Roku’s ad engine hums: Q1 ad revenues jumped 27% as 38.7 billion streaming hours and premium CTV formats helped pull marketers from linear TV.

Fire TV's new UI weaves ads across screens, tying CTV reach to retail data and programmatic scale.

The news: Google reduced its sub-$500 million smart TV budget by 10%, laid off a quarter of its 300-person TV staff, and scaled back investments in connected TV (CTV) initiatives like Google TV and Android TV, per The Information. The latest changes prioritize YouTube and cloud, which now drive Alphabet’s $110 billion annual run rate. Our take: Advertisers should reallocate budgets toward YouTube’s growing ad ecosystem while exploring emerging CTV platforms like Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Google’s retreat creates openings for competitors to capture market share in CTV advertising.

Total media ad spending growth has stabilized, and digital ad spending is set for an extended period of low double-digit annual increases. Amazon, TikTok, and Instagram will be the main growth drivers this year.

Here are five charts that reveal the scale and outlook for CTV from the perspective of its access points.

Smart TVs are used by 61.9% of US connected TV (CTV) households, making them the top CTV device by far, per Comscore CTV Intelligence. In second and third place are Amazon Fire TV (29.1%) and Roku (28.4%), respectively.

The forecast: In 2021, US Roku monthly users will increase by 11.5%, reaching 111.7 million monthly users. With these figures, Roku maintains its position as the most-used connected TV (CTV) device in the US market, though Amazon Fire TV is catching up.

Amazon’s new smart TVs will disrupt both the connected TV (CTV) and TV measurement industries: Amazon Fire TV is already a major player, but its new CTV lines will let it take advantage of the ongoing fracturing of TV measurement.

As the pandemic drove consumers to move their spending online in 2020, Amazon benefitted in a big way. But it wasn’t just its ecommerce business that grew by double digits. Its advertising business grew by 52.5% last year, pushing Amazon’s share of the US digital ad market past 10% for the first time. This has only strengthened its position as the No. 3 ad publisher in the US.

TV ad spending takes a hit as marketers adjust their budgets amid a recession.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated cord-cutting and boosted streaming video viewing.

Roku was the top connected TV (CTV) platform in the US last year with 84.7 million users, according to our estimates. This year, that figure will grow 12.5% to 95.2 million.

Advertisers are making significant investments in connected TV as the TV landscape becomes more fragmented.

Advertisers are embracing the popularity of connected TV by allocating more money to streaming platforms.

Ad dollars and viewers are pouring into digital video platforms as the TV industry continues to lose subscribers.

Principal analyst Lauren Fisher joins guest host and fellow principal analyst Nicole Perrin to discuss Amazon’s plans to offer video ad inventory to demand-side platforms dataxu and The Trade Desk. They also talk about our new programmatic fee estimates, Microsoft’s purchase of ad-tech firm PromoteIQ and Facebook’s offer to pay for news.

In the first of a three-part series on digital video and TV, analyst Paul Verna breaks down the data on ad spending and subscription fees. When will digital video ad spend catch up with TV ad spend? How much subscription income is flowing into services like Netflix and Hulu?

This third annual StatPack compiles key metrics around digital video, television and the relationship between them.

Connected TV advertising is expected to grow, albeit not as fast as many would like, and certainly not as fast as audiences are embracing this platform for consuming content. Industry experts are optimistic that the ad dollars will eventually catch up with consumer adoption.