Streaming Monetization, CTV Advertising & Ad Tech News

The article from Magnite discusses how programmatic technology can be utilized to optimize advertising for live streaming of major global soccer events in 2026 and beyond. It focuses on enabling advertisers to maximize success through programmatic ad insertion in live sports streaming.

The article argues that Amazon DSP has structural advantages in programmatic advertising due to access to Amazon purchase and return data, and the use of Amazon Marketing Cloud predictive modeling for audience targeting. It highlights shoppable and interactive Prime Video ad formats that enable add-to-cart actions from the TV experience, citing reported ROAS and conversion-lift examples from advertisers. It also notes Amazon’s streaming ad inventory expansion via partnerships and includes third-party projections about Amazon’s share of US programmatic spend and potential ad-revenue growth relative to Meta.

A LinkedIn post cites unverified reports of an OpenAI and The Trade Desk “AI-to-CTV pipeline” that would use signals from a ChatGPT conversation to inform CTV bidding via UID2. The post claims this could enable advertisers to bid in near real time and serve dynamically generated TV ads (e.g., outdoor brands) based on the ongoing AI conversation while viewers watch TV.

The post cites YouTube’s Q4 results, stating ad revenue grew 8.7% while subscription revenue grew 17%, and references remarks from YouTube’s Chief Business Officer that Premium subscriber migration is slightly negative for ads revenue but positive for the overall business. It frames the data as evidence that a growing segment of viewers will pay for ad-free viewing and raises implications for publishers, DSPs/SSPs, and retail media networks if impression-based addressable audiences structurally shrink.

A LinkedIn post argues that connected TV (CTV) is becoming a primary channel for brand building, citing claims that 90%+ of U.S. households have connected TV devices and that CTV ad spend is expected to exceed $40B within the next few years. It highlights major streaming platforms (including Amazon, Roku, Netflix, Disney, NBCUniversal, and YouTube) as combining TV-scale reach with digital targeting/measurement to deliver premium streaming ad environments with higher completion and recall than linear TV.

At the 2026 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Roku outlined a strategy centered on growing its advertising business through AI-driven ad tools and home screen personalization, while expanding platform distribution via new OEM and retail partnerships. Roku reported platform revenue growth of 18% year-over-year, guided to roughly 18% platform revenue growth for the current year, and reiterated a target to exceed $1 billion in free cash flow by 2028. The company also highlighted subscription growth across its owned streaming services and discussed initiatives in political advertising and sports monetization, alongside challenges including rising memory costs and competitive pressure.

Cynopsis cites a 2026 CTV/OTT Advertiser Survey conducted by Advertiser Perceptions indicating that 70% of CTV advertisers plan to increase CTV/OTT spend in 2026, with average budget increases of 17%, alongside a shift toward integrated teams controlling 55% of streaming TV budgets. The article highlights accelerating adoption among regional and local advertisers, growing preference for premium video environments (97% associating them with improved ROI), and ongoing challenges around fragmentation, deduplicated reach, and cross-provider measurement, with interest in single-platform management and AI-driven real-time optimization.

The Trade Desk launched the Ventura Ecosystem, positioning it as a collaboration to improve transparency, identity, measurement, and monetization in programmatic CTV advertising. Independent TV OS provider V (formerly VIDAA) and ad tech platform Nexxen are the first partners, with integrations expected to go live within weeks and initially focused on SSP integrations and The Trade Desk tools such as OpenPath, UID2/EUID, Open Pass, and upcoming OpenAds. The article also cites The Trade Desk’s 2025 results (including $13.4B gross ad spend and $2.89B revenue) alongside its Q1 2026 revenue outlook.

The post reports IAB Spain and PwC data showing an 8.7% decline in traditional TV GRPs alongside 48.4% growth in connected TV (CTV) advertising in Spain, reaching €174.9 million, with YouTube included when bought as CTV. CTV still represents only 2.6% of total digital ad spend, while video advertising (online video plus CTV) accounts for 11.4% of investment, with 35% of CTV buying conducted programmatically and the rest via direct deals, indicating an ongoing shift of ad budgets toward CTV and related models such as FAST, AVOD, and hybrid monetization.

The Trade Desk has launched the Ventura Ecosystem, a connected TV-focused ad marketplace that aims to unify TV operating systems and streaming platforms around a more transparent, revenue-optimized model. Participants can use Ventura’s monetization tools and The Trade Desk’s ad tech stack, including OpenPath, Unified ID 2.0/EUID, OpenAds and the forthcoming OpenPass, to access increased programmatic demand and improved CPMs and fill rates. V (formerly VIDAA TV OS) and Nexxen are the first companies to join the ecosystem.

The article argues that while major platforms like Netflix and Disney+ attract most attention, CTV growth in 2026 is increasingly coming from the long tail of Free Ad-Supported Streaming (FAST) services, as overall CTV penetration reaches 117 million U.S. households. It highlights challenges for advertisers such as ad-free subscription tiers and rising CPMs on major platforms, and promotes using proprietary DSPs like Iridio by RRD to access harder-to-reach inventory across smaller premium streaming services.

The article reports that Disney+ is introducing an ad-supported subscription plan in Belgium. This move extends Disney's advertising-based streaming offering into an additional European market, complementing its existing subscription options.

MediaPost reports that Tubi has expanded its deal with Nielsen for audience measurement of its ad-supported streaming service. The article notes that Tubi now accounts for 6.2% of total ad-supported streaming viewing, underscoring its growing presence in the AVOD market.

The post describes AppLovin's approach to streaming television, positioning TV as a direct performance marketing channel rather than just a brand awareness medium. It notes that free streaming services are enabling more measurable advertising outcomes and that AppLovin is using Wurl to connect TV ad inventory to its own performance marketing infrastructure.

IAB Tech Lab released a five-step guide for ad tech companies to implement ARTF (Agentic Real-Time Framework), a new standard designed to allow logic execution within the ad auction. ARTF aims to reduce latency, enhance data protection, and facilitate new use cases like fraud detection and identity resolution directly in the bidstream. The framework leverages OpenRTB and standard container technology, supporting a partnership model for deployment within SSPs or exchanges.

The article examines Dolby OptiView’s Server-Guided Ad Insertion (SGAI) architecture, explaining how it blends client-side and server-side ad insertion to improve personalization, latency, playback quality, measurement, and CDN scalability for live and sports streaming. It details the system’s technical design, Google Ad Manager and VAST integrations, support for advanced ad formats, and use of client-side QoE and viewability data. Case-study results from a tier-one sports deployment are cited, including higher eCPMs, better fill and programmatic match rates, and reduced server-side infrastructure burden versus traditional SSAI.

The article outlines key connected TV (CTV) advertising trends heading into 2026, including platform consolidation, growing ad loads, the rapid uptake of interactive and shoppable formats, and deeper integration with retail media. It details leading CTV ad revenue platforms, emerging formats like pause and rewarded ads, and provides strategic guidance on frequency management, data integration, and format testing for marketers operating across major streaming services.

Hasbro Entertainment and Animaj have launched Lumee, a joint venture ad sales entity focused on better monetizing kids content on YouTube. The new venture aggregates more than 50 billion annual views and offers COPPA-compliant media, audience insights, and branded content solutions for family-focused advertisers.

The article notes that YouTube has become the most-watched video provider on TV sets, with viewers consuming over a billion hours of YouTube content on televisions. It explores how this shift in viewing behavior contrasts with the allocation of traditional TV advertising budgets and questions why ad spend has not fully followed audiences to YouTube on connected TVs.

The article examines why ad measurement has become critical to OTT and CTV advertising, especially in the context of dynamic ad insertion (CSAI, SSAI, SGAI) and fragmented devices, players, and stakeholders. It outlines standard and enhanced measurement needs (impressions, quartiles, completions, viewability, audio status) and highlights emerging industry standards such as SVTA Ad Creative Signalling, CTA’s CMCDv2, and the IAB’s Open Measurement SDK as tools to deliver trusted, comparable metrics. The piece argues that broadcasters who adopt robust, standards-based measurement will be better positioned to secure ad spend and grow revenue.

The article discusses how advertising budgets on YouTube, despite it being a highly watched platform, often trail the amounts brands still allocate to traditional television. It highlights a disconnect between YouTube’s audience scale and the level of ad spending it attracts from marketers.

Wurl and TVision released a study showing that emotionally relevant contextual ad placements in CTV can significantly increase attention duration from 30% to 70%. This approach provides marketers with a method to enhance ad performance without requiring larger budgets, emphasizing smarter placements over higher spend. The study highlights contextual targeting as a key driver for ad engagement and better outcomes across the marketing funnel.

PubMatic has launched AI Insights, an AI-powered analytics and benchmarking tool integrated into its platform to help publishers understand real-time demand dynamics and optimize monetization. The product surfaces channel, advertiser, inventory, and buyer behavior insights via dashboards and natural language queries, with use cases highlighted for CTV and online video publishers, including large streaming clients. Early results indicate material eCPM uplift opportunities for CTV and online video inventory when benchmarked against peer cohorts.

Prebid.org announced the Prebid Sales Agent, an open-source software solution for agentic advertising, developed in collaboration with AgenticAdvertising.org (AAO). This initiative aims to provide publishers with scalable agentic advertising capabilities without requiring proprietary solutions, enabling them to connect to programmatic and agentic buyers through a unified stack. The Prebid Sales Agent leverages the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) under AAO's governance framework and will be maintained by Prebid.org's developer community.

eMarketer predicts that generative AI (GenAI) will become standard in programmatic advertising by 2026, automating bidding, targeting, creative generation, and measurement. The report anticipates that agentic AI will follow, automating end-to-end campaign workflows, with new protocols like UCP, AdCP, and ARTF accelerating adoption. Marketers are advised to prioritize data integration, AI literacy, and a shift to live feedback systems for measurement.

DataFusion outlines how its programmatic DSP is making connected TV (CTV) advertising smarter, more targeted, and easier to measure. The company highlights its use of first and third-party data for audience targeting, verifiable reach, and real-time measurement in the shifting landscape from linear TV to CTV. DataFusion also provides an overview of the CTV ecosystem, programmatic buying types, and creative best practices for advertisers.

Innovid and Wurl collaborated on a QSR advertising campaign, leveraging Wurl's emotional content targeting and Innovid's dynamic creative optimization to achieve improved results. The initiative highlighted a shift towards using context as a creative input in CTV advertising, not just a targeting parameter. Innovid emphasizes that creative drives about 50% of campaign performance, utilizing AI for scene-level insights.

The article discusses how connected TV (CTV) advertising will evolve by 2026, focusing on the growing maturity of measurement capabilities and the rising importance of curated inventory and audiences. It also examines how AI-driven optimization will shape buying and selling strategies in the CTV ecosystem.

Magnite has developed a 'Seller Agent' to interface with the early-stage open standard Advertising Context Protocol (AdCP). AdCP aims to standardize communication among advertising platforms, publishers, data providers, and AI agents, building upon the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The purpose of the Seller Agent is to provide a shared language for buyer and seller-side AI agents to interpret campaign goals, inventory, and audience signals.

AdExchanger is hosting "Programmatic AI," a conference in May 2026 at the Park MGM in Las Vegas focusing on the application of AI in programmatic advertising. The event covers topics such as AI in media planning, creative optimization, workflow optimization, data privacy, and measurement. The agenda includes keynote speakers and sessions from various companies and industry leaders discussing how AI is reshaping programmatic advertising workflows and strategies.

The article critiques the lack of transparency in Connected TV (CTV) programmatic advertising, asserting it is less transparent than YouTube and hindering advertiser spend and performance. It highlights that CTV publishers often sell inventory without providing program-level data, which contrasts with traditional linear TV models and limits buyers' ability to optimize campaigns. The piece advocates for greater transparency, citing companies like Amazon, Olyzon, Iris TV, Spectrum, and Peer39 as examples making progress in providing more detailed reporting.

This article discusses two newly released AI advertising standards, ARTF (Agentic RTB Framework) and AdCP (Ad Context Protocol), clarifying their distinct purposes to advertisers. ARTF focuses on modernizing programmatic ad auction plumbing for faster transactions, while AdCP aims to be a universal language for AI agents to plan, buy, and measure ad campaigns across platforms. Both standards are designed to integrate AI into advertising workflows and are backed by various industry entities.

This article discusses how "Total TV" integrates linear and digital ad sales to address fragmentation in advertising. It aims to improve measurement accuracy and enhance audience value across different viewing platforms. The content focuses on convergence and collaboration within the TV advertising ecosystem.

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) released its Q2 2025 Programmatic Transparency Benchmark report, indicating that $26.8 billion in global media value is unrealized due to programmatic inefficiencies and a decline in the TrueCPM Index. Concurrently, ANA launched the ANA Online Benchmark, a free, interactive platform providing real-time programmatic supply chain data to all ANA and TAG members across CTV, web, and mobile in-app environments. The report highlighted increased CTV spending as a percentage of total programmatic spend and continued challenges with log-level data access for marketers.

Wurl, in partnership with TVision, published a study across 50+ CTV campaigns, finding that emotional alignment between ads and content significantly increases viewer attention and watch time. Wurl's BrandDiscovery product, which uses GenAI to match ads to the emotional tone of content, is highlighted as a solution to drive stronger brand outcomes. The report details how emotionally aligned ads lead to higher attention scores, reduced cognitive friction, and improved brand metrics such as favorability and purchase intent.

FanDuel Sports Network has achieved a 25% year-over-year increase in impressions served through Magnite's SpringServe video platform, according to a recent announcement. This growth highlights FanDuel Sports Network's strategy to enhance live sports monetization through Magnite's ad serving and programmatic capabilities, leveraging increased digital consumption of live sports.

Hydrolix has introduced new capabilities to provide streaming ad publishers with end-to-end visibility. This development aims to assist publishers in optimizing their revenue opportunities within the streaming advertising ecosystem.

IAB Tech Lab has formed a Containerization Project Working Group to develop standards for interoperability in the programmatic advertising ecosystem using containerized environments. This initiative aims to improve flexibility, consistency, and scalability for ad tech companies processing programmatic ad auctions. The project seeks industry collaboration to define standard interfaces, service definitions, reference architectures, and best practices for integrating containers.

Google's Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) is enhancing its capabilities through new integrations and updates. These include partnerships with generative AI platforms Adobe GenStudio and Typeface to accelerate creative workflows, expanded automated tracking for YouTube ad formats and via The Trade Desk, and deeper cross-channel insights for CTV and digital video platforms.

eMarketer reports that ad-supported streaming tiers are now the primary driver of new subscriber growth in the US, with 71% of net new SVOD subscribers over the past nine quarters coming from ad-supported plans. Nearly half of all US streaming subscribers (46%) now pay for ad-supported tiers, demonstrating consumer willingness to accept ads for lower costs and high platform retention for these plans.

This article discusses the shift in advertising towards outcome-oriented models, driven by Google and Meta, which presents an opportunity for open web ad tech companies. It highlights Taboola's pivot to a "Performance beyond search and social" message as an example of embracing this 'Outcomes Era.' The analysis suggests open web ad tech can compete by offering transparent outcomes, independent verification, and data control, differentiating themselves from walled gardens.

The in-game advertising market is projected to reach $27.4 billion by 2035, driven by various formats like static, dynamic, and gamevertising across mobile, PC, and console platforms. This article from Avenga provides a guide on how IGA works, its ad-serving mechanisms, measurement techniques including IAB’s OM SDK, and the benefits it offers over traditional marketing for brands and advertisers.

TVNZ has enhanced its ad revenue capabilities by integrating Imagine Communications' SureFire ad management solution. This integration aims to bridge linear and digital ad sales to maximize inventory utilization and improve Total TV monetization for the New Zealand broadcaster.

This article explains various monetization strategies for Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms, detailing five primary methods for generating revenue in the streaming industry. It covers subscription video on-demand (SVOD), advertising video on-demand (AVOD), and transactional video on-demand (TVOD), along with hybrid models and different ad formats like pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll. The piece also discusses technical aspects of ad insertion, such as SSAI and CSAI, highlighting the projected growth of the global OTT market to $434.5 billion by 2027.

Titan OS has selected ThinkAdvertising to enhance its `Titan Audience Segments` offering, enabling targeted CTV ads across millions of European households. ThinkAdvertising will utilize AI and machine learning to process viewership data from Titan OS TVs for audience segmentation. This partnership aims to provide advertisers with more precise targeting capabilities across Titan OS's growing Connected TV ecosystem, including its FAST channels.

Meta has developed Andromeda, a personalized ads retrieval engine leveraging NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip and Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) hardware, to enhance its Advantage+ automation for ad recommendations. This system utilizes deep neural networks and hierarchical indexing to improve personalization and ad performance, achieving a +6% recall improvement and +8% ads quality improvement on selected segments within Instagram and Facebook applications. Andromeda is designed to scale with the exponential growth of ad creatives generated by generative AI tools, increasing efficiency and return on ad spend for advertisers.

Google's VP and GM of Search Ads, Shashi Thakur, discussed the rollout of AI Overviews in the US and its implications for advertisers. He stated that ads would appear alongside AI answers, sometimes above or below, complementing content with commercial intent. Thakur also addressed concerns from publishers about potential revenue loss, asserting that user engagement with commercial queries and embedded links would continue to drive clicks.

Media companies including Netflix, Disney, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros. Discovery are hosting annual Upfronts events to woo advertisers, as ad spending continues to shift significantly from traditional TV to digital and streaming platforms. While traditional TV ad buying is projected to see a slight increase of 1% to $18.79 billion, digital advertising spend for Upfronts and Newfronts is expected to jump by nearly 32% to $16.45 billion this year. Streaming advertising revenue across media companies increased by 22% and now accounts for 18% of total advertising revenue.