Streaming TV has reached several critical tipping points that signal a fundamental shift in how consumers watch content and how advertisers must approach this evolving landscape.

"The rise of viewing on streaming and connected TV in particular has been incredible," said Dina Liu, TikTok's global head of brand product marketing, during a session at this week's EMARKETER Future of Digital Summit. "The latest stat we just saw is that it's actually overtaken linear for the first time, which is an incredible milestone for streaming."

During the session, industry experts from TikTok, Mastercard, and VML explored how streaming's dominance is reshaping advertising strategies across platforms and creating new opportunities for brands.

Meaningful experiences beyond traditional channels

EMARKETER forecasts that US connected TV (CTV) ad spending will eclipse traditional TV ad spending by 2028.

"This has been a long time coming," said EMARKETER analyst Paul Verna in the session. "We've seen this coming, but the lines are just going to keep separating."

For advertisers, the fragmented streaming landscape presents both challenges and opportunities that go beyond traditional spot advertising. Mastercard has reimagined streaming as an opportunity for creating experiences rather than just delivering ads.

"We're really at this interesting inflection point in marketing overall, where brand trust with consumers is at an all-time low," said Jay Altschuler, Mastercard's senior vice president of global media and agency relations, at the summit session. "Human attention span is less than a goldfish, and we are really struggling with traditional spots and dots advertising."

He said Mastercard's partnership with Netflix, where the company serves as Netflix's "official experiences partner," illustrates how brands are thinking beyond conventional advertising.

"We are seeing the blending of the physical and digital, and how we start to engage the consumers that we serve by delivering something much more meaningful, beyond just spots and dots into a full, priceless experience," said Altschuler.

Creator economy transforms relationships

The creator economy has become central to how brands connect with audiences across streaming platforms, with Altschuler saying Mastercard views creators as small businesses and has launched a creator accelerator program.

"Creators are the fastest growing small businesses that exist today," he said, touting the company's creator PATH program for incentivizing creators to develop content and experiences that align with their brand while allowing creators to monetize their work.

For agencies, working with creators involves calculated risk.

"When you invite creators into your brand experience, there is a level of risk, because you are turning over your prized possession, which is your brand and your brand message," said Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at VML. "It can be a little nerve-wracking depending on what level creator they are."

Meanwhile, brands who use creator marketing powerhouse TikTok are evolving their approach.

"In the past, we may have taken the message of saying it is only creators and creator-first content that resonates on the platform," said Liu. "[But now,] even our largest brands, whether it's fortune 100 brands, some of the more traditional, conservative brands, they're seeing what authentic, creative storytelling at scale can do on Tiktok."

Measurement challenges require focused frameworks

With campaigns spanning multiple streaming platforms, measurement has become increasingly complex, requiring advertisers to focus on meaningful metrics rather than getting lost in data.

"What we're finding is that clients are almost overwhelmed by the amount of data, because you can get 1,000 data points on anything that we're running," said Kohl. "One of the biggest things for us is to put together a measurement framework and identify the top five metrics that are the most important to our client, and use those as our beacon as we're designing our plans."

Altschuler predicted that attribution will continue to improve.

"What we're going to see in the next few years is probably this shrinking of the funnel, and everything will really start to be able to be traded based on outcomes," he said. "What we love about streaming, television in general, is just the storytelling possibilities—the sight, sound, emotion, the rich storytelling mechanics are so powerful. They've been amazing for 50 years in building brands, we just haven't necessarily had the right technology to attribute it and do the closed loop attribution back to the sale."

Watch the full session.

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.