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How many streaming services does your household have access to? Once upon a time, many of us only had a single Netflix account to our name. Now, however, it’s more common to juggle multiple subscriptions across not only Netflix, but also Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Hulu, Peacock, Max, Disney+, and more. Welcome to the wild world of connected TV viewing!
The lack of unified connected TV (CTV) inventory is mildly frustrating for consumers (wait, which app can we stream Sunday Night Football on?), but it’s doubly so for marketers. And with the recent attention the channel has received from consumers and advertisers alike, ensuring brand safety and preventing ad fraud on CTV adds an additional layer of difficulty for teams. Combine that with the challenge of knowing who precisely is in front of a TV set at a given moment, and it’s clear that, much like the broader marketing landscape, CTV is complex.
The cost of this complexity and fragmentation can extend beyond the consumer experience, trickling all the way down to team satisfaction and turnover rates. CTV media fragmentation results in inordinate amounts of time spent on the low-value, manual tasks necessary to cobble together data and holistic insights from many disparate media sources. In the context of burnout within the digital advertising industry, it’s critical that brands and agencies seek out ways to automate as many aspects of the CTV media buying process as possible in order to retain talent and avoid the high costs of turnover.
Despite the challenges of navigating fragmentation, ensuring brand safety, and embracing tech to streamline CTV advertising, savvy marketers know that connected TV is an effective channel to include in a holistic marketing mix. After all, 86% of US households own a connected TV device, and in 2025 the average US adult will spend nearly two and a half hours watching CTV devices each day. Even more, it’s the fastest-growing major ad channel in the US, with CTV ad spend projected to hit $32.57 billion in 2025, representing 9.6% of total digital media ad spend.
To make the most of the CTV opportunity, advertisers need to understand how to work around industry fragmentation to run effective, brand-safe campaigns and connect with viewers when and where they’re watching video. With a proactive approach to planning, targeting, and measurement, advertising teams can fully capitalize on CTV within today’s complex landscape.
Planning an effective CTV campaign requires marketers to grapple with pain points related to targeting and measuring. While identifying targeting parameters and KPIs early in the planning process is best practice for any campaign, it’s even more important when it comes to CTV (more on this later!), due to the channel-specific challenges those areas present.
In addition to identifying KPIs early in the planning process, planning for optimizations is another best practice to include in the early stages of a CTV campaign. This could include preparing multiple versions of the same video, editing those versions to different lengths, and planning to A/B test them to see which lengths perform best.
Once teams have identified KPIs and planned for optimizations, they should consider the following when planning an effective CTV campaign:
Though the CTV advertising boom has opened up exciting opportunities for brands and advertisers, the rapid increase in ad investment on the channel has also attracted attention from fraudsters and other bad actors. And, combined with the fact that more than 80% of CTV ad buyers say finding brand suitable ad placements is a significant concern, it’s clear that safeguarding against brand safety threats on the channel is a key step to crafting an effective CTV campaign.
Formulating a brand safety plan during the planning process is key, as this ensures that clear guidelines are established for suitable content and targeting criteria from the start. When it comes to CTV targeting, tools like allowlists, blocklists, and CTV-specific contextual targeting segments can help teams focus their ads on desired placements. By getting clear on their specific brand values and creating a strategy that incorporates both pre-bid and post-bid monitoring, teams can actively manage where their ads appear. This approach not only helps to avoid unsuitable placements, but also allows for quick adjustments if any brand safety risks arise during the campaign.
Additionally, there are many partnerships (such as those discussed earlier) that can help teams avoid ad fraud and prioritize brand suitable CTV placements. With the right partnerships, advertisers can access verified inventory, utilize advanced measurement tools, and ensure their ads run in safe, brand-appropriate placements, thus enhancing overall campaign effectiveness. Ultimately, by considering brand safety from the very beginning of the campaign process, brands and advertisers can protect their CTV campaigns and drive meaningful engagement with their audiences.
Once advertisers have identified KPIs, planned for optimizations, made intentional creative choices based on their audience, and crafted a proactive brand safety plan, it’s time to focus on CTV targeting.
There are many targeting opportunities in the realm of CTV, each offering unique advantages for reaching audiences. For instance, contextual advertising solutions are privacy-friendly, scalable, and cost-efficient, making them an ideal choice for CTV campaigns. These audience segments are classified using groups such as content category, broadcast type, production type, app store, and device, to better target media based on user viewing habits. For example, a home décor brand may want to run their ads within a content category that features home improvement projects, and a gaming company may want to target viewers tuning into CTV inventory through gaming console devices.
Leveraging private marketplace deals (PMPs) is another privacy-friendly way for CTV marketers to target. Within a PMP auction, advertisers can layer on contextual, first-party, and demographic data to further target specific audiences. And since these deals consist of high quality, premium inventory, they can help teams avoid ad fraud by offering enhanced control and quality assurance compared to inventory found via open marketplaces.
A few other key targeting tactics that advertisers can leverage within their CTV campaigns include geotargeting, dayparting, and retargeting. These allow marketers to reach viewers in specific locations and at specific times, and to extend their first-party segments across devices.
A final note on effectively targeting CTV ads: Intentionality is key! If teams curate an allowlist that is too limited (i.e., they’ve layered on too many different targeting tactics), it will be difficult to effectively scale that campaign and reach a broad audience.
As explored earlier, fragmentation is one of the most pressing challenges facing CTV advertisers—and it can make measurement and reporting especially tricky.
One of the best ways to maintain focus is to intentionally plan and optimize towards specific key performance indicators (KPIs), which will also help advertisers to ensure that they’re connecting with the right audiences in the right ways.
So, which KPIs should marketers consider when planning CTV campaigns? Video completion rate (VCR), which tells advertisers the rate at which their ad was viewed in its entirety, tends to be the most common. Other KPI options to consider for CTV campaigns include:
There are a variety of partners—or, even better, automated advertising platforms with a variety of partner integrations—that marketers can layer onto a CTV campaign to leverage custom capabilities for each campaign and optimize towards specific KPIs. Partnerships and integrations teams might use for their CTV campaigns include:
While the fragmented nature of CTV advertising presents challenges for marketers, brands and agencies willing to think outside the box and test creative solutions will enjoy the broad brand awareness and conversions CTV offers. By taking an intentional approach throughout each stage of their campaigns, advertising teams can optimize their reach, drive meaningful engagement, and capitalize on the full potential of connected TV advertising.
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As CTV continues to grow and evolve, it’s critical for advertisers to understand how to balance it with other digital video channels. Looking for a deeper dive on how to embrace the connected TV advertising opportunity within a holistic digital video strategy? Check out Video Unleashed: The Ultimate Guide to Digital Video Advertising for all the data, trends, and research marketing teams need to craft a holistic, omnichannel video experience.