What is CTV advertising? How it works and how to buy (2026)

Connected TV (CTV) advertising is video ads that run inside the shows, movies, and live sports people stream on internet-connected TVs. It gives you the impact of TV with the targeting and measurement of digital, so you choose who sees your ad and can track what they do next.

Key takeaways

• Streaming made up 48.6% of all US TV viewing in May 2026, more than broadcast and cable combined (Nielsen).
• You can buy CTV direct from a publisher, on a self-serve platform, programmatically through a DSP, or through a managed service partner.
• CTV is priced by CPM, and inventory, targeting, how you buy, and timing all move the price.
• CTV works best as one channel in a plan, paired with retargeting on phones and laptops to turn viewers into leads.

If you’re weighing CTV, you probably want three answers: what it is, whether it can drive real results like leads, and how to buy it without wasting budget. This guide covers all three, plus what it costs and the questions to ask before you sign anything.

What is CTV advertising?

CTV stands for connected TV, which means any TV that connects to the internet to stream video. That includes smart TVs with built-in apps, TVs plugged into a streaming device like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, or Chromecast, and gaming consoles like Xbox and PlayStation.

Streaming is now where most TV time goes. In May 2026, streaming made up 48.6% of US TV viewing, compared with 20.4% for cable and 19.2% for broadcast (Nielsen). Budgets are following: EMARKETER forecasts US CTV ad spend will reach $36.95 billion in 2026, and the IAB expects CTV spend to grow 15.6% this year.

Where do CTV ads run?

CTV ads run across three kinds of streaming services. Each reaches viewers in a different way, so most plans use a mix.

• Subscription services with ad-supported plans, like Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, HBO Max, Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.
• Live TV streaming services, like Sling TV, YouTube TV, Fubo, and Philo, which carry live sports, news, and network shows.
• Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services, like Tubi, Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, and The Roku Channel.

How does CTV advertising work?

CTV ads are often bought programmatically, which means software buys ad space automatically, one impression at a time, based on the audience you set.

1. A viewer starts a show on a streaming app, and the app has an ad break to fill.
2. The app offers that ad spot in a marketplace, along with details like the type of show and the household’s general location.
3. Advertisers’ buying platforms, called demand-side platforms (DSPs), check whether the household fits their audience and what it’s worth to them.
4. The winning ad plays in a fraction of a second, and the impression is recorded for reporting.

Because each impression is bought for a specific household, you can set rules a TV network can’t offer, like which zip codes to reach and which apps or shows to avoid.

CTV vs. OTT vs. linear TV

These three terms get mixed up a lot. Linear TV is traditional broadcast and cable, watched on a set schedule. OTT (over-the-top) is any streaming content delivered over the internet, on any device. CTV is OTT watched on a TV screen.

So all CTV is OTT, but not all OTT is CTV. Watch Hulu on your phone, and that’s OTT. Watch the same show on your living room TV, and it’s CTV.

For a deeper look at how they differ and when to use each, see our CTV vs. OTT guide.

Why advertisers use CTV

It reaches people where they watch TV now

People who cut cable, or never had it, still watch TV. They do it through streaming apps. CTV puts your brand on the biggest screen in the home, with full-screen, sound-on ads that viewers usually can’t skip.

You choose who sees your ad

With CTV, you pick the audience first, and your ad runs only in the households that fit it. A local business can stick to a few zip codes around its locations, and a national brand can reach a precise segment across the country.

What results can CTV drive?

CTV can move the number you care about most when the campaign is built around it. The ads usually can’t be clicked, so the response comes a step later: someone sees your ad, then searches for you, visits your site, stops by a location, or responds to a follow-up ad on their phone.

• Generate leads: a multi-location vein center paired 30-second CTV ads with cross-device retargeting in a four-week test and drove 821 qualified leads and 45,682 site visits from people who saw the ads.
• Increase revenue and sales: a Midwest kitchen remodeler ran CTV with display and online video retargeting for 90 days and matched $5.9M in revenue to households that saw the ads.
• Drive foot traffic: a grocery chain in Texas and Louisiana led with CTV, followed up with display and online video, and drove 434,830 in-store visits over nine months.
• Build brand awareness: a children’s health system ran a CTV-only campaign for 10 months and saw a 10.6% lift in awareness, more than four times the healthcare benchmark.
• Re-engage customers: a coffee brand used its own customer list to reach lapsed buyers on CTV and turned a $10K test into $38K in online sales in eight weeks.

Most of these campaigns paired CTV with retargeting, and campaigns that pair awareness with retargeting see 200%+ more conversions.

You can see what it delivered

Every impression is recorded, so you can see which apps and shows your ads ran on, how often each household saw them, and what people did afterward. That makes CTV easier to tie to results than linear TV, and easier to adjust while the campaign runs.

What ad formats run on CTV?

Most CTV ads are standard video spots, but a few newer formats give you more ways to show up.

• In-stream video ads: 15- or 30-second spots that play before or during a show, like a commercial break. These are the core of most CTV plans.
• Pause ads: an ad that appears when a viewer pauses what they’re watching, so your brand fills the screen during a natural break.
• Home screen ads: placements on the main menu of a smart TV or streaming device, seen while viewers pick what to watch.
• Interactive ads: video ads with a QR code or on-screen prompt, so viewers can act from their phone, like claiming an offer or booking an appointment.
• Social CTV ads: your Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, X, or Facebook video posts, turned into 4K TV ads that keep the look of the post, likes and comments included, with no extra production cost.
• Dynamic CTV ads: one video ad that updates with live inventory, weekly deals, upcoming events, or details for each location, so viewers see what you’re promoting today.

Whatever the format, creative matters. Show your brand early, keep to one message, and give people a clear next step, like a short URL or QR code. Our CTV creative best practices guide walks through what works.

How do you buy CTV ads?

There are four main ways to buy CTV. They differ in how much control you get, how much work you take on, and what you pay for besides the media.

Programmatic deals come in three types. The open exchange is a real-time auction across many apps, with the widest reach and the widest range in quality. A private marketplace (PMP) is an invite-only auction with selected publishers, and programmatic guaranteed reserves set inventory at a fixed price, closest to a traditional TV buy.

To pick a path, start with your goal, your budget, and how much time your team can give it. Those three answers usually point to the right one.

How CTV is targeted and measured

Targeting

CTV targeting works at the household level: data partners match streaming devices to the households that use them. Strategus pulls from 200+ data partners and combines these tactics into one audience, with a different mix for each goal.

• Website retargeting: shows your ad on TV to households that recently visited your website, bringing them back for a second look.
• First-party data: puts your own customer data from your site, app, or point of sale to work, so you can reach past buyers again.
• Third-party data: uses demographic, interest, and purchase data from outside providers to find new audiences.
• Look-alike modeling: finds new households that share traits with your best customers.
• Retail media: uses retailer loyalty and purchase data to reach people actively shopping for products like yours.
• Amazon data: reaches people based on how they shop and browse across Amazon, including Whole Foods, Kindle, Prime Video, and Fire TV.
• Location-based retargeting: reaches people based on the specific places they visit.
• Smart audience contextual: finds in-market buyers based on the category websites they browse.
• Linear TV extension: runs your TV message on CTV to reach the households your cable and broadcast buy misses.
• ACR data: uses smart TV viewing data to reach households based on what they actually watch.
• Social signals: finds people who are in the market right now based on their activity across major social platforms.
• App install data: reaches people based on the apps they’ve installed, which say a lot about their interests and needs.

Our team picks the mix, handles the setup, and adjusts your targeting as results come in.

Measurement

Decide what success looks like before launch, then set up measurement around it. If the goal is awareness, track reach and frequency. If it’s leads or sales, track site visits, form fills, calls, and purchases from households that saw your ad.

Each of these Strategus attribution options answers a different question, and our team recommends the ones that fit your goal.

• Post-view website visits: also called view-through attribution. A pixel on your site counts visits from households that saw your ad, even if they never clicked.
• Online purchases and revenue: shows who bought from your online store after seeing your ad and how much each sale was worth.
• First-party data matching: matches your customer list against the households that saw your ads, so you see how many new customers you reached and what each one is worth.
• Foot traffic: uses location data to count how many people visited your locations after seeing your ads.
• Retail media: connects your ads to in-store sales with SKU-level purchase data from retailers, a good fit for brands sold on store shelves.
• Brand lift: surveys people who saw your ad and people who didn’t to measure changes in awareness, favorability, and intent.
• After-ad influence: shows what people searched for and which sites they visited right after seeing your ad.
• Search and social impact: links conversions from your paid search, paid social, and email campaigns back to people who saw your CTV ad first.
• App event tracking: shows who took actions in your app after seeing your ad.

With Strategus, results are in a 24/7 dashboard down to the publisher level, and our team walks you through what’s working and what we’ll change next. Incrementality testing, which compares people who saw your ads with similar people who didn’t, is available on request.

What does CTV advertising cost?

CTV is usually priced by CPM, or cost per thousand impressions. If the CPM is $30, you pay $30 each time your ad is shown 1,000 times.

For a benchmark, Media Dynamics estimated the average streaming CPM in the 2026-27 primetime upfront at $25.90, down about 5% from the season before. Broadcast averaged $41.65 and cable $17.70 in the same estimate. Upfronts are big national buys made months ahead, so treat that as a reference point, not a quote.

Your CPM can land above or below that average for a few reasons.

• Inventory: live sports and top subscription services cost more than FAST channels.
• Targeting: each data layer adds cost, and fewer impressions go to households that don’t fit.
• How you buy: direct deals, private marketplaces, and the open exchange are priced differently, and some routes add platform or data fees.
• Timing: CPMs rise in the fourth quarter and in election years, when more advertisers compete for the same households.

What’s included in the CPM?

Who runs the campaign changes what your CPM covers. Buying direct can get you a lower CPM, but you work out a separate deal with each publisher, and each one runs on its own. The same household can sit in several publishers’ audiences, so you can end up paying to reach it more than once.

Running CTV yourself on a DSP or self-serve platform can also lower the CPM. Either way, your team needs to know targeting, frequency, attribution, and reporting to get results from it.

A managed service usually adds a small markup to the CPM, with strategy, targeting, attribution, and reporting built into that price. With Strategus, that price also gets you a partner stack that keeps growing. We negotiate deals with publishers, compare prices across multiple DSPs, and are always testing and adding new targeting, inventory, attribution, and identity partners. You get those partners built into your plan without adding to your team. The better value comes down to whether your team has the time and know-how to run CTV well.

Is a cheap CTV CPM a good deal?

Not always. Some sellers lead with a low “CTV” price, then fill the plan with cheaper online video and display on phones and laptops. Those channels have their place in a media plan, but they aren’t the same inventory as a full-screen ad on a TV. Ask how much of your budget will run on TV screens before you compare prices.

A low CPM can still cost you more. If cheap impressions run on low-quality apps or reach the wrong households, your cost per lead or sale goes up. So start with who you need to reach, then compare options on where the ads run and what happens after people see them. For budget planning, see how much it costs to advertise on streaming services.

Questions to ask before you buy CTV

Clear answers to these mean you’ll know where your budget went and what it delivered, whether you run CTV yourself or hire a partner.

• Where will my ads run? You should get reporting by app and publisher.
• How will you manage frequency? Without one cap across apps, the same household can see your ad too many times.
• How do you keep out fraud and low-quality apps? Ask what verification is used and how unknown apps are filtered out.
• How will we measure results? Ask which goal the campaign is measured against and what counts as a conversion.
• Who helps me read the results? You want a dashboard you can check anytime and a team that explains what it means.
• What should CTV pair with? Ask how it works with retargeting, online video, and your other channels.

How CTV fits into your full media plan

CTV does its best work with a clear job. In most plans, that job is building awareness and anchoring the plan, while other channels turn that attention into action.

A common pairing: CTV puts your brand in front of the right households, then cross-device retargeting follows up on their phones and laptops with display and online video ads that link to your site. Streaming audio and digital out-of-home (DOOH) extend reach to moments when people aren’t watching TV.

Why run CTV with Strategus?

Strategus helped pioneer programmatic CTV in 2015. Today our team plans and runs CTV alongside OTT, YouTube, online video, display, streaming audio, and DOOH as one managed plan, so you get the results without running the technology yourself.

• A team that does the work: strategists, media buyers, and analysts plan, launch, and optimize your campaigns, and a strategist reviews performance every day. Agencies can use us as a white-label extension of their team.
• Not tied to one platform: we buy across multiple leading DSPs, with access to all ad-supported CTV inventory and premium data partners, so your plan can follow your audience from app to app.
• A plan built before you spend: Blueprint™ research uses performance data from 60,000+ campaigns, AI Personas, and Resonate to shape your audience, message, and budget before launch.
• Measured by outside partners: our attribution suite connects your campaigns to site visits, store visits, leads, and sales, with measurement from third-party partners.

Ready to see where CTV fits in your plan?

Tell us your goal and budget, and we’ll show you how CTV and the right mix of channels can get you there.

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