Connected TV advertising is thriving, but the foundation below it is starting to crack.
Publishers produce the content that makes streaming valuable, yet they carry the heaviest burden and earn the smallest share. Meanwhile, OEMs and streamers have tightened control of distribution and data. What began as a basic imbalance between supply and demand has evolved into a structure where the largest intermediaries set the rules and everyone else plays by them.
Industry discussion often blames fraud, invalid traffic or unavoidable complexity. But confusion in CTV isn’t a natural byproduct of a maturing market; it’s an outcome of how distributors protect their pricing power. The result is a system that hides inefficiency behind opacity and leaves publishers footing the bill.
The underlying problem: A glut of supply
CTV inventory has multiplied over the past few years. FAST channels, OEM apps and new AVOD services have poured billions of impressions into the market, outpacing demand and pushing CPMs down. Price corrections are normal as markets expand, but many distributors haven’t absorbed them. Instead, they’ve changed the terms of participation to preserve their margins and control.
They’ve done so through contractual control of inventory, selective access to data and self-serving definitions of what counts as safe or direct supply. These practices make publisher inventory harder to find, value and transact, despite being identical in quality to what platforms sell themselves.
Hoarding inventory: Many OEMs and streamers take as much as half of a publisher’s ad inventory by contract. They aggregate that share, repackage it as premium direct supply and label the remainder as lower quality. The same audience, same content and same impression value are treated differently simply because one side controls the pipes.
Hoarding data: Platforms also decide which bidstream signals are visible. When impressions flow through their own auctions, data is abundant. That includes genre, device IDs, IP addresses and more. When publishers sell directly, those signals often disappear or are sold back to them on a per-parameter basis. Missing data depresses bid density and artificially lowers yield, even on quality inventory.
Defining what counts as safe and direct: Platforms further tilt the field by setting proprietary standards for what qualifies as addressable or premium. Two identical bid requests can be labeled differently depending on who sells them. In some cases, publishers must buy back their own impressions at inflated rates to meet direct campaign commitments. The appearance of complexity masks a simple fact: control dictates value.
How publishers absorb the impact
These conditions impose both operational and financial strain. Beyond serving and delivery costs, publishers must maintain app-ads.txt and sellers.json files, manage transaction IDs and handle IFAs consistently – even when platform rules limit them. Their remaining inventory is fragmented and stripped of identifiers, making DSP algorithms default to platform-controlled supply.
Platforms also retain first-party authentication data, such as the emails users provide when activating devices. That data gives them a lasting advantage in audience targeting and measurement, while publishers are locked out of those same capabilities. For endemic and mid-market advertisers seeking to buy directly from trusted publishers, the inventory simply isn’t available. Publishers can’t sell what they no longer control.
The broader market effect
In the short term, these tactics protect distributor revenue. In the long term, they weaken the entire ecosystem. By blocking publishers from serving endemic and local advertisers, whole categories of demand are sidelined. Oversupply combined with data scarcity devalues impressions, pushing CPMs lower even as buyers continue paying premiums to a few dominant intermediaries.
As transparency fades, the narrative of complexity justifies further consolidation. Platforms create the opacity that reinforces their dominance. Publishers, deprived of diverse demand, resort to filler or repetitive ads that erode viewer experience. That erosion ultimately reduces engagement and harms the very platforms driving the behavior.
The feedback loop is clear: Less transparency leads to less competition, which leads to poorer content economics and, over time, a weaker CTV market for everyone.
A more sustainable CTV
Rebalancing CTV requires restoring publisher agency and enforcing open, consistent standards for how inventory is represented and sold. Publishers should be able to pass the same data signals that platforms use without penalty or paywalls. Uniform standards for identifiers, transaction IDs and rights-based distribution must replace proprietary definitions of clean supply. Distribution splits should be transparent and auditable, with DSPs optimizing for clarity and outcomes rather than CPM efficiency alone.
True governance requires collaboration among publishers, OEMs, SSPs, DSPs and verification vendors. Unilateral control by the largest platforms cannot produce a healthy marketplace.
CTV now sits at a familiar crossroads. A decade ago, display advertising followed a similar path, where efficiency and safety became shorthand for consolidation. That consolidation raised costs for buyers, limited choice for publishers and degraded user experience. CTV is on the same trajectory unless the industry intervenes.
The better path is more complex but sustainable. It starts with transparency, shared technical standards and respect for publisher value. Complexity in CTV isn’t an inherent trait of the medium; it’s a business choice. And because it’s manufactured, it can be dismantled.
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
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