the dispute and potentially return to Nielsen, their immediate focus is on VideoAmp for viewership data. This move highlights the industry's growing appetite for more cost-effective, flexible measurement solutions.

The broader implications for TV measurement

Paramount’s decision underscores two key trends shaping the future of TV measurement:

A new competitive landscape for measurement currencies:

This shift doesn’t suggest that Nielsen will cease to be a major currency, but it does lay the groundwork for alternative measurements to be considered true competitors. If Paramount successfully conducts business without Nielsen, it could inspire other networks to follow suit, accelerating the adoption of alternative currencies like VideoAmp. As these tools become more prominent, they could offer more tailored insights, giving advertisers a clearer picture of audience engagement and ad performance.

Pressure for cost-effective solutions and innovation:

Paramount’s frustration with Nielsen isn’t unique. Other networks may face similar pressures to seek alternative tools that provide more granular insights at a lower cost. As the industry evolves, networks and advertisers may gravitate toward measurement solutions that offer more flexibility and the ability to fine-tune campaigns in real-time.

For media buyers, Paramount’s break from Nielsen is an important reminder that the measurement landscape is evolving. While Nielsen remains the dominant player, alternative currencies are gaining traction, and buyers will likely encounter a mix of measurement tools in the near future.

Staying informed about these shifts will be crucial, as buyers may need to adjust their strategies to account for multiple measurement standards. Tools like VideoAmp offer the potential for more detailed, flexible insights, helping media buyers optimize ad spend and better understand viewer behavior across platforms.

Paramount’s move away from Nielsen doesn’t necessarily mark the end of Nielsen’s reign, but it does highlight the growing momentum behind alternative currencies. As more networks explore these options, the industry could see a more competitive, diverse measurement landscape where Nielsen is no longer the default choice.

This shift is an opportunity for media buyers. As alternative measurement tools continue to develop and compete with Nielsen, they could offer new ways to track and optimize campaigns, leading to better outcomes and a more nuanced understanding of audience engagement.

Ultimately, while Nielsen’s influence will likely continue, Paramount’s decision signals that the future of TV measurement may be more dynamic than ever before. Adapting to these changes and staying open to alternative tools will be key to delivering data-driven results in this new era of TV advertising.

Paramount's break from Nielsen highlights rising costs and growing demand for more flexible, cost-effective TV measurement tools

A Rise of Alternative Currencies Era: Paramount's Break with Nielsen and What It Means for the Industry

Let's face it: sticking to outdated methods in 

 (CTV) is like running a marathon in flip-flops. Sure, it might get you somewhere, but it won't get you there fast—or in one piece. The reality? Innovation is not a luxury; it's a necessity. Let's take a look at 

. The brave who embrace these new tools win, while the rest fall further behind. And if you're still running your campaigns like it's 2005, you're bleeding money.

 are already reaping the rewards: sharper targeting, better engagement, and stronger results. The bottom line is clear—if you aren't innovating, you're losing.

More on how the industry has changed over the last 40 years, you can find in the 

So, what are these groundbreaking streaming innovations, and how can they supercharge your streaming advertising strategy? Let's explore.

Artificial intelligence has moved from a buzzword to an essential tool in Connected TV (CTV) advertising. As CTV platforms continue to expand and diversify, advertisers face the challenge of reaching fragmented audiences across various streaming services. AI is critical in simplifying this complexity by making ad creation smarter, faster, and more adaptive.

Today’s advanced AI tools, such as Waymark and 

, enable you to create CTV ad videos in minutes, eliminating the traditional need for long production cycles and manual edits. These platforms give advertisers full control over the creative process: you simply provide the core message, select a style (e.g., entertainment or business), choose the tone, pick music, and specify technical details like length and visual identity. The service quickly generates a professional video, with the ability to create multiple versions for testing different audience preferences. It also isn’t limited by the laws of physics or reality, allowing for incredible shots, alternate realities, gravity-defying environments, and a range of other difficult concepts.

How AI-powered ad creation solves fragmentation in CTV:

: If your ad matches the genre of movie or TV show you are targeting, the chances of success are growing. So the contextually-relevant ad means that viewers see a sci-fi version of your ad when watching 

 or the ad or home improvement application shown during some home-related reality shows, and the ad of your kitchen utensils shop runs when viewers admire Gordon Ramzi creating his culinary masterpieces.

 AI allows you to produce personalized ads for different audience segments across CTV efficiently. Whether you’re targeting families on one platform or sports enthusiasts on another, you can adjust the tone, style, and messaging of your ads to better resonate with specific viewer groups. This helps you overcome the challenge of fragmentation and deliver more relevant experiences.

 With AI tools, advertisers can generate multiple versions of a CTV ad—such as one designed for an educational tone and another for an entertainment-focused approach—and test them in real time across various streaming platforms. This rapid feedback loop lets you optimize campaigns quickly, maximizing effectiveness while keeping pace with the ever-evolving CTV ecosystem.

 AI-driven ad creation tools allow advertisers to produce multiple, tailored ads for different audiences and platforms. Instead of relying on one generic ad, AI enables you to craft personalized messages that resonate with specific viewers, improving engagement and effectiveness. This adaptability is key to navigating the complexity of the CTV landscape, where quick adjustments and targeted approaches are critical to success.

By embracing AI-driven ads, you can stay ahead of the curve in CTV, delivering smarter, faster, and stronger campaigns that break through the fragmentation and reach audiences precisely.

Automated content recognition: next-level audience insights

One of the publishers' best tools in the CTV space is Automated Content Recognition (ACR). ACR technology identifies exactly what content is being watched on connected devices, from hit TV shows to major movies, and it does so in real time. By analyzing audio, video, and images, ACR delivers a wealth of valuable insights into viewer behavior.

 adds another layer of precision, as it enables seamless data sharing across platforms while remaining fully privacy-compliant. These innovations work together to offer advertisers a powerful way to optimize their campaigns, ensuring their ads reach the right audience, at the right time, in the most effective way.

 ACR enables hyper-relevant, context-driven ads, helping advertisers connect with viewers at the perfect moment. This precision enhances engagement and allows you to reach those hard-to-find cord-cutters who are increasingly moving away from traditional TV.

Programmatic tech: smarter spending, better results

Programmatic technology has completely transformed how ads are bought and sold in the CTV space, but not all programmatic auctions are created equally. While the open market offers flexibility, it's also rife with bad actors and requires extra vigilance to avoid fraud and wasted spending. In contrast, private marketplaces (PMPs) — especially when working directly with trusted publishers—are far safer and offer higher-quality inventory. Though CTV is not yet supply-constrained like linear TV, this will likely change as ad spending catches up with viewer time spent on CTV. When that happens, premium inventory will shift towards PMPs and programmatic guaranteed deals that offer more control over pricing and delivery.

Programmatic technology enables you to target audiences more precisely, ensuring that your ads reach the right people at the right time. This improves the effectiveness of your campaigns and allows for better budget allocation. The result? Smarter, more efficient ad buys that maximize reach and minimize waste, giving you a competitive edge in the evolving CTV landscape.

Privacy-compliant targeting: precision without compromise

Targeting in CTV is undergoing a significant transformation as the privacy landscape continues to tighten. While IP addresses and device IDs have been commonly used for targeting, they are not fully privacy-compliant. Many experts predict governments will soon classify IP addresses as personally identifiable information (PII). As a result, relying on these methods may expose your campaigns to regulatory risk and damage consumer trust.

To stay ahead, advertisers must shift towards privacy-compliant targeting solutions like pseudonymization, where PII is hashed to protect user identities. However, hashing personal data isn't a foolproof method for ensuring privacy. Hashes can still be traced back to individuals, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been cracking down on companies that misuse this approach, citing cases where hashed data was re-identified, compromising user privacy.

Publishers may need to do more in the long run to ensure compliance, as the FTC has shown that even hashed data can lead to privacy violations if not handled properly. The future of targeting is moving towards more privacy-centric methods, such as panel-based seeding, probabilistic lookalikes, and contextual targeting. These probabilistic methods allow for precise audience targeting without directly handling sensitive data.

Automated optimization: the key to precision and performance

With the complexity of budget allocation across target audiences, platforms, and time slots, manual optimization becomes increasingly inefficient and prone to error. This is where automated systems like Simulmedia's TV+'s 

APO dynamically allocates spending across key parameters, such as daypart and streaming app, to ensure your campaign delivers the right message at the right time. The beauty of more advanced automated optimization capabilities lies in its ability to set multiple objectives to balance and optimize throughout the customer journey, from raising awareness in the upper funnel to driving conversions at the bottom, using multi-objective settings. This kind of precision allows you to make the most of your ad budget without constant manual intervention.

Thanks to APO, three things will be the keys to a successful CTV ad strategy.

 as APO focuses on when audiences are most engaged, ensuring your ads are shown at the right time for maximum impact.

 ensures ad spend goes where it drives the best performance, improving efficiency and results.

 helps advertisers understand and verify performance while reducing uncertainty for more confident decision-making.

Brandformance: where brand building meets performance in CTV

Are you still thinking that you can use Google Ads approach in Connected TV? Exclusively focusing on driving up conversions and driving down cost-per-conversion are the only things that matter. Those days are gone. One of the most significant innovative approaches to transforming Connected TV advertising is the rise of 

—a blend of brand awareness and performance marketing. Branding and measurable results matter more than ever, brandformance has become a critical tool for advertisers. The most fantastic thing is that with CTV ads, brands can engage audiences at every stage of the funnel, from creating emotional connections with immersive, story-driven ads to driving measurable actions like site visits and conversions.

Using CTV for brandformance builds awareness and pushes viewers down the funnel with targeted, actionable content that leads to conversions. Traditional TV has always been great at driving broad-based awareness, and with CTV's digital origins, performance-based acquisition is far more easily measured. Leveraging CTV for both (a holistic perspective) smartly recognizes that their audiences are in different stages in their journey. This holistic strategy strengthens every stage of the customer journey, creating a seamless loop where awareness, consideration, and conversion feed into one another, driving more impactful and efficient campaigns.

The innovations transforming CTV aren't just buzzwords — they're powerful tools that can elevate your advertising strategy. According to Comscore reserch that was published in

, only 13% of ad viewing time occurs on streaming devices — 87% still occurs on cable and broadcast. This means, that your CTV ad ad must be as competitive as possible, impress, capture attention and give an incredible experience. 

Sure, your first AI-generated ad, created from a script you uploaded to a video-creation tool, might feel rough around the edges. But here's the advantage: you'll be ahead of the curve. While others are still learning from their early missteps, you'll already be mastering the process.

Discover how streaming innovations in CTV can elevate your advertising strategy with smarter targeting, better engagement, and enhanced performance

Streaming Innovation is No Longer Optional. CTV’s Guarantee of Survival

A version of this was originally featured on ANA.

 (CTV) is rapidly emerging as a dominant force in the advertising landscape, blending the best features of traditional TV and digital channels. However, as CTV gains traction, a concerning trend is surfacing—many marketers are treating CTV primarily as a digital performance channel. This approach is often driven by the fact that CTV budgets come from digital allocations, leading to a narrow focus on immediate, quantifiable results, much like in digital advertising.

This performance-centric mindset mirrors past digital missteps, where overemphasizing short-term 

 leads to diminishing returns. By focusing too heavily on immediate outcomes, marketers risk missing out on CTV’s broader, long-term advantages. The key question is: how can marketers leverage CTV’s unique strengths while avoiding performance overkill? A more balanced approach that drives results while building lasting brand value is essential.

The Digital Mindset’s Impact on CTV Strategy

Many digital marketers approach CTV advertising with a mindset shaped by paid search and paid social experiences. These channels are built around performance-driven models, where success is measured by immediate actions like clicks and conversions. They carry this narrow focus to CTV, prioritizing short-term results over long-term brand-building.

In both paid search and social, the emphasis is on driving immediate outcomes—whether it’s capturing high-intent users through clicks or optimizing social ads for conversions. However, CTV operates differently. There’s no direct "click" in CTV; performance is gauged by how effectively the TV ad drives actions on other household devices, such as a website visit, made possible through vendors’ back-end device household graphs. The risk is that marketers, used to the immediacy of digital channels, may apply the same mindset to CTV, underestimating the medium’s potential for brand-building and long-term engagement.

Moreover, multi-touch attribution models, common in digital campaigns, can sometimes skew the perceived effectiveness of these channels. Practices like cookie bombing, where retargeting campaigns flood users with cookies to increase a channel’s conversion credit, deliberately gamed these attribution models. While some may not explicitly consider it 

, cookie bombing manipulates attribution models by inflating touchpoints, giving certain channels undue credit. This overemphasis on volume—pervasive in display advertising—often detracts from engagement quality and true contribution to brand growth. 

 is a legitimate strategy that allows brands to re-engage audiences. However, as CTV grows, there may be a temptation to adopt similar practices like cookie bombing, which favors inflating impressions to game attribution models at the expense of meaningful brand-building interactions.

Marketers must move beyond narrow digital performance metrics to tap into CTV's potential. By recognizing CTV as a powerful tool for both performance and brand-building, they can craft strategies that drive immediate results and foster long-term brand growth and loyalty.

Maximizing CTV’s Potential with a Full-Funnel, Brandformance Approach

Connected TV (CTV) offers a unique opportunity to blend traditional TV’s mass reach and emotional impact with digital advertising’s precision and measurability. To harness this potential, marketers should adopt a full-funnel strategy that integrates brand-building with performance marketing—a concept known as "

CTV’s versatility allows brands to engage audiences at every funnel stage. While digital channels like paid search and paid social excel at driving conversions, they face limitations in brand building. Paid search, primarily text-based, struggles to create emotional connections. Paid social has become increasingly expensive, and its long-term brand-building effectiveness remains uncertain. Social ads, often consumed on small mobile screens and shortened to fit fast-paced user-generated content, make it challenging to tell a rich brand story in just a few seconds. In contrast, CTV offers broad reach and the ability to use 15- or 30-second video ads that allow for deeper storytelling and emotional resonance while also supporting precise targeting to nurture and convert audiences lower in the funnel.

A full-funnel brandformance approach with CTV means investing in creative that resonates emotionally and suits the immersive viewing experience CTV provides. Viewers engage with content in a lean-back setting, often on the biggest screen in the house, enhancing message retention and brand recall—critical in a media environment where ads on other channels are easily skipped, scrolled past, or ignored.

Thanks to generative AI, producing high-quality 

 is now more accessible. This technology has lowered production costs, enabling even smaller advertisers to create stunning TV-ready videos. By leveraging CTV’s capabilities and these cost-effective tools, brands can craft campaigns that engage audiences across the entire funnel, from awareness to conversion.

 approach involves creating campaigns that drive immediate actions while building long-term brand equity. Effective brandformance in CTV requires balancing brand-building with performance metrics across the funnel. Upper-funnel efforts should maximize the campaign’s strategic audience reach, ensuring key potential customers are aware of or reminded of the brand. While 

 like brand lift and ad recall are valuable, they are often supplemental due to their slower collection process, which can limit real-time optimization—a digital strength.

Mid-funnel actions, such as site visits or app installs, nurture interest and guide prospects closer to conversion. Finally, lower-funnel optimization focuses on converting these engaged prospects into customers, with success measured through direct conversions—areas where paid search and social excel.

This comprehensive approach ensures that CTV effectively contributes to top-of-funnel awareness, mid-funnel consideration, and bottom-of-funnel conversions, creating a virtuous cycle in which each stage of the funnel reinforces the other.

Understanding the Halo Effect of TV Advertising

The "halo effect" of TV advertising is a compelling reason to integrate CTV into a full-funnel marketing strategy. Both traditional and streaming TV have consistently shown that the powerful combination of sight, sound, and motion on the big screen amplifies the effectiveness of other marketing channels. TV ads not only capture viewers’ attention in the moment but also boost brand recognition, making audiences more likely to engage with the brand across platforms like paid search and social.

This halo effect occurs because TV’s broad reach and emotional resonance significantly enhance brand awareness and recall, which in turn improves the performance of other channels. For instance, after watching a TV ad, consumers are more inclined to search for the brand online, interact with social media ads, or click on paid search results.

While this effect is more challenging to measure than direct response metrics, it is quantifiable through 

 campaign, as they measure how TV exposure drives key actions like site visits or clicks on organic, paid search, and social ads. They provide a gold-standard method for understanding CTV’s impact on the broader marketing ecosystem.

Best Practices for Implementing a Successful Brandformance Strategy in CTV Campaigns

To effectively incorporate brandformance into a well-formed 

, it's crucial to balance brand-building with performance metrics across the entire funnel. Here are key steps to guide your efforts:

Define specific goals for each funnel stage. In the upper funnel, focus on maximizing the reach of your strategic audience to ensure potential customers are aware of or reminded of your brand. Mid-funnel campaigns should nurture interest through actions like site visits or app installs, while lower-funnel efforts should target direct conversions.

Use compelling video content to capitalize on CTV’s immersive experience. Generative AI tools have made high-quality video production more affordable, enabling even smaller brands to create ads that resonate emotionally and capture attention.

 to measure the true impact of your CTV campaigns on other channels, such as site visits or clicks on paid search and social ads. These studies provide critical insights for optimizing your strategy by quantifying how TV exposure enhances overall marketing performance.

 Regularly monitor performance data and make dynamic adjustments. Real-time optimization lets you respond quickly to audience behaviors, ensuring that each funnel stage aligns with your objectives and contributes to campaign success.

By following these best practices, you can maximize the impact of your CTV campaigns, ensuring they drive immediate actions and build long-term brand equity. A comprehensive Brandformance strategy ensures each funnel stage reinforces the others, creating a sustainable cycle of engagement, consideration, and conversion.

Marketers must shift from a narrow performance-focused mindset to leverage CTV's potential for both brand-building and immediate results.

The Pitfalls of Performance Obsession in Connected TV Advertising

Everything is everywhere, all at once. This movie title best describes an omnichannel marketing campaign.

Building a successful ad strategy today means covering all touchpoints with your potential and existing customers. This includes interactions in all stages—from awareness to purchase via websites, socials, emails, YouTube mobile apps, and TV (both Connected and linear). Even offline presence matters.

Covering all marketing channels is definitely challenging and requires high budgets, so why is it worth the time, money, and effort?

 No matter where customers are looking for information, you are there, ready to support, explain, and interact. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

 Customers who interact with brands across multiple touchpoints in an integrated, multichannel marketing campaign tend to engage more deeply and are often more valuable.

 Omnichannel marketing can increase conversion rates by providing relevant content at each stage of the buyer's journey, as customers receive timely information that influences their purchasing decisions.

: Consistent messaging and personalized experiences foster trust and loyalty among customers, making them more likely to choose the brand over competitors.

Let’s examine the different stages of the customer journey to understand how TV ads can be included in every stage.

 At the top of the funnel, TV ads introduce the brand, educate the audience, and establish brand characteristics or value propositions. The creative focus is on conveying the brand’s story, feel, and differentiators without requiring immediate action. It's about getting the brand in front of a broad audience and building recognition.

 In the middle funnel, TV ads pivot to more detailed messaging, emphasizing why the product or brand is superior to others on the market. This stage reinforces the reasons that make the brand or product unique and aims to persuade the audience to consider the brand over competitors.

 As potential customers move down the funnel, the creative includes stronger calls-to-action (CTAs), such as QR codes, strong calls-to-action, and specific website links, to drive direct action. The goal is to encourage immediate response and make it easy for viewers to take the next step, reducing friction and pushing toward a purchase decision.

How to attribute TV Campaigns in a multichannel world

There are a few approaches that can help with this issue.

Multi-touch attribution vendors with proper device graphs.

 CTV campaigns must work with attribution vendors with robust household and device graphs. These vendors should be able to navigate multiple devices and tie TV exposure to other digital activities, such as desktop or mobile behaviors.

 Marketers should ensure the correct attribution model is being used. TV ads are rarely the "last touch" before conversion; therefore, models that only credit the last touch (e.g., paid search or social click-throughs) may not reflect the actual impact of TV exposure.

 One of the most effective ways to attribute TV campaign results is by conducting 

 These studies isolate the population that has seen the TV ad from those who haven't while ensuring other marketing channels are equally distributed across both groups. By comparing the differences in behaviors between these populations, marketers can measure the lift and impact TV has on website visits, conversions, and other desired outcomes. This method captures the "halo effect" that TV advertising can have on other marketing channels, providing a more holistic view of its contribution to the overall campaign performance.

Smart budget allocation for TV and beyond

Start with your goals when planning your TV ad budget using an omnichannel strategy. Know what audience reach you want—whether 30% of a broad target demographic or 50% of niche enthusiasts. This will guide how much of the budget is allocated to TV.

Next, analyze where your audience spends their time. If they tend to be older, allocate more to linear TV. Younger audiences will be interested in connected TV and social media. Use forecasting tools to see how your TV budget fits within your overall strategy.

Think of your strategy as building a house: TV forms the strong foundation for brand awareness, and other channels layer on top for mid and lower-funnel activities. Balance your budget so TV enhances all channels without overshadowing them, and adjust as you see the results unfold.

Maximize TV impact without annoying your audience

Focus on maintaining frequency balance to optimize TV ad spend without causing overlap or ad fatigue. Overexposure to one channel, such as showing the same TV ad to a viewer multiple times within the same hour, can lead to irritation. However, overlapping across multiple channels isn’t necessarily negative unless egregiously overdone.

The key is to ensure that each channel supports a unified campaign strategy. All touchpoints—from TV to digital ads—should carry the same messaging and feel like they’re coming from one brand voice. This integrated approach strengthens your message without confusing or annoying your audience, making it more impactful and less likely to cause ad fatigue.

Also, remember that different channels complement each other. Seeing your brand deliver the same message across TV, social media, and banner ads can reinforce the message without feeling repetitive, as long as each placement feels contextually relevant and not overwhelming.

Discover how adding TV to your omnichannel marketing strategy can boost engagement, conversions, and brand loyalty.

What is Omnichannel Marketing? The Bold Move You Need to Make TV Work for You

Market growth always brings new opportunities for advertisers, and 

 (CTV) is no exception. As streaming services become the go-to choice for viewers, this shift is driving a significant increase in CTV ad spending—a trend poised to accelerate.

According to eMarketer, U.S. CTV advertising spending is expected to nearly double over the next five years, from $24.6 billion in 2023 to $42.4 billion by 2027.

This surge reflects the rise in CTV viewership and the changing landscape of video consumption. During Q2, 2024, U.S. consumer spending on video services grew by 1.2%, with streaming services seeing a remarkable 27% increase. (data from 

). Meanwhile, traditional pay TV continued its decline, signaling new CTV challenges for some advertisers (at the same time digital-firs advertisers will likely embrace it) as traditional TV's penetration rate drops below 50% of U.S. households.

However, market growth doesn’t just create new opportunities—it also intensifies competition. Staying ahead in the CTV space means understanding what will shape the future of connected TV and how to build a successful CTV ad strategy for the years ahead.

First, let’s talk about the trends that are here to stay.

As we look ahead, it’s clear that certain patterns in the Connected TV (CTV) space persist and accelerate. The numbers tell the story—consumer spending on streaming services is rising, and advertisers are increasingly leaning into CTV's advanced targeting capabilities. Streaming apps are nudging consumers to 

 and increasing ad loads. But what does this mean for the future of your campaigns?

We’ve analyzed the data, and based on these insights, here are our key predictions for what’s next in CTV. Let’s dive into the trends that are driving the future of connected TV and how they will continue to shape the landscape.

The future is personalized: targeting and engagement in CTV

Ad personalization in Connected TV advertising transforms how brands engage with audiences, offering tailored experiences that resonate more deeply with viewers.

Making generalizations based on broad demographics and reminding them about a previous purchase is not enough anymore. You need to understand much more—life stage, the number of family members, current needs, etc. As consumers seek content tailored to their preferences, CTV’s advanced algorithms and user-friendly interfaces provide personalized viewing experiences that meet this demand, further fueling market growth.

, 84% of advertisers believe that CTV offers superior targeting capabilities compared to traditional TV, Now they can leverage advanced targeting techniques, including demographic, geographic, behavioral, and contextual targeting, to deliver personalized ad experiences at the right time for the right viewers with the message that works best for them.

The rise of data-driven insights in CTV allows advertisers to track and analyze viewer interactions, allowing for real-time campaign optimization. Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) further enhances personalization by tailoring ads based on viewer data, such as local weather, time of day, or specific interests.

However, it’s crucial to develop a strategy that reaches a broader audience—helping to enhance brand awareness and visibility and discover new customer segments—while still maintaining a personalized approach. Balancing outcomes, relevance, and reach will be critical for staying competitive in this evolving landscape. As a result, the “

” approach is set to continue growing in popularity.

Why programmatic buying is the new normal

 model is increasingly viewed as rigid and outdated, primarily due to its lack of flexibility. In a rapidly evolving world, adapting strategies to current events is critical for success. Once ad space is secured through upfront deals, it becomes challenging to adjust campaigns based on real-time factors such as product launch delays, shifts in consumer behavior, or unexpected market changes.

Advertisers are now seeking continuous, data-driven planning that allows for real-time adjustments, aligning more closely with the demands of modern marketing strategies. This shift towards programmatic buying reflects a broader trend toward agility and responsiveness in advertising.

As programmatic advertising gains traction in CTV, its appeal lies in the ability to automate and optimize ad buying using real-time data. This approach not only enhances efficiency but also enables advertisers to refine their campaigns based on performance metrics. As technology advances, programmatic CTV is poised to become the dominant method for purchasing ad inventory, offering the flexibility and agility that modern advertisers require.

Metrics that matter: measuring what counts in CTV

As CTV evolves, advertisers emphasize measurement and analytics to evaluate campaign performance. However, it’s not enough to simply track a list of metrics like 

 (cost per thousand), CPA (cost per action), or CPR (cost per unique reach) every month. Success depends on understanding which metrics are most valuable to your specific goals and knowing which ones may not warrant as much attention.

This approach helps focus on data-driven insights, enabling advertisers to make smarter decisions and optimize their strategies for better results. You can learn more about how to build your ideal TV ad strategy using 

—along with a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of different metrics

Developing standardized measurement practices tailored specifically to your needs will help unify CTV with other digital advertising channels. This allows advertisers to track performance more consistently across platforms, leading to more informed decisions and more effective strategies.

CTV ads for all brands and why watch sci-fi? Our predictions for CTV’s evolution

Explore the future of Connected TV: emerging trends, personalized targeting, and strategies to maximize your CTV ad campaigns.

Unlock winning holiday strategies! Get insights on AI, TV ads, and more in our free e-book.

Guide for pharma marketers

Key Challenges:

Simulmedia’s Solutions:

Unique Advantages:

Conclusion:

Key Features: