Hot Takes: The State Of CTV Advertising, October 2026
We have a new TVREV Special Report coming out next week on CTV Advertising, and so for our latest Hot Take, we asked our TVREV Thought Leaders Circle Member their thoughts on some of the hottest topics in CTV in our latest Hot Takes piece.
First up is Matt McLeggon, SVP, Advanced Solutions, at our sponsor, Magnite, who spoke to why TV advertising is fundamentally different than social video.
"TV is the only medium that combines full-screen sight, sound, and motion with undivided, lean-back attention. Social media captures fragmented micro-moments, but streaming TV delivers immersive storytelling in a prestigious, brand-safe environment. Connected TV has taken that traditional emotional power and added the intelligence of digital, allowing brands to build trust and massive household reach while remaining precise, accountable, and performance-driven."
Next up is Fariba Zamaniyan, Global SVP of Data Monetization at the report’s other sponsor, TiVo Ads, who spoke about the need to use data to not just inform, but to project.
We have spent years using TV viewing data primarily to describe what happened — what people watched, how many people watched it and how a campaign performed. One of the biggest untapped opportunities is using those signals to help decide what should happen next. Historically, different viewing signals have lived in different places. Set-top-box data provides a strong deterministic view of linear television viewing, while ACR adds visibility across Smart TV viewing environments. Each tells an important part of the story, but the real opportunity comes from bringing those signals together to create a more complete view of viewing behaviour. That is where we are investing at TiVo Ads. Our enhanced U.S. TV Viewership Data combines deterministic set-top-box data with ACR signals in a single, session-level feed across millions of U.S. households and devices, providing visibility across linear, AVOD and SVOD environments through a shared schema. Once you have that more holistic view, TV data can move beyond reporting and become much more actionable — informing incremental-reach strategies, audience creation, campaign planning, contextual activation, measurement and audience extension. I believe that shift from understanding what happened to informing what happens next is one of the biggest opportunities for our industry.
Tony Marlow, who is CMO at Genius Sports, focused on the ability to use contextual data in a live setting.
The next frontier of contextual advertising isn't just understanding what someone is watching. It's understanding what's happening in that moment, and why it matters to the viewer. Live sports is the ultimate example. A scoring moment, a dramatic comeback or an unexpected upset can completely change a fan's emotional state and receptiveness to a message in seconds. Yet most advertising still treats those moments as interchangeable. Genius Sports' advances in AI and real-time data are changing that, allowing brands to align their message with the context, emotion and momentum of the game, at scale. The result is advertising that responds to the game as intelligently as the fans watching it, ultimately allowing brands to better connect with fans. The future of CTV isn't simply reaching the right audience (which of course is critical). It is increasingly about reaching the right audience, with the right message, in the moments that matter.
Alex Kyle, Head of Ad Tech Products, PREMION looked at how to make CTV work for small and medium-sized businesses.
The biggest barrier to SMB adoption of CTV is proving value. Search and social have trained small businesses to expect a direct line from ad spend to results, and CTV has to meet the same standard by connecting campaigns to website visits, calls, and sales. Creative is the second barrier. AI has lowered production costs, but effective TV advertising still depends on expertise, so SMBs need partners who can turn cheaper production into high-performing creative. Complexity is the third. Time is a small business owner’s scarcest resource. Premion is simplifying CTV buying, targeting, and measurement so local advertisers can fold streaming into their broader marketing and show business impact. As these barriers fall, CTV can take a larger share of the performance budgets SMBs already spend on search and social.
Next up, Jesse Weinstein, Vice President, Strategic Platforms, Mediaocean, spoke about the challenges of overfrequency
“Frequency isn't a bad thing. Advertisers need repetition to make an impression, but there's a point where it stops helping. The challenge in CTV is that a household might see the same ad across several streaming services, with each platform counting those exposures separately. An advertiser can be within its frequency cap on every platform and still be reaching the same household too often. That’s a challenge for buyers and publishers alike. Advertisers want to reach more of their intended audience, while publishers want to deliver value for their advertising partners without compromising the viewing experience. Better visibility into reach and frequency across platforms helps both sides make smarter decisions about inventory, uncover opportunities for incremental reach, and improve campaign performance. A more coordinated approach benefits advertisers, publishers, and viewers.”
-Overfrequency and its corollary, ad fatigue were also top of mind for Taylor Stewart, VP, Growth & Emerging Channels at TripleLift
When we talk about advertising, the topic of ad fatigue often comes up. People are not overwhelmed by advertising, they are overwhelmed by irrelevant advertising. When my husband and I moved to Philadelphia and I was shopping for a car, I was served the same car manufacturer ad three times in one ad slot. I find this not only annoying as a customer, but it’s worse from a marketer standpoint. Making sure your ads are relevant to the end user and managing the frequency of ads solve for that.
Dan Callahan, CRO and SVP Sales, Spectrum Reach also had ad frequency—and how to keep it in check—on his mind last week.
“It has been a significant problem, and it’s mostly invisible. When you buy ads on streaming, service by service, the same households could get hit again and again while others are never reached. Frequency is wasted on the first group, and the second group is an audience you paid to find but missed. Both erode campaign efficiency and incremental reach. The fix is available today. Advertisers should work with media partners that plan across screens using household-level addressable data, backed by privacy-focused first-party viewership insights and a large, integrated source of premium inventory. That’s how you reach more households and waste less.”
Alok Band, Lead Product Manager for Ventura TV OS at The Trade Desk expounded on why he is so bullish on home screen ads.
Everyone’s debating how many ad formats viewers will be comfortable with. I think that’s the wrong question. People don’t mind ads so much as they mind seeing the same ones over and over. The home screen, the pause screen, the ad break: none of it feels like too much until nobody’s keeping track across them.
Keeping track means knowing it’s the same household, and right now most apps start from scratch. The TV already knows the household from setup, but that knowledge rarely makes it to the apps where the ads run, so advertisers, publishers and measurement partners end up guessing.
Carry that signal through and ad loads become something we manage together, instead of something we race each other on. Fewer repeats, more confidence in who you reached, and new formats that fit the viewing experience, instead of piling onto it.
V’s CEO, Guy Edri, spoke about how CTV is just TV and why it’s an ideal medium for small and medium-sized businesses.
"Let's stop calling it CTV. Almost every TV is connected today, so it's simply TV. And TV has a lure. Every small business owner I meet would love to see their brand on the biggest screen in the home. What happened on mobile is now happening on TV. Mobile opened advertising to every small business. Suddenly the local gym or restaurant could reach the people around them, with a small budget and real results. TV can now do the same, with all the impact of the big screen. What's missing are the systems: simple buying, easy creative, results they understand. That's what we're building. We recently ran the first trials of what we call V City, and the early results are promising. Put the systems in place, and this market can grow the way mobile did."
Measurement challenges were top-of-mind for Ioanna Protogiannis, Vice President of Measurement and Reporting Solutions at LG Ad Solutions
“We've become very good at measuring campaign delivery, how many households we reach and how often they're exposed to advertising. But those metrics only tell us part of the story. The more important question is what those impressions actually accomplish. Reaching a new household isn't automatically valuable, just as reaching the same household more than once isn't necessarily waste. It all depends on the advertiser's objective. That's why measurement needs to begin before a campaign launches, with a clearly defined outcome that informs how the campaign is planned, activated and evaluated. Independent validation and meaningful benchmarks provide the evidence advertisers need to assess performance against those objectives. The real shift is from proving that advertising was delivered to holding it accountable for the outcomes it was designed to achieve.”
Stuart Schwartzapfel, EVP of Media Partnerships, iSpot focused on a related topic—currency.
“The industry has long had reasons and opportunities to move away from traditional currency systems in the wake of media and consumer fragmentation and technological innovation, but at the same time measurement providers are not all alike and neither is their utility. Some rely on search signals. Some have issues incorporating big data sources. Some aren’t able to even measure households or key demos. It’s critical that media sellers understand not only the methodologies of each measurement provider, but the inputs themselves – as a way to understand what are often varied results. Having this context is critical to the market making the most-informed business decisions and reaching consumers where they are at and on what platform.”
Ria Madrid, VP, Global Advertising, at Wurl explained how contextual targeting could work in conjunction with traditional audience targeting.
"Contextual isn’t an alternative to audience targeting. It’s a 'yes, and.' Audience data tells you who is watching. Context tells you what they’re watching and provides a deeper understanding of the moments surrounding the ad placement. That’s where contextual offers a real advantage: adding both relevance and brand suitability insights without relying exclusively on personal data. Where it falls short is scaled access. Today, content signals aren’t consistently available or standardized across CTV, making it difficult for advertisers to activate these capabilities broadly. Once inventory starts to carry more complete and consistent signals, many other benefits will be realized. Outcomes will become easier to measure and compare across platforms. And since contextual data doesn’t depend on personal identifiers, it will hold up as privacy rules continue to tighten. Now it’s about connecting the best technologies, data, and inventory across the ecosystem so advertisers can actually put it to work – something we are particularly focused on solving for.”
Next up, Adam Gendelman, GM, WunderKIND Ads, make a plea for relevance on home screen ads.
“The risk isn’t too much advertising. It’s too much bad advertising. Viewers don’t resent an ad on the Home Screen or Pause Screen; they resent ads that interrupt, repeat endlessly or feel irrelevant. We think about advertising in the ethos of being non-invasive and non-disruptive to the user. The Home Screen is where people decide what to watch, so an ad there has to earn its place by being as relevant as the content tiles beside it. The platforms that get this right will treat new formats as part of the product, not extra inventory, with disciplined frequency and creative built for the format rather than a recycled :30. When done well, these formats don’t just add revenue; they improve the overall experience.”
Finally, Smriti Sharma, Comscore Chief Analytics and Technology Officer, gave her take on the real value of ad measurement.
We've made significant progress, but identity fragmentation, walled gardens, and inconsistent data access remain challenges.
Ultimately, advertisers shouldn't just ask, "How many impressions did I buy?" They should ask, "How many unique people did I reach, how often, and how many more could I have reached with the same budget?"
That's where measurement starts driving real business value by bringing together large-scale viewing data, representative panels, and person-level methodologies to better understand unduplicated reach and frequency across linear TV, streaming, and digital.
Our Special Report on CTV Advertising will be out next week. It’s a complete TVREV-style overview of where we are now and where we need to go from here. Inside, you’ll hear from all these smart folks and more.
Stay tuned!
