With inflation driving up operating costs and a potential recession looming, marketing is getting deprioritized. Our current outlook: Ad spending won’t bottom out

We lowered our expectations for digital ad spending next year amid ongoing data privacy challenges, post-pandemic normalization in investment, and overall market instability.

Next year, connected TV (CTV) ads will move from conception to creative to production faster. That’s according to Michael Hopkins, vice president of go to market at MNTN, who spoke this week on our “Behind the Numbers: The Daily” podcast.

On today's episode, we discuss innovations in connected TV (CTV) and the outlook for next year. "In Other News," we talk about what to make of recent price hikes for streaming platforms and YouTube launching Primetime Channels. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Paul Verna and Michael Hopkins, vice president of go to market at MNTN.

Digital video viewership is being propped up by connected TVs (CTVs), which allow for easy access to streaming apps on the biggest screens in households

Next year, US connected TV (CTV) ad spend will hit $26.92 billion. This market has grown by double digits each year since we began tracking it in 2017, and it will continue to do so through the end of our forecast period in 2026.

Even as we approach a potential ad spend winter, connected TV (CTV) advertising is in decent shape. Netflix and Disney+ just joined the ad-supported streaming game. Cord-cutters are outpacing pay TV viewers. And YouTube is increasingly watched on CTVs. These five charts offer a closer look at CTV’s past, present, and future.

A successful marketing approach prioritizes knowing and defining your audience, expanding your reach, and giving yourself room to adjust on the fly.

We expect US subscription OTT video ad spending to near $10 billion and account for 3.4% of all digital ad spending—and 10.2% of total video ad spending—by the end of 2023.

Each year, our analysts dig into media and device usage across the world. In total, we looked at 44 markets. Here’s a look at eight key insights our analysts found in the United States and Canada.

The UK is home to some of the most voracious digital video viewers, but planning a campaign across the plethora of video platforms is getting more and more complicated. An increase in ad-supported on-demand platforms is adding to the complexity.

YouTube will soon sell subscriptions to other streamers: Major rivals like Netflix and Disney are notably absent as YouTube gears up to take them on.

With a growing number of streaming channels, it can be challenging for marketers to put together a comprehensive connected TV (CTV) strategy. But it’s never been more important to do so. This year, we estimate that CTV ad spend will total $18.89 billion. As growth accelerates, that number will double by 2026, reaching $38.83 billion.

The digitally native generation does not watch TV the same way baby boomers, Gen Xers, and even millennials might. Here are five tips we picked up at NYC Advertising Week that marketers can use to engage Gen Z with TV.

As linear technology improves and consumers adopt more digital TV alternatives, the TV market is cruising toward a more “advanced” future. Advertisers are amping up spend accordingly.

These days, more TV inventory is addressable than not. But even as streaming audiences expand and technology advances, fragmentation of inventory and data is proving a barrier to success for advanced TV advertisers.

In August, ad spending dropped for the third month in a row. But the outlook for spending isn’t so cut and dry. “If you start at that pre-pandemic point and you plot a curve to where we are now, we're actually not doing so badly,” our analyst Paul Verna said on a recent “Behind the Numbers” podcast.

Nearly a quarter of TV viewers no longer watch linear TV—they’re flocking to other options like ad-supported video-on-demand. Today’s advertisers must understand the nuances of the landscape to effectively reach customers.

There are a few ways to view the decline of the pay TV bundle. In our pay TV figures, we exclude vMVPDs, which deliver live TV over the internet. When viewed this way, pay TV will decline 7.2% this year to 66.4 million households. That figure will drop to 54.3 million households by the end of 2026.

Smart TVs are staring down a very different landscape: Hardware sales will recover this year as the industry addresses concerns about miscounting ads.