These are boom times for digital advertising. While the pandemic battered the economy, the job market, and consumer confidence, it did little to quash a bonanza in digital ad spending. Still, there are challenges ahead for the industry, including grappling with the thorny issue of measuring ad performance across fragmented media platforms and walled gardens.

Attribution innovations have brought the focus away from video completion rates and toward return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost-per-action (CPA) metrics

Connected TV (CTV) ad spend will reach $14.44 billion this year, up 59.9% from 2020.

On today's episode, we discuss how prepared measurement and syndication vendors are for the removal of third-party cookies and device IDs, what options advertisers have to maintain measurement and addressability, and some best practices and recommendations for both sides of the supply chain that will help them seamlessly transition to a privacy-centric future. We then talk about how connected TV (CTV) giants are holding onto new customers, YouTube's CTV ads that can move over to your smartphone, and where people prefer to watch movies. Tune in to the discussion with senior vice president of product and general manager of customer experience at Neustar Steve Silvers and eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna.

Among connected TV (CTV) companies we forecast, Hulu will lead in US ad revenues in 2021 at $3.13 billion, up 44% over 2020.

A standard currency for TV and digital is unlikely, despite buyers’ wishes: Media buyers want more connection between linear and streaming TV, and though individual networks are making strides, an industrywide solution is unlikely.

YouTube viewers are pivoting to TV screens as their method of choice for watching content, a trend that experienced significant growth before and during the height of the pandemic. We estimate that 113.1 million US YouTube viewers, 52.8% of total viewers, watched the platform's content on connected TV (CTV) devices in 2020. Those numbers will increase to 130.8 million and 57.7% by 2022.

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.

Around the world, mobile is the No. 1 device for watching YouTube, capturing 63% of the platform’s video views in Q2 2021.

High prices drive people to ditch pay TV

Advertisers may never see the likes of Nielsen again: NBCUniversal announced it is creating an independent measurement system in partnership with other firms.

How Olympic viewers streamed the opening ceremony

eMarketer forecasts that retail media and connected TV (CTV) will be among the fastest-growing digital ad channels this year. Jed Dederick, senior vice president of global client and agency development at demand-side platform The Trade Desk, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss what the firm has learned over the course of the pandemic, what buyers want from CTV and retail media, and why resolving the identity crisis is so important.

Roku soars at the upfronts: Advertisers’ upfront spending commitments with the platform doubled from last year, as interest in CTV continues to rise.

Attack of the clones: Now that most major social platforms have a TikTok-like feature, each is exploring different ways to use short-form video to further their longer-term goals.

For the first time, we have broken out the portion of US upfront digital video ad spending that goes to connected TV (CTV). This year, advertisers will increase their upfront CTV video ad spending by almost 50% year over year to $4.51 billion.

US programmatic digital display ad spending continued growing at double-digit rates during the pandemic, and we expect it to reach a milestone next year when more than 9 in 10 digital display ad dollars are transacted using some form of automation.

The medium screen: New data on ad impressions shows that more YouTube viewing is happening on TVs, suggesting the platform will soon become an increasingly popular place to reallocate TV ad dollars.

“Roku Recommends” rolls out: The new show from Roku’s branded content studio surfaces top streaming content and gives advertisers a chance to reach viewers who might otherwise skip straight to ad-free services.

This report explores our Q1 2021 estimates of time spent with media in the US and analyzes which behaviors will stick in 2021.