Roku and Viant target CTV advertising budget shift from social media

The immediate implication is a repositioning of streaming as a brand-safe alternative to digital channels currently facing generative AI disruptions. By framing CTV as a 'safe harbor,' platforms are moving beyond simple reach metrics to challenge the performance dominance of Google and Meta. Within the broader ecosystem, this shift forces a convergence between traditional TV buying and digital performance marketing, though analysts like Madison and Wall remain skeptical of CTV's ability to outpace social media growth. Watch for whether mid-level brands maintain their CTV spending levels or retreat if attribution models fail to prove the same conversion efficiency as search.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy Report provides quantitative backing for the CTV advertising budget shift narrative. Targeting capabilities overtook content quality as the top criterion for TV and video ad buys, rising to 49% from 39% a year earlier, a 10-point jump the trade group attributes to eroding identity signals and a growing share of non-human traffic complicating audience classification. Small and mid-size spenders, those with annual budgets under $50 million, are driving the shift with a 23-point year-over-year increase in targeting importance, reflecting their narrower customer bases and more acute need for niche audience precision in CTV environments.

Buyer confidence in CTV inventory quality remains a structural challenge even as spend climbs. U.S. ad spending on CTV is expected to rise 11% in 2026 to $29.3 billion, per IAB data, yet 43% of buyers expressed somewhat or no confidence in the quality of inventory purchased through trusted methods like programmatic guaranteed and direct insertion orders. That figure rises to 55% for private marketplaces and 67% for open exchange and real-time bidding. Cost and audience delivery each surged to 47% as the leading reasons buyers reduce or eliminate spend with a streaming partner, up from 41% in 2025, joining targeting capabilities at 46% and business outcome delivery at 45% near the top of the list.

The trust deficit creates both a headwind and an opportunity for platforms like Roku and Viant that are pitching CTV as a brand-safe alternative to social and search. Among buyers reporting low confidence in open exchange purchasing, fraud or invalid traffic was cited by 56% as the leading driver of mistrust, followed by inability to verify the publisher or content source at 48% and uncertainty about program-level placement at 44%. Yet the same report found that only 31% of buyers would pay additional fees for fraud detection, well behind brand safety verification at 41% and advanced measurement at 39%. This gap between stated concern and willingness to pay suggests that platforms able to bundle verification into their offering, rather than charge for it separately, may hold a structural advantage in capturing the social and search budgets that Roku and Viant are now pursuing.

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