CTV ad spend growth to capture 52% of TV market by 2028

The transition of over half of all television advertising dollars to connected platforms marks the end of linear dominance in the media mix. This shift is driven by the migration of high-value live sports inventory to streaming and the rapid adoption of ad-supported tiers by major services like Netflix and Disney+. For the broader ecosystem, this necessitates a move toward programmatic buying and sophisticated attribution models like footfall and cross-device tracking to justify higher CPMs. Watch for the impact of generative AI on ad creative volume, as tools like StackAdapt's video builder allow brands to iterate on personalized assets at a scale previously impossible for traditional television.

StackAdapt operates in an increasingly crowded programmatic CTV market where demand-side platforms are racing to capture the shift from linear to connected inventory. The company's AI video builder, which generates personalized ad creative at scale, competes with similar tools from FreeWheel and other ad-tech vendors seeking to reduce production friction for CTV campaigns. Bitmovin's 2026/2027 Video Developer Report found that ad insertion ranked among the top challenges for video providers at 27% of respondents, underscoring the operational complexity that programmatic CTV platforms like StackAdapt must solve for advertisers moving budgets from linear to streaming.

The business case for CTV ad spend growth is being reinforced by the migration of premium live sports inventory to streaming platforms, which historically anchored linear television's pricing power. Mux and Synamedia announced a partnership at IBC 2025 to integrate real-time quality-of-experience signals with CDN switching decisions, a collaboration that reflects how infrastructure vendors are adapting to the delivery demands of ad-supported streaming at scale. For advertisers evaluating StackAdapt against alternatives, the ability to guarantee viewability and minimize buffering during high-value live sports placements has become a differentiator that directly affects CPM justification.

On the technical side, programmatic CTV buyers are increasingly evaluating platforms based on measurement sophistication and creative automation depth. Mux launched its Robots product in 2026, offering first-party video AI analysis including content moderation and summarization as native API workflows, signaling that video infrastructure providers are embedding AI directly into the pipeline rather than requiring external orchestration. For StackAdapt's target buyers, this trend toward integrated AI tooling means the competitive bar for creative personalization and content safety verification continues to rise, pushing DSPs to demonstrate measurable performance gains rather than relying on reach alone.