CTV

YouTube is winning the CTV race by not just focusing on TV; ads threaten the gen AI user experience; and sports still brings brands incremental reach.

You’d think the United States Congress would have bigger things to worry about right now than figuring out where and when football games are airing… and yet.

Viant is on an M&A tear, with two acquisitions – IRIS.TV followed by lockr – in less than six months. Although the rationale behind these deals might be obvious to ad tech insiders, Wall Street investors speak a different language, one that Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook has become fluent in as the leader of a publicly traded company.

Magnite’s SpringServe deal illustrates why SSPs need a video ad server; Google grapples with AI search’s impact on publisher traffic; and Anthropic’s AI assistant is a law enforcement snitch.

Even with the amazing storylines, this NBA season brought a steep decline in local TV viewership. While it’s tempting to frame this as waning fan interest, these drops are symptoms of a media ecosystem in transition.

Will programmatic buying inevitably lead to a repeat on CTV of what happened with digital media publishers? We asked Roku, Tubi and NCBU that question on stage at our Programmatic IO event in Las Vegas.

OMD’s Emily Proctor outlined the criteria the ad agency uses to evaluate alt IDs. She also shared which five IDs OMD uses most often and why.

TV dealmaking has shifted to “always-on” models; “activation” is a classic bit of ad jargon; ChatGPT is sending more traffic to publisher.

PubMatic’s new AI curation features are helping it forge closer relationships with ad agencies like GroupM that are ramping up their use of AI.

Amazon Prime Video rolls out new audience and contextual targeting; streamers wring more revenue from subscription-weary consumers; and AI is an app, so it must obey Google and Apple.

The era of fragmented, adversarial ad tech is winding down. A new paradigm is emerging defined by AI-first, end-to-end platforms and collaboration among buyers and sellers.

LinkedIn has been investing in video like nobody’s business. Lindsey Edwards, VP of product management, takes us inside the company’s video strategy, which now includes CTV ads and a creator rev share program. Plus: Why LinkedIn decided to host its first NewFronts presentation this year.

Now that all the dust and confetti has settled after the upfronts, negotiations between marketers, agencies, networks and streamers are only just getting started.

Amid the glitz of TV upfront presentations, advertising executives take the stage to talk about things like new audience targeting capabilities or to ballyhoo new ad measurement partnerships. How, though, are we supposed to focus on brand lift statistics when we can all hear Lady Gaga belting a vocal warmup offstage?

Political advertisers, by necessity, have built precise, privacy-conscious targeting strategies that work without relying exclusively on third-party data like cookies.

The CFPB backtracks on plans to bar data brokers from selling financial data; Jamie Lee Curtis takes on Mark Zuckerberg over fake AI ads; and Gas Station TV drives traffic to Applebee’s.

If Netflix’s most recent upfront presentation is any indication, the third time must be the charm.

At Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation in New York City on Wednesday, Ad Sales co-presidents Ryan Gould and Bobby Voltaggio announced the launch of not one but two ad solutions: NEO and DemoDirect.

Over the past year, music video network Vevo has brought on more than 15 new SSP and DSP partners to help manage its growing inventory supply, including Yahoo DSP, FreeWheel, Magnite, Index Exchange and Nexxen.

Like a pumpkin turning into an elaborate stagecoach, Disney’s programmatic ad sales have grown rapidly in recent months.

Streaming is rapidly becoming a top performance channel for brands like NOBULL that are looking to drive outcomes up and down the funnel.

Instead of simply watching ads on the big screen, consumers are now being encouraged to interact with those ads – a shift in marketing that was particularly apparent at the 2025 NewFronts presentations in New York City this week.

If you felt a strange gust around 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, it was probably just the cumulative sighs of relief across Wall Street as The Trade Desk shook off its Q4 blues with a better-than-expected first quarter earnings report.

Shopify is growing its advertising and data business; the privacy train is slowing down; Roku is striking deals to make its data more accessible.

Paramount Global saw a 6% decline in total revenue and 19% decline in advertising revenue this past quarter compared to last year’s Q1 – which just so happens to be when CBS hosted the 2024 Super Bowl broadcast. 

For CTV advertisers, Warner Bros. Discovery’s first earnings report of the 2025 fiscal year was a bit of a mixed bag.

Does a connected TV DSP need lower take rates? Inside the battle among DSP’s to take on The Trade Desk’s dominant market position. Plus: an on-the-ground report from the TV Newfronts.

When it comes to third-party cookies on Chrome, Google’s plan to reverse course is neither here nor there, says Magnite CEO Michael Barrett. “Forget Privacy Sandbox,” Barrett said. “That thing was dead upon arrival.”

At NewFronts, marketers weigh new budget priorities under the Trump tariffs; The New York Times isn’t letting tariffs temper its 2025 outlook; and video podcasting is taking over CTV.

Disney had a good quarter, with revenue on the rise and streaming on the brain. Its DTC division, which houses its streaming business, is also growing and remains profitable.