Marketers shift to CTV home screens as linear effectiveness plateaus
A Rakuten TV survey shows 100% of European marketers are integrating CTV into their media mix, with 70% planning to increase investment in the next year. The study highlights a shift from traditional pre-roll/mid-roll ads to homescreen, pause, and display advertising, with homescreen ads projected for significant growth. Advertisers are prioritizing attention, memorability, and contextual alignment over sole delivery metrics, indicating a move towards viewer-first strategies in CTV advertising.
Key Takeaways
- 70% of European marketers plan to increase their CTV investment over the next 12 months.
- Only 6.1% of advertisers rank pre-roll and mid-roll as the most effective formats, despite 57.6% of them currently using these traditional spots.
- Investment in home screen advertising is projected to rise by 64.6% as 36% of buyers name it their preferred format for content discovery.
- 82.3% of surveyed viewers report being open to well-integrated, contextually relevant advertising within streaming environments.
Why It Matters
Active viewer fragmentation has reduced the reliability of standard ad breaks, forcing a move toward native UI integrations like home screen billboards. This shift signals a transition from simple reach-based buying to 'attention' metrics, where discovery-phase placements are valued more highly than disruptive in-stream clips. For platform owners, this prioritizes the TV home screen as a high-margin ad product that captures audiences before they enter third-party apps. Watch for the emergence of standardized attention-based measurement frameworks to replace traditional completion rates by late 2026.
Additional Context
The push toward home screen dominance follows findings from Samsung Ads' 'Behind the Screens 2026' report, which identifies the TV UI as the 'primary moment of influence.' Per Samsung Ads (June 2026), European households now launch an average of 18.4 billion apps annually, with viewers returning to the home screen more than five times per session to navigate this fragmented landscape. This fluidity is most pronounced among younger demographics, who utilize 21% more apps than average and move between subscription and free services based on specific content rather than platform loyalty.
Simultaneously, the broader European digital market is professionalizing its CTV approach to match this scale. Per IAB Europe (January 2026), nearly 70% of industry stakeholders now identify CTV as their top growth opportunity, even as programmatic maturity for the channel (30%) still trails traditional display. Concerns over brand safety and transparency remain, with 52% of respondents citing media quality as a persistent barrier. This has led to a dual-track market: premium 'guaranteed' buys on home screens for discovery, and a push for better program-level visibility in programmatic video to prove effectiveness.
Financial forecasts support this rapid migration of capital. Per eMarketer and IAB data from early 2026, CTV ad spend is projected to grow by roughly 14% this year, outpacing overall digital video growth. As major streamers like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix report that ad-tier adoption has surpassed 50% for new signups in several markets (per AIMC, June 2026), the surplus of inventory is driving more sophisticated contextual targeting. Industry experts, including those from DoubleVerify, indicate that 2026 is becoming a 'defining year' for accountability, as buyers move away from GRPs in favor of tying CTV exposure directly to cross-screen engagement and retail conversion outcomes.
Read full article at internetretailing.net
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