Connected TV (CTV) heads into 2026 with growing expectations from marketers who now treat streaming as a core part of the media mix.

• CTV ad spending will increase nearly 15% (14.5%) this year to reach $37.95 billion, according to EMARKETER's December 2025 forecast.

As budgets stabilize and performance scrutiny rises, industry leaders have identified several themes that could dominate the year, including practical AI, standardized measurement, and more curated, personalized viewer experiences.

From buzzword to backbone

AI’s role in CTV is shifting away from splashy creative demos and toward foundational infrastructure that improves context, relevance, and scale.

“AI is not a differentiator. Every company has some type of AI in their business," said Dan Larkman, CEO and founder of Keynes Digital. "What matters is the data you feed it.”

In other words, AI won't fix a broken foundation where poor identity inputs or weak signals still produce unreliable outcomes.

On the platform side, the meaningful progress is coming from standardization.

“One of the most encouraging AI developments this year has been the industry’s work on AdCP, an open framework that gives AI systems a shared way to interpret context,” said LG Ad Solutions' CMO Tony Marlow. "As AdCP gains traction, AI can better understand the nature of an impression, the surrounding content, and suitability signals, thereby improving creative alignment and making the entire ecosystem more interoperable."

At the same time, AI is broadening access to CTV for smaller advertisers.

“We’ll see the continued rise of AI-generated video ads on CTV, not just from national brands but also from an increasing number of small and local advertisers,” said Sara Sinclair, vice president of ad platforms at TVIQ. "These ads will become more tailored to specific audiences and DMAs as creative automation becomes more accessible."

The market demands measurement standardization

One of the biggest forces pushing CTV forward in 2026 will be measurement discipline, according to experts. After years of rapid audience growth, brands now want proof that the format is living up to its hyped potential.

“If you want CTV to behave like a performance channel, you have to measure it with the same discipline you’d apply to anything that affects revenue," said Larkman. "That means structuring tests correctly, validating incrementality, and making sure CTV isn’t judged on short-term expectations built for social."

The recent rise of media mix modeling (MMM), in particular, has created new friction for teams still adapting their analytics approaches. As Larkman explains, “The biggest overlooked trend is the shift from MTA to media mix models, and the fact that most teams don’t know how to set up CTV inside those models.”

Sinclair adds another dimension: Supply-path logic is not aligning with publisher economics.

“The assumption that short and transparent supply paths are inherently more efficient doesn’t always hold true in practice," she said. "If buyers truly want to support publishers, the industry needs mechanisms that intentionally prioritize these smaller, more direct paths rather than defaulting to scale-driven buying behaviors."

Both trends point to the same conclusion: 2026 will be the year marketers insist on consistent, comparable definitions of quality, reach, and lift.

“This will be the year where proving value becomes just as important as driving it," said Larkman.

CTV's unified experience

For marketers, 2026 will be about meeting consumers across surfaces that increasingly feel like one integrated environment, according to industry leaders.

"The industry sometimes talks about subscription video on demand (SVOD), ad-supported video on demand (AVOD), free ad-supported television (FAST), and the Smart TV home screen as separate areas, yet viewers do not think about them this way," said Marlow. "They move fluidly across all parts of the ecosystem, and the opportunity for marketers lies in understanding how these surfaces work together."

For many publishers who cannot rely on scale alone, curation is a major advantage, experts say.

“Publishers should lean heavily into curated audience packages as a mechanism to unlock premium demand," said Sinclair. Contextual clusters, lookalike content groupings, and cross-FAST retargeting could help smaller publishers compete more effectively.

Finally, the home screen is emerging as a critical moment of influence, one that blends discovery, personalization, and monetization.

“Consumers spend meaningful time browsing the Home Screen before they settle on what to watch," said Marlow. That moment is becoming a valuable frontier for performance and brand impact.

The experimentation phase is over. CTV’s next chapter is about clarity, quality, and consistency.

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.

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