CTV

Netflix touts sharper targeting, but buyers say its black-box approach – especially the lack of usable IP data – is blunting measurement and quietly pushing performance-driven spend elsewhere.

Walmart will buy Vibe.co, a self-serve video ad platform, in hopes of attracting more small and medium-sized advertisers to connected TV.

Everyone’s investing in AppsFlyer; NBCU launches Rock Studios, a creative studio for brand integrations; and Meta wants to hop on the TV bandwagon.

DSP-only buying puts brands at risk of missing most of the TV marketplace. Tatari’s CRO, Andy Schonfeld, explains why that strategy is wrong.

Amazon is making a splash at Cannes by touting recent Fire TV interface upgrades designed to help viewers find relevant content more easily, including when they are watching the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

For the first time, Omnicom can directly compare ad frequency and performance across multiple major streamers, which typically prefer to keep data locked inside their walled gardens.

The future of TV isn’t traditional vs. CTV. Rather, it’s a partnership of two sides. Fox and Roku represent this convergence.

The Trade Desk is muscling its way into the TV operating system business with its Ventura OS – but the real story isn’t the product itself. It’s what TTD’s ambitions reveal about conflicts of interest within the industry and the inherent mismatch between consumer and advertiser needs.

The broadcast and streaming worlds are being pulled together by a wave of major M&A, from Fox’s $22 billion acquisition of Roku to Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. TV Land, naturally, is watching closely.

Every time an ID hops from platform to platform, it gets less accurate – and in programmatic, there are a heck of a lot of hops.

Some DOJ staffers wanted to challenge the Paramount/WBD merger on antitrust grounds; ad tech M&A is poised to pick up; and social media marketers want to normalize controversial clipping.

Papa Johns tapped NBCUniversal, Instacart and the dentsu-owned media agency Carat for help reaching consumers when they’re low on groceries – and thus more likely to be swayed by a mouth-watering ad.

It’s long felt like a foregone conclusion that Roku would eventually get gobbled up by a much bigger fish. Now, the day has finally arrived.

To close the gap between digital audio ad spend and audience engagement, audio platforms want to get more deeply embedded in omnichannel campaign planning tools.

How can companies put ads in new places without hurting the user experience? Smart TV makers, like Samsung, are adding programmatic ads to the home screen, and Roblox will now show ads to users under 13. We examine the trade-offs as platforms expand their ad footprint.

In digital advertising, if you haven’t planned your event-based campaigns several months – or more – before the event takes place, it’s usually too late.

Samsung Ads is making its home screen ads available programmatically, the company announced on Wednesday.

Advertisers can target high- and medium-attention ad inventory in Amazon DSP while filtering out low-attention placements and made-for-advertising sites.

Marketers and media buyers are gradually getting more comfortable talking about ad campaigns they’re testing on large-language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

In Connected TV Ad Land, proving performance is the priority for video advertisers. To drive more demonstrable reach and results, publishers are trying to expand their reach while wringing more data and AI features into their offerings. 

Connected TV has entered a new phase.

For years, the channel was primarily a reach vehicle, a way to follow audiences as viewing shifted from linear TV to streaming. That migration has reached critical mass. Audiences are engaged across CTV, and advertiser dollars are following. According to eMarketer, US CTV ad spending is projected to reach $53.42 billion, reflecting continued double-digit growth as streaming outpaces linear TV.

As performance takes center-stage in more advertising discussions, demands to solve fragmentation and cruddy measurement are reaching a fever pitch.

To squeeze the most juice out of their live sports campaigns, many marketers are adopting programmatic buying and marketing mix modeling, both of which are also drawing more advertisers to the digital live sports cornucopia.

Performance CTV tech company Keynes launched an AI-powered platform. Tuckernuck says it can finally “pop open the hood” and see what’s working.

The FAST channel ecosystem is providing advertisers with a sandbox (no, not that sandbox) to test new CTV formats, targeting tools and programmatic buying methods.

TV piracy of sports streams is siphoning away millions of viewers. Then: Vox Media and BuzzFeed found new owners this spring, punctuating the end of the pageview era.

Roku unveiled its new home screen, which includes new features designed to further personalize the home screen experience for each viewer.

Email targeting in CTV has a credibility problem as buyers and sellers question whether one-to-one identity even fits a channel built for broader reach.

At AdExchanger’s Programmatic AI conference, media experts discussed how the rise of AI-generated content is changing the industry’s understanding of “premium” content.

Coming back from POSSIBLE last month, one thing stood out to me: Streaming TV has entered a much more operational phase. The conversation has evolved from where streaming is headed to how marketers drive better performance today. The content and conversations focused on how AI can improve campaign execution, how data can sharpen targeting and measurement and how channels work together within broader omnichannel strategies.