CTV ad spend reaches $80B as buyer confidence in quality slips
As U.S. digital video ad spending reaches $80 billion, media buyers are reporting declining confidence in inventory quality across programmatic marketplaces. Agencies are increasingly shifting toward direct supply-path optimization and tighter relationships with supply-side platforms (SSPs) to address fragmentation and improve measurement transparency.
Key Takeaways
- IAB data shows 43% of buyers have low confidence in direct I/O and programmatic guaranteed inventory, formerly the sector's most trusted formats.
- Confidence drops further for private marketplaces (55%) and open exchange/RTB buys (67%) due to transparency gaps and measurement fragmentation.
- Agencies including Dept, Kepler Group, and Crispin are shifting toward deals-based, curated supply models to bypass opaque intermediaries.
- The definition of 'premium' is fragmenting, with some buyers moving away from brand-name platforms in favor of independent third-party quality verification.
Why It Matters
The 'maturity correction' in CTV reflects a critical tension where premium pricing no longer guarantees premium transparency. As digital video captures more than 60% of total TV/video ad spend, the industry is pivoting from purely automated procurement to a more manual, supply-path-optimized approach. This shift favors established streamers and transparent supply-side platforms (SSPs) while penalizing multi-hop resellers that inflate costs without providing placement data. Watch for at least one major agency holding company to mandate standardized content-level metadata from all CTV partners by Q1 2027.
Additional Context
The push for CTV transparency follows a major inflection point in 2024, when digital video ad spending surpassed linear TV for the first time. According to IAB reporting from April 2025, digital video captured 51% of the total video market in the previous year and is projected to reach 58% by the end of 2025. This rapid migration of capital has been accelerated by the maturation of ad-supported tiers on Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, which have collectively introduced enough inventory to normalize CPMs across the sector. Per Marketing Architects in July 2024, some major streaming platforms reduced CPMs by over 25% in a single year to compete with Amazon’s aggressive entry pricing.
While volume is growing, structural inefficiencies remain a persistent headwind. The IAB’s July 2024 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report found that 89% of advertisers are now exploring alternative measurement currencies because traditional metrics cannot handle the complexity of multi-screen attribution. Furthermore, an ANA study published in June 2024 highlighted that log-level data transparency could save the industry up to $22 billion in wasted spend. As a result, supply path optimization (SPO) has moved from a technical niche to a core agency strategy. Major players like Samsung’s DSP have noted that as much as 60% of CTV transactions are now returning to direct buying as agencies seek to eliminate hidden fees from resellers that can inflate inventory costs by 40%.
Read full article at digiday.com
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