Consumers now engage with content across more channels than ever, making it essential to optimize ad spend to reach audiences wherever they are. But fragmented media investments create major measurement challenges. Different platforms use unique metrics and reporting tools, leaving marketers without a unified view of ROI and forcing them to guess instead of strategically invest.

Effective cross-media strategies require holistic data that shows how ad dollars work across channels and which creative assets truly drive results. Nielsen’s 2025 Annual Marketing Report highlights the scope of the challenge: marketers cite stakeholder alignment, data volume, and inconsistent metrics as the top barriers to calculating ROI.

The explosion of platforms, from traditional TV and radio to social, search, and streaming, creates silos of information that rarely connect. Without a comprehensive understanding of how media touchpoints interact, marketers risk inefficient spending and missed opportunities.

Advertising intelligence helps break down these barriers. Nielsen Ad Intel delivers a holistic view of the ad landscape with robust reporting across TV, connected TV (CTV), digital, social, audio, print, out of home, and cinema. With this integrated perspective, marketers can see where their ad dollars are going and how audiences are being reached. Moving beyond single-channel metrics enables better decisions, clearer insight into creative performance and ultimately stronger ROI.

CTV continues to grow as a key player in this ecosystem. Marketers are shifting budgets toward streaming, but simply adding CTV isn’t enough. Its impact must be measured and integrated with other channels. To support this, Nielsen recently expanded Ad Intel to cover more than 20 individual platforms representing 95% of the US CTV market. This transparency lets marketers see where and how brands are allocating their budgets, and which platforms capture the most spend.

When CTV data is combined with insights from other media, marketers gain a consistent, comparable analysis of campaign performance. For example, a brand running a product launch across linear TV, CTV, and social can use integrated spend and creative data to compare messaging and placements in real time, adjusting the mix for maximum impact.

Winning cross-media strategies depend on more than collecting data—they require intelligent use of it. By analyzing spending trends, optimizing campaigns in real time and building a continuous feedback loop, marketers can move from reactive adjustments to proactive optimization.

The path forward is clear: leverage comprehensive cross-platform intelligence to bring all data into a single framework. Nielsen Ad Intel provides the clarity needed to optimize media mixes, understand audiences, and prove the true value of advertising investments in today’s complex, multi-screen world.

Learn more about how Nielsen’s advertising intelligence data can help shape your cross-media ad strategies.