Executives from Imagine Communications, LG Ad Solutions, and Google Ad Manager participated in a panel at the StreamTV Show to discuss the challenges of unifying broadcast and CTV advertising. The discussion focused on the necessity of standardized audience measurement, the shift toward selling audiences rather than specific ad spots, and the impact of fragmented pricing on the economics of content creation.
Broadcasters are moving to treat linear and CTV as a single pool of inventory to protect margins as pay-TV declines. This shift forces a move away from traditional GRPs toward impression-based, cross-platform metrics, requiring ad tech stacks to become interoperable across digital and broadcast silos. For the ecosystem, this means the 'Total TV' approach is no longer optional for maintaining reach without escalating operational costs. Watch for whether major publishers adopt Imagine's unified selling model to reconcile lower CTV CPMs with premium linear rates by the 2027 upfronts.
The industry's move toward converged workflows coincides with a projected tipping point in media investment. Per eMarketer and Axios (August 2026), US CTV ad spending is expected to reach $37.95 billion this year, with upfront commitments for streaming officially forecast to exceed primetime linear TV upfronts for the first time ($17.73 billion vs. $16.98 billion). This shift is driven by streaming reaching a 48.6% share of total U.S. TV watch-time as of May 2026, according to Nielsen data, fundamentally altering the leverage broadcasters hold during annual negotiations.
Measurement providers are racing to provide the technical foundation for this convergence. Per Comscore (June 2026), the market is transitioning from simple ratings to outcome-based measurement, focusing on deduplicated reach and daily program-level reporting across both linear and digital feeds. This aligns with recent IAB Tech Lab updates, such as the 'Redefining Media Types' standard released for public comment in July 2026, which aims to establish a shared technical language for CTV, FAST, and linear environments to reduce misaligned media planning.
Technical interoperability is also advancing through standardized signaling. In early 2026, the IAB Tech Lab expanded the Open Measurement SDK to include 'Device Attestation' for LG and Samsung smart TVs, addressing fraud and spoofing in the CTV bidstream. These standards, alongside new OpenRTB attributes for live content launched in May 2026, are designed to give buyers the transparency needed to execute high-value programmatic buys during live broadcasts, bridging the gap between digital efficiency and traditional broadcast reliability.
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