While traditional TV ad spending will struggle for growth in the coming years, digital video will not. A portion of digital video spend will go to the nascent CTV space, but traditional broadcasters are also developing their own streaming services (with BVOD ad spend rising at a far faster rate than traditional TV spend). Overall, the advertising opportunity for CTV remains small.

Upfront purchasing within digital video is growing because overall digital video ad spending is growing—but upfront spending will account for just 12.3% of all US digital video ad spending this year. Likewise, upfront digital video spending accounts for only a small portion of total upfront spending, as most upfront spending goes toward TV.

CTV advertising is almost entirely video with ad spending on CTV devices representing almost a quarter (24.3%) of digital video ad spending. Growth in CTV ad spending exceeds growth in topline digital video ad spending by 6.6 percentage points.

For the first time, CTV will account for more than two-thirds of US upfront digital video advertising spending in 2022. Upfront spending accounts for about one-third of total CTV ad spending. Total US TV upfront ad spending will be flat at $19.21 billion in 2022-2023.

This doesn’t include digital inventory sold by social networks, YouTube, device-makers like Roku and Samsung, or news publishers, as those dollars are counted in our upfront digital video ad spending forecast instead. The upfront TV forecast also excludes upfront commitments that don’t ultimately result in a transaction.

What’s also clear is that little digital video spending is committed upfront, with nearly 90% of the dollars going to social and programmatic channels outside of the upfronts and NewFronts loop in 2022. On the other hand, as CTV programming and advertising mature, more upfront digital video ad dollars are going to CTV.

Nearly 9 in 10 of all digital video ad dollars will transact programmatically for the next few years. Mobile Dominance. Three-fourths of programmatic ad spending flows through mobile. For programmatic video, mobile accounts for two-thirds of spending.

A portion of digital video spend will go to the nascent CTV space, but traditional broadcasters are also developing their own streaming services (with BVOD ad spend rising at a far faster rate than traditional TV spend). Overall, the advertising opportunity for CTV remains small. CTV Will Have Little Impact on the Strong Growth in Digital Video Ad Spending.

This year, digital video ad spending will surpass linear TV, one year ahead of our previous forecast. We have increased our digital video ad spending forecasts YoY, from $71.81 billion to $76.20 billion in 2022. To be clear, the amount of money spent on linear will still be considerable.