Streaming Monetization, CTV Advertising & Ad Tech News

This article discusses how ad-tech's shift towards AI-powered 1:1 personalization creates significant measurement challenges and risks fragmenting brand messaging. It argues that while hyper-personalization can be effective for short-term, bottom-funnel performance campaigns, it undermines long-term brand building and introduces a multivariate nightmare for scientific measurement. The piece advocates for a strategic shift from hyper-personalization across the entire media mix to focusing on the right messages for the right population over time.

tvScientific by Pinterest has launched Creative Advisor, an AI-powered tool designed to optimize CTV ad creatives. This new solution analyzes video ad elements and performance data, providing predictive recommendations to improve campaign performance, leading to an average 13% improvement in campaign results for early testers. The platform aims to maximize the effectiveness of media investment for advertisers by predicting and refining ad creative before and during campaigns.

New studies from Samsung Ads and Rakuten TV suggest that Connected TV (CTV) has reached a tipping point for advertisers in Europe, redefining retail media. The growth of CTV creates demand and influences consumers earlier in the purchase journey, with home screens becoming a new discovery environment for advertisers. This shift presents both opportunities for brands to influence consumers and challenges around fragmentation and measurement for retailers and ad-tech providers.

IAS has launched its Total TV product in the US, designed to bring linear-like transparency to CTV advertising by aggregating and normalizing data from direct publisher partnerships. This initiative aims to solve industry fragmentation and inconsistent measurement, with major publishers like Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Prime Video supporting its rollout. IAS is also leveraging AI to enhance media quality, brand suitability, and overall ad performance for its clients.

BIScience has expanded its AdClarity CTV ad intelligence platform to 19 new countries, bringing its total market coverage to 20 with $70 billion in tracked CTV ad spend. The platform offers unified cross-media competitive intelligence and AI-driven automation for global advertisers, including major brands and advertising agencies. This expansion aims to provide total visibility across various screens with a consistent methodology.

A Harris Poll commissioned by Tubi found that 74% of streamers appreciate brands that advertise during free streaming, indicating higher trust for ad-supported streaming among consumers. The study, cited by Tubi VP Chris Grillo, also revealed a 4-to-1 ROI for CPG advertisers on Tubi, with ad-supported streaming being the second-most-trusted ad source behind a brand's own website. The article highlights that free streaming is gaining significant reach and trust, offering CPG marketers an effective environment for advertising, especially with co-viewing. The Nielsen February 2026 Gauge report notes that 45.6% of US TV viewing time is ad-supported streaming.

Fox and Telemundo achieved record US viewership for the 2026 FIFA World Cup opener, with Fox's English-language coverage drawing 15.99 million viewers and Telemundo's Spanish-language coverage reaching 8.9 million. Fox briefly breached FIFA advertising rules by returning to play 10 seconds late after an ad break, but FIFA accepted their explanation and will not take further action. The article highlights the potential of new commercial inventory, like hydration break ads, to boost future World Cup media rights deals for broadcasters as divergent strategies for monetization emerge.

Samsung Ads is making its Smart TV home screen ad inventory available programmatically to advertisers through integrations with The Trade Desk and Google Display & Video 360. This new access, powered by Magnite's SpringServe technology, aims to streamline ad buying for high-impact CTV placements, with a global rollout expected from Q3 2026. The move allows advertisers to incorporate these premium placements into their existing programmatic workflows for wider video and omnichannel campaigns.

MNTN, a technology platform for Connected TV performance marketing, announced a new integration with HubSpot. This allows B2B advertisers to directly link CTV ad campaigns to revenue reporting within their CRM workflows, providing full-funnel attribution and measurable outcomes.

A VAB report reveals 86% of U.S. households own a Connected TV (CTV) device, indicating near-market saturation and a shift towards smart TVs over standalone streaming devices. This trend highlights the growing importance of ad-supported streaming for advertisers, with nearly 90% of streamers watching ad-supported content and the FAST sector continuing to grow significantly. The report was released alongside news of significant M&A activities in the CTV advertising space, with Fox acquiring Roku and Walmart earlier purchasing Vizio.

Magnite CTO David Buonasera emphasizes that infrastructure is a critical competitive advantage in ad tech, particularly for managing live sports and AI demands. Magnite employs a hybrid cloud strategy to ensure capacity and flexibility, enabling them to handle massive traffic spikes during global events like the Cricket World Cup. This approach allows ad platforms to scale rapidly without prohibitive upfront hardware investment and supports the increasing demands of AI-driven optimization.

The article discusses how "agentic trading" in programmatic advertising is set to revolutionize bid pricing by fostering collaboration between buy-side (DSPs) and sell-side (SSPs) platforms. This new approach allows SSPs to leverage their rich supply-side context and behavioral signals, which were previously underutilized, to generate more accurate outcome predictions in conjunction with DSPs' historical conversion data. This shift creates a "shared brain" that can determine a more precise bid price reflecting predicted value from both sides of the transaction, moving beyond the DSP's historical monopoly on outcome prediction.

WPP Media has updated its 2026 global ad revenue forecast, predicting an 8.9% increase, an almost two percentage point rise from its December guidance. This growth is largely attributed to the increasing impact of AI in advertising products, particularly from top ad sellers like Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon. A new digital advertising channel, generative search, is expected to contribute $5.1 billion globally in 2026 and reach $100 billion by 2030.

Connected TV (CTV) in India is transitioning from experimental to a central screen, with marketers increasing spend 56% year-over-year. However, fragmented data, lack of ownership within media organizations, and limited transparency in ad inventory and content context hinder sustained growth for CTV advertising. The industry requires collaboration on standards and deeper content-level understanding to build advertiser trust and unlock CTV's full potential.

Adtelligent compiled a list of 20 influential ad-tech voices to follow in 2026, including CEOs, analysts, and social media accounts. These individuals are recognized for shaping discussions around privacy, AI automation, and monetization models in CTV and retail media. The list highlights key figures from companies like The Trade Desk and Google, as well as independent analysts and meme creators.

Nielsen continues to lose patent infringement lawsuits against measurement startups Hyphametrics and TVision, with TVision winning a recent jury trial. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Xbox division is exploring ad-supported models, including programmatic ads, as a strategy to offset console manufacturing costs and address Game Pass subscriber losses.

Kargo's Alena Morris highlights a trend where marketers leverage Connected TV (CTV) insights to inform and optimize their overall video advertising strategies across various platforms, including desktop and social media. This shift is driven by the need for cross-channel optimization and outcome measurement in response to fragmented consumer identities. The ability to tie CTV exposure to lower-funnel outcomes like in-store traffic is enabling more data-driven budget allocation.

TV networks and streamers are heavily promoting sports programming to secure upfront advertising revenue, as overall advertiser budgets have decreased by 10-40%. While streaming ad inventory faces declining CPMs, sports programming is seeing mid-to-high-single-digit CPM increases, highlighting its growing value to marketers.

Sabio has launched Household Graph, a platform providing real-time, anonymized streaming TV behavior data for 21 million UK households, covering 97% of the population. This GDPR-compliant platform allows advertisers to analyze geographic regions, target demographics, and integrate first-party data to optimize CTV planning and delivery.

The 2026 NBA Finals on ABC achieved record ratings due to favorable market demographics, competitive narrative, and optimized scheduling, highlighting the structural advantages of over-the-air distribution for mass audiences. The article analyzes the shift required for media executives to move to platform-agnostic distribution and the modernization of ad-insertion architecture using dynamic ad insertion (DAI) across CTV streams to optimize monetization.

Viant has launched 'Viant Publisher Solutions (VPS)' to enable direct DSP-to-media company connections in CTV, bypassing SSPs and offering publishers a free alternative to The Trade Desk's OpenPath. Simultaneously, Google, The Trade Desk, and Procter & Gamble are discontinuing their TAG accreditations, signaling a shift in industry certification standards. The article also touches on potential token price reductions by OpenAI and Anthropic in the AI market.

Unilever's Degree brand, in collaboration with WPP Unite, is executing a dual advertising strategy for the World Cup, combining direct placements on traditional broadcasters and a FAST channel with programmatic CTV buys on Vizio. This approach aims to leverage both proactive event advertising and data-driven audience targeting to enhance brand awareness and drive direct sales for the consumer goods brand. The strategy emphasizes data use for personalized messaging and contextual relevance in CTV advertising.

Samsung is making its smart TV home screen advertising inventory programmatic, joining a trend among smart TV operators to open this ad space to new demand. Additionally, gaming platform Roblox is expanding its advertising to include untargeted ads for users under 13 who pass an age verification system, aiming to integrate ads in new areas responsibly.

Despite digital audio making up 30% of media consumption, it only attracts 3% of US ad spend, prompting platforms like The Trade Desk and SiriusXM to advocate for deeper integration of audio into agency campaign planning. They aim to shift digital audio from an afterthought to a core component of omnichannel advertising strategies, seeking to leverage programmatic tools and direct integrations to 'swim upstream in planning'. Efforts include integrations with planning tools like VideoAmp and promoting programmatic guaranteed deals, as well as the production of video content to align audio with broader digital media mix considerations.

Gray Media has partnered with ad tech firm Madhive to enhance its local advertising capabilities. This agreement gives Gray Media access to Madhive’s advertising platform and AI tools, including Maverick AI, to improve audience targeting, campaign management, and measurement for local businesses and political advertisers.

Irdeto has launched its new Broadcast Addressable Advertising solution, which combines the broad reach of linear TV with the targeting and measurement capabilities of digital advertising. This technology allows operators to boost revenue by increasing CPMs and ad fill rates across both broadcast and OTT inventory. The solution supports hybrid STBs (Linux, RDK, ATV) and integrates with various ad servers, providing features like real-time ad insertion, impression management, clash management, and advanced reporting.

Imagine Communications surveyed 43 ad executives in Q1 2023 on CTV ad buying trends and challenges. Key findings include strong interest in buying linear and CTV ads together, concerns about ad frequency, measurement, and a desire for linear-like ad placement control in CTV. The report also touches on the potential impact of Netflix and Disney+ ad-supported tiers on CTV ad prices.

AWS provides a detailed guide on configuring its MediaTailor service to enable personalized ad insertion for HLS and DASH streaming channels. The documentation outlines prerequisites like an ad decision server and recommends using a CDN for origin requests to optimize performance.

Setplex published an article detailing how AI-powered ad frequency management, including predictive capping and personalized exposure limits, can improve the viewer experience and advertiser ROI on Connected TV (CTV) and AVOD platforms. The article emphasizes that controlling ad repetition is now a retention lever, crucial for balancing content consumption with monetization and preventing viewer churn. Setplex highlights its own capabilities in providing real-time analytics, rule engines, and AI triggers for optimizing ad delivery.

Imagine Communications has released a guide detailing how its OSI Admin Tool supports the Television Interface Practices (TIP) initiative. The guide provides API configurations for streamlining TV and video advertising transactions, including inventory avails, commercial instructions, log times, and invoices. This initiative aims to foster interoperability between system providers for ad trading.

Brand advertising is driving significant growth in microdramas, with Omdia projecting revenues to reach $14 billion by 2025, including $3 billion outside China. COL Group, a key player in the microdrama space, notes brands are leveraging the format for improved ROI and exploring AI for content creation, including using celebrity likenesses. This shift creates an advertising ecosystem that reduces viewer costs.

Data from Roku and Omnicom Media Intelligence indicates that combining home screen ads with video ads on Connected TVs significantly boosts brand favorability by 19% and search intent by 12%. This integrated ad strategy also substantially reduces the cost-to-impact for advertisers, lowering it to 25 cents per person. The findings highlight the Roku home screen as a critical engagement point for streaming audiences.

Revolut is scaling its programmatic TV advertising strategy using YouTube and Connected TV (CTV) via Google's DV360 to blend brand building and performance marketing. The fintech aims to achieve mainstream trust and drive sign-ups by leveraging targeted reach and measurable results, a strategic shift from its historical focus on lower-funnel channels. By centralizing infrastructure through DV360, Revolut gains a holistic view of frequency and optimizes ad spend based on real-time performance, building on its in-house media buying and marketing mix modeling.

Walmart's retail media network, Walmart Connect, is expanding its advertising capabilities by allowing brands to place streaming video ads on YouTube using Google Display & Video 360. This move integrates Walmart's audience data and closed-loop measurement into CTV advertising, leveraging its acquisition of Vizio. The initiative is currently in a proof of concept phase for YouTube ads and builds on recent expansions of Walmart Connect into various DSPs and social media.

Spotify is observing significant growth in biddable audio advertising, with The Trade Desk reporting a doubling of biddable campaigns in the past year. Advertisers are increasingly integrating audio into omnichannel strategies due to advancements in automation, measurement, and planning tools. This shift makes audio easier to buy and justify, reducing costs and increasing effectiveness in overall media mixes.

Fox is projecting 150 million US viewers for the World Cup across linear TV, streaming, and digital channels, with 90% of sports fans engaging with extra content. This broad reach necessitates omnichannel advertising strategies beyond traditional linear TV for brands, including social media, audio, and vertical video engagements. Brands are advised to secure podcast placements, budget for distinct social/short-form video assets, and plan for varied outcomes to maximize reach.

Imagine Communications' Dan Walsh advocates a staged approach to ad tech system upgrades for broadcasters and video service operators, emphasizing measurable ROI at each step. This strategy aims to build customer trust and achieve long-term transformative goals by delivering incremental value. The company focuses on customer success beyond contract signing, promoting an open approach to integrate with other ad tech partners.

Start.io research indicates that 65.7% of World Cup fans show travel intent, extending beyond passive viewership. This highlights an opportunity for advertisers to use mobile data and behavioral signals, such as travel planning, streaming habits, and shopping, to engage audiences more broadly during major events. The article advocates for a shift from siloed sports advertising to a more holistic, data-driven approach that transcends traditional sports media.

Xperi showcased its DTS AutoStage platform at Radiodays Europe 2026, demonstrating its capabilities in connected-car radio listening and data analytics. The platform provides broadcasters with insights into in-car audience behavior, influencing programming and distribution strategies. DTS AutoStage aggregates data from over 14 million vehicles and processes billions of metadata requests monthly, offering near real-time analytics to broadcasters.

Xperi details how connected cars are transforming traditional radio into a data-driven advertising channel, enabling precise targeting, measurement, and attribution for advertisers. This shift allows radio to integrate into omni-platform campaigns, similar to Connected TV (CTV), enhancing its value for both advertisers and broadcasters. DTS AutoStage, Xperi's platform, is highlighted as a key enabler in this evolving ecosystem, powering over 14 million vehicles globally.

Xperi's blog post suggests marketers can leverage smart TV viewership data to target World Cup audiences, offering a cost-effective alternative to premium direct ad buys within game broadcasts. This strategy allows brands to engage fans through contextual insights and adjacent content platforms, extending reach beyond traditional advertising slots.

Xperi showcased new developments at CES 2026, including increased adoption of DTS AutoStage Video by Mercedes-Benz in 14 million vehicles and expanded content for TiVo OS. The company also announced new advertising features for TiVo Ads, such as hero video trailers and shoppable QR codes, which now reach over 5.3 million monthly active users.

Magnite launched Magnite Orchestration, a new coordination layer designed to connect buyer and seller agents for premium omnichannel inventory. This platform enables AI-driven buying and streamlines ad workflows, with partners like dentsu and DIRECTV Advertising already testing its expanded agent capabilities. The technology aims to integrate AI into existing ad platforms and workflows for more efficient media transactions.

Raghav Anand of EY-Parthenon discusses India's Connected TV (CTV) market, predicting significant growth to 120 million households soon and forecasting trends mirroring the US in retail media, gaming, and the creator economy. He highlights CTV's emergence as a central commercial hub in the living room, driven by digital media's dominance in advertising spend.

EKN Solutions, a subsidiary of Numatec, has launched operations in Romania, appointing Olimpia Norsesovici as Country Manager. The company will offer omnichannel advertising solutions, focusing on programmatic, CTV, gaming, audio, and Programmatic Digital Out-Of-Home, aiming to partner with local brands and agencies. EKN emphasizes its curated programmatic approach and high-impact formats to enhance media quality, optimize performance, and ensure brand safety in the growing Eastern European digital advertising market.

Caretta Research forecasts record revenues of $8.9 billion for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a 54% increase from 2022. Despite this, the share of media rights in overall revenue will decrease, and the total number of broadcast deals has fallen by 11%. This reflects a FIFA strategy shift towards fewer, higher-value broadcast partnerships.

BARC India and Nielsen have launched a cross-media measurement solution in India, integrating linear TV, CTV, mobile, and desktop data with a deduplication methodology. This initiative aims to address the fragmentation of audience data and provide advertisers with a unified view of campaign reach across screens. JioHotstar has become the first premium platform to adopt this solution, starting with the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup India & Sri Lanka 2026.

Nielsen has expanded its cross-platform measurement capabilities in Italy, adding linear TV audiences to its existing YouTube ad measurement across computer, mobile, and connected TV devices. This enhancement provides advertisers and media buyers with a unified view of audience reach across four screens, enabling better comparison of campaign performance between YouTube and linear television. The launch is part of a broader international rollout and represents a step towards Nielsen ONE's cross-media measurement framework.