“We’re treating CTV as if it’s TV that streams, but it’s a very different medium,” said our analyst Jacob Bourne at EMARKETER’s virtual CTV Summit.

CTV ad spend will surpass TV ad spend by 2028, EMARKETER forecasts. While CTV is pulling budgets from linear TV, marketers who don’t adjust their strategies could miss out on CTV’s full value.

There’s more content than ever, and unlike during linear TV’s heyday, consumers can easily avoid your ad by scrolling on their phones.

Competing with the second screen

Consumers are serial multitaskers, and they won’t focus on ads when they have an ad-free experience on a smaller screen. Nearly two-thirds (65%) watch or stream content while scrolling, according to a January 2025 EMARKETER forecast.

CTV offers ad formats designed to break through multitasking, allowing advertisers to reach consumers outside a standard ad break. Viewers stream CTV at their own pace, creating white space for advertisers. Most viewers who hit pause stay away for over a minute, according to an April 2025 Magna Global and DirecTV survey.

“Users are multitasking, and that’s why you need interactive formats,” said Jules Minvielle, co-founder and CEO of Olyzon. “You need pause ads, QR codes, and home screen ads. You need to make sure you can touch them all along the ad journey, and not just during the ad break.”

Dodging wasted budget

Cross-channel reconciliation is the top CTV challenge for marketers worldwide (34.5%), up from 30.9% in 2024, according to an ID5 survey.

“A lot of agencies and vendors don’t necessarily see conversions,” said our analyst Suzy Davidkhanian. “It happens all the time where I’ll purchase something, I’ll search for said something, and I’ll still get an ad for it.”

Internal systems with shared data and language can support that reconciliation and keep ads relevant. Part of optimizing spend is creating a frictionless experience that doesn’t bombard consumers or turn them off from your brand, said our analyst Jeremy Goldman.

“We need to get better as a digital advertising community at making sure that no dollar is spent

not hitting the KPIs that we’re trying to hit,” Goldman said.

Digesting endless content

Unlike traditional TV, which had a fixed slate of shows that were easier to track, CTV requires deeper insight into who is tuning in and where. That data helps advertisers feel confident their money isn’t wasted on the wrong audiences. Without those insights, CTV is “essentially a black box you run blind,” said Minvielle.

“You don't know what sentiments are attached to those shows, what’s happening in the show, if it’s brand safe, or if it’s just relevant for your brand,” he said. “There are so many shows that you need AI agents to analyze and score each show.”

AI thrives on scale, giving it a clear use case in unpacking the CTV landscape, said Bourne. Increased marketing effectiveness (44%) and process efficiency (42%) are the top AI benefits according to CMOs worldwide, per a February2025 Merkle survey.

“There’s the program level data that you’re talking about, but then there’s this whole world of just the emotional context of what viewers are watching at any given moment,” said Bourne. “There’s a need for an even deeper layer of intelligence to interpret that.”

Watch the full session.

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