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Hello and welcome to a special edition episode of the eMarketer podcast, behind the Numbers. I'm Marcus Johnson and today I'm introducing a special episode from the eMarketer Summit, CTV and Streaming Advertising Trends for 2026, which was held on November 14th. In this episode, Ross Benish unpacks the key trends driving the evolution of streaming and ctv. Afterwards, Ross sits down for an in depth conversation about streaming platform developments and emerging opportunities for advertisers with Kim Marchon, Head of agency development for StackAdapt.
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I hope you enjoy and hi everyone. I'm Ross Benesh, senior analyst at eMarketer. We're kicking off things with our keynote, CTV and streaming advertising trends for 2026. Let's get into it. So the first graphic that I want to show here just demonstrates some inflection points that are going to happen in the streaming ecosystem over the next few years and we're going to go more in depth through these as I go through the presentation. But we're going to start with YouTube, which I think is the most important company in streaming right now, at least from the consumer side. And we're going to go into paid subscriptions and eventually ending on advertising. Now with YouTube, we are going to talk about how it's disrupting the TV industry. That's what's the primary focus for today. But it's so much more than that. We don't have time to get totally into it. But YouTube is pulling search and podcasts and shopping everything into its orbit. But it also happens to be the largest service when it comes to time spent with television. There are some advertisers who believe that YouTube still isn't TV, that YouTube is competing for different budgets. And that sentiment is understandable. But for consumers, especially those who are under 30 years old, it's the service that they rely on most when they are watching content on a TV screen. So, so we can't totally ignore it. This chart from Nielsen shows how YouTube has surpassed its closest competition when it comes to viewing time. So YouTube is more than a tenth of total time spent on TV screens. And when it surpassed Disney, I think that's pretty significant because the Disney portfolio is so large. There's you know, the ESPN streaming services, Hulu, Disney plus. There's also all the TV networks that Disney owns, such as the Disney Channel, Disney Junior, ESPN channels, ABC and YouTube has more views viewing then all of that. And that's just on the TV screen. You know, you have half the time spent with YouTube is on phones and computers and tablets that's not even included here. This is just TV screen viewing. And YouTube has distanced itself from its closest competitors. It's gained share over Netflix and Disney and the others who are below them. So even though it's a large service, already was reaching over 200 million people a month, it's now gaining time spent faster than other services who are at the bottom of the Nielsen gauge. YouTube share of total time spent with TV has increased about 3 percentage points over the last 18 months. And there isn't another service or company whose share has increased to such a degree. Now this chart kind of tells the same story, but on a more macro basis. So previously we were looking at YouTube compared to Netflix and Disney, which are the other companies at the top in terms of time spent with tv. What we also see though is streaming has surpassed broadcast and cable watching. If we go back a few years ago, there was, you know, 2/3 of the viewing in this area would have been broadcast and cable. Now it's 50 50, which is quite interesting. And of course these trends are, you know, telling the same story. They're part of the reason that the streaming time spent is going up so much is because Netflix and YouTube continue to drive more time spent. And this cuts off here at August. There will be a little bit of fluctuation at the end of the year. So like in December and January when, when, when Nielsen releases their latest gauges of the year, you will see more time spent with broadcast and cable because sports watching really kicks off in Q4. You have the NBA and NFL and college football all happening at the same time. Most of that viewing is happening on traditional tv. So it wouldn't be surprising to see the broadcast and cable part go back over streaming, you know, and be the majority. But that'll be short lived if you look at a long term. You see broadcast and cable time spent declining, streaming time spent increasing. Now if we zoom back even further, and this is this data, here is our own forecast, we see that streaming has made remarkable progress in just a few years. So in 2020 there was about the same amount of time spent with, with convergent TV in total. And by that I mean linear TV plus ctv. But where it's allocated has changed dramatically. You had two thirds of time spent with traditional TV over three hours. At the time it was more than double ctv. And now CTV has surpassed it. And if you go back even further, the divergence was even greater. In 2019 there was significantly less time spent with streaming. It was actually the pandemic that helped bring streaming forward we saw a change of about 25 minutes per day in 2020among the whole population, including those who aren't even streaming viewers. And even then, though, it still trailed TV by quite a bit. So this inflection point has been years in the making. I don't think it's necessarily terribly surprising, but it's notable and we should call it out because just five years ago this would seem like a gargantuan lift. But now it's commonplace to accept that streaming is where most of the viewership happens. And streaming's rise is part of a broader trend where people are just spending more time with video. So this chart is comparing video to non video time spent for digital media. So what it says is that most of the time that people spend with digital media is watching video at this point. And there's certainly simultaneous usage and we count both things. If you're co viewing, if you're reading an article and you're streaming, you'd be counted as consuming both types of media. But overall, whether it's on social media, publishers, websites and apps, or on streaming services, consumers are just spending more time with video than they ever have. And it's basically most of their digital media diet at this point. Now another inflection point is happening on the subscription side. This will be the first year that there will be more viewers who don't pay for live TV than there are those who do. Now, in this chart here, we're looking at the broadest definition of pay TV possible. So this includes traditional pay tv, that's satellite and cable companies like Dish Network, Charter, Comcast, but also digital pay TV. Those are known as VMVPDs. That's services like Hulu at live TV and Sling and YouTube TV. Even if you include those digital services, there are more cord cutters and cord nevers than there are subscribers to television. Now Those services, the VMVPDs, digital pay TV, whatever term you want to use, they launched about 10 years ago, was when the first one came out with Sling. And they've only replaced about one third of cord cutters during that time. Initially they were replacing about 70% in that first year or two because they were sold at a discount and they brought in a lot of viewers. Sling TV used to only be about 25 bucks a month for its premium package of channels. Now that price is closer to 85 $90. It's not really that much different than getting a traditional pay TV package. Because of that, you just see fewer viewers being replaced over time. So it reduces cord cutting if you include that in your definition, but it doesn't really slow the trend down too much, you still see a drop of about 3 to 5 percentage points per year. And in the share of the US population that will subscribe to a bundle of TV networks. Now this graphic here is just taking that data and putting it in revenue terms. If we look at subscription revenues, how are they being allocated? And subscription revenues are super important. I know this is an audience of marketers. We are e marketer obviously, so we care about the advertising side. But 2/3 of the money that goes into the television industry is coming from people's credit cards. It's coming from them $100 cable TV bills and those $12 SVOD fees that everyone's paying. And with streaming services like Netflix, Disney plus Peacock, they used to only account for about 25% of the amount of revenue that consumers would spend on subscriptions. By the end of our forecast period in 2027, we expect that it'll be about half and, and then, you know, depending on if you want to include vmv, PDS as digital or if you want to count them as pay TV, you saw the other portion go into live TV. And basically live TV packages used to be about 3/4 of subscription fees and soon will be half. And within that half a third is going to the digital services like YouTube TV, 2/3 going to go to your Dish networks and charters. Host of the world. Now a way that streaming providers have increased those subscription fees is they've raised the prices on consumers and they've done so quite a bit. Streaming services used to be much cheaper to access, particularly the ad free tiers. And we've seen price increases that greatly exceed inflation and they exceed the price increases that you've seen with pay tv. Packages like pay TV is certainly rising every year the TV networks increase their retrans fees, which increases the subscribers bill at the end of the month. But streaming services, you know, you've seen a lot of them go from being under $10 a month to being closer to $20 a month. And this chart here, I just wanted to emphasize that it's, it compounds. These are annual growth rates. So if it grows, you know, 22% in 2023 and then another, you know, 10 plus percent in 2024, the consumer is feeling a much bigger increase than 10% in 2024. They're looking at it long term and they're saying, well, hey, the price of my service has gone up 50% over the course of three years. And that's Leading to a lot of churn of particular streaming services. This chart just kind of breaks down what we had in the previous chart, but on a buy service level. So we're looking at how each service has changed the price of their cheapest ad free tier. Basically, how much does it cost to avoid advertising? At the start of the pandemic, on average, across the major streaming services, it was about nine bucks. Now it's almost double that. And we're going to see more price increases coming. The biggest offender of this has been Disney Plus. So Disney launched in November 2019. They had fortuitous timing. It was right before the pandemic started and it was only $7 to get their service and they didn't have an ad tier. Now Disney plus costs $19 to avoid advertising, almost three times the price that it cost at launch just five years ago. And there is at least another price increase coming in the next 18 months for Disney plus because right now Disney plus cost $19 to avoid ads. You could pay $1 extra and get Disney plus and Hulu together for $20 to avoid ads. And Hulu and Disney are integrating together. Next year the Hulu app will be phased out. By the time Hulu is completely a part of Disney, the price of that bundle will most likely become the de facto price for Disney a la carte. So you'll see Disney go into at least $20 once that integration happens and that'll be pretty significant. So you'll see a six year gap where a service launched at $7 and if you want to avoid ads six years later, it's going to cost you $20. And I think that's going to become a normal thing for these streaming services. HBO Max is not far behind Disney plus in its ad free price. Netflix is only a few dollars off and I expect a price increase next year. At the very top of this, you will probably see $20 across the board for at least three or four streaming services to avoid ads. And of course they offer ad free tiers and they're trying to grow subscribers there. One way to do that is to increase the gap in the subscription price between the two. And that's what we're looking at here, is how many ad supported subscribers these services had compared to how many total subscribers they have. So Netflix is the king of streaming. They have the most total subscribers, but on an ad supported basis, they're behind Peacock and Paramount plus and several of these others because their ad tier is new and their viewers like the ad free option. That was like a major asset of Netflix. If you've been subscribing to Netflix without ads for years, chances are you're probably willing to pay up to continue that experience. So they don't want to disrupt the subscription side too much. It's been so fruitful for them. And this is just viewership, it's not time spent. So Amazon Prime Video is second in terms of total viewers. They're first in terms of ad supported viewers. But the time spent with Amazon is a fraction of what it is with Netflix. Netflix viewers spend about an hour per day with Netflix. Amazon viewers are under a third of that. Most people who have Prime Video just get Prime Video as like a. It's like a little perk they get because they ready are subscribing to Amazon for the shipping and e commerce benefits. They're not necessarily becoming prime members just so they can watch Thursday Night Football or Ms. Maisel. They get that as a like a side effect. So Amazon's a different business model than these others. Now when consumers are asked about the price increases, Hub Research did the study of what's portrayed in this chart here. What you tend to see is consumers have kept their budgets relatively stable. They've increased them slightly and they continue to say, I can only pay a few dollars more. Like I'm paying, you know, 85 bucks. I'm willing to pay 86 or $87. They're not really wanting to increase their budget substantially, even though the price of an individual service has increased pretty substantially in the last three years. So what that means is that they have subscribed to fewer services than they have in the past. They, you know, Instead of having five subscription services now many people have two or three. And they watch more YouTube, they watch more services like Tubi that are completely free and they just rely more on the subscriptions they have while also hopping around depending on seasonality and when their favorite show ends or when their promotion on their current streaming service comes to an end. And what that all means is that it just there's more competition among streaming services to attract and retain subscribers. Because if everything's becoming more expensive but consumers aren't wanting to increase their overall budget at the rate at which individual services are increasing their subscription fees, you have more intense competition to be included in that budget. Now the inflection point that this audience here probably cares the most about is when will CCTV surpass linear TV and advertising? And this is all U.S. data, and we believe that will be 2028. That sounds like it might be a far ways away, but it's really not that far away. And consider that's how much progress CTV has made. So we did our first CTV forecast in 2019. At the time, CTV was $7 billion of U.S. ad spending. Linear TV was 70. So CTV was a 10th. Within 10 years, CTV will go from being a 10th to eclipsing linear. And right now it's more than half of linear ad spend. So it's come a significant way. It's another major inflection point. And I suspect the inflection point that marketers will look to after 2028 is when will CTV surpass linear TV and ad impressions? Because CTV ads are more expensive. So even though it surpasses them, linear TV in total spend as a long ways to go to hit up to linear TV in terms of impressions. You know, linear TV is 15 minutes of ads per hour. There's very few places where you can have ad free options. I mean, you can watch HBO's channel, but almost every TV network has ads. Linear is a much different ball game. You know, Almost exclusively under 10 minutes of ads per hour. Some services only 2 or 3 minutes of ads per hour. Large chunks of viewing, especially on Netflix, ad free. So the ad impressions right now for linear TV are about 5 times the amount of ad impressions there are for CTV in 2025. So we're probably looking till after 2020, 30 when the ad impressions are start to catch up. But first the ad spending has to catch up. And this chart here is from the iab and it just kind of shows how TV and CTV are diverging relative to the rest of the media industry. So CTV ad spending this year is going to grow basically as fast as anything. Social media expected to grow slightly higher. And linear TV is shrinking worse than about anything. But 2025 is an unfavorable comparison point for year over year when it comes for linear tv, because every four years, due to the elections and Olympics, linear TV actually sees growth in ad spending. Like last year, linear TV in the US saw ad spend growth, even though the industry's in secular decline. And we expect decline every other year. So there was bound to be some drop off this year because last year was very Strong for linear TV. You probably won't see 15% decline in 2026, but you still will see a decline. And the decline will be similar to what you see for other traditional media, which is probably 3 to 5 percentage points. Now this chart is breaking down where those CTV ad revenues are going. The biggest recipient is YouTube, and this is YouTube on a gross basis. So if we looked at YouTube on a net. That would just be the money that Google is keeping. But the gross basis gives us a size of scale. And, you know, advertisers, when they're spending all that money on YouTube to reach their audience, it's not necessarily that relevant to them how YouTube is splitting that money. With creators, generally there's a 55, 45 split. It's, you know, how much money is going in there in total and how does that relate to the time spent? Because that'll give you a good idea of what sort of price you should pay for your ads. Now, there's a note in this chart here for Disney, and that's Disney plus should have a strong year this year for sure, in 2027, because they're integrating with Hulu. So that there is just combining Hulu's ad revenues with Disney plus ad revenues to give a single figure. Several research services already do this. If you look at the Nielsen gauge, there is not a figure for Hulu anymore. There is just a Disney figure. And the Disney figure includes Disney plus and Hulu. I expect more services to do that because it's going to be hard to find reporting specifically for Hulu as that app gets phased out. And once you have it all in one app, looking at it that way as one seller, Disney, specifically Disney plus, not including the ESPN stuff here, there'll be around like Roku size, you know, above Netflix, certainly below Amazon and YouTube. But this will make them one of the largest players in streaming advertising for a particular app. But there is one bastion where lives where linear TV still holds strong, and that's in live sports. So this data is from Inscape. The way the data is collected is a panel of Vizio smart TV owners. So it skews a little bit toward people who are streaming, you know, people who have their same television set for the last 35 years and it doesn't connect to the Internet. That's not really included in this data here. So you see, you know, two thirds of the time spent on engaging with the TV screen is spent on streaming. Streaming is the majority, as we saw from Nielsen data. Our own data confirms this. But what's so interesting is that when it comes to sports, streaming is a small part of people's viewing. It was only about 10%. The other two thirds is going to a package of linear TV channels. Now, you know, some of that's going to VMVPDS. You could be optimistic and say, well, digital is a third of sports viewing because the vmvpds but that's not how the average, that's not how the advertising is sold with the vmvpd. If I'm watching ESPN or Fox Sports, most of those ads are going to be the exact same. If I'm watching it on DISH Network or on Charter, it's the same ads shown to the same people, except for those local ads that are sold. So the two minutes per hour, that's different, that's sold by the provider. But most of those ads are the same. And for the consumers viewing experience, it's the same. If you're watching ESPN on Hulu with live TV or you're watching it on DISH Network, we're seeing a bevy of sports rights coming towards streaming services. You know, the NBA season just kicked off about two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and there's exclusive games on Peacock on Amazon Prime Video. You're just going to see more and more of that each year. But the bulk of live sports viewing is still on linear tv. And that matters for marketers because sports is hotter right now than it ever will be in the rest of the year. Like we're in Q4 and that's when the most sports watching happens. NBA just started. College basketball, men's and women's just started. College football is in the bulk. College football is right in like the heat of the playoff race right now. There are NFL games of pretty important significance happening right now. Now it's a lot different than the summer. In the summer you have wnba, you have mlb, and there's not a lot of national broadcast happening. A lot of that stuff is happening on regional sports networks. So sports is a dead time. But now that there's like great programming on ESPN and Fox Sports 1 every single night. Live sports is accounting for about 40% of total national TV ad spending in Q4. And most of this is going to happen on traditional tv. The streaming services have some games here and there, but most spending most viewing. If you want to be in live sports, you still got to pay attention to linear tv. For now, that will change, but not overnight. Up next, I'll be joined by Kim Marchon, head of agency development at StackAdapt, for a fireside chat on how data, AI and programmatic innovation are driving efficiency, transparency and creative opportunity in CTV. But first, a short video from StackAdapt.
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All right, Kim, pleasure to have you.
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Happy to be here.
C
So how are advertisers mindsets changing as CTV moves from being an experimental channel to a mainstream buying mechanism?
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It's been a really exciting time, I think over the course of the last five to seven years from a CTV perspective. You know, I've had spent a lot of my time convincing brands and agencies that they need to look outside of standard linear TV buying channels and move towards ctv. Not just from a targeting perspective, but also measurement. So I think we're finally there. And with 70% of households now expected to use CTV in some way by 2026, it's, it's not just a maybe we should move into CTV as a brand. It's more of how much should we be investing and how do we tailor a brand strategy based on, you know, some of their campaign goals to fully be able to take advantage of all of the benefits of ctv.
C
Also, as those brands are shifting budget into ctv, what advice do you give them so that they can know, be innovative and efficient?
A
It's important first and foremost to ensure that a brand explains their goals because at this point, you know, CTV can be used across the entire purchase funnel from obviously brand building and awareness with the sight, sound and motion of the big screen. But also, you know, more recently thinking about how to approach CTV as more of a mid funnel consideration type of an option or, or now even a lower funnel. How do we drive conversions perspective. So I think my first advice would be how do we clearly define the goal and then also, you know, how do we also at the same time leave room to do a little bit of experimentation once we get those core goals right. So, you know, spending a majority of your budget obviously on the core goals and objectives, but a little bit as well on, you know, how do we potentially add some interactive overlays or how do we start to experiment with pause ads? Because CTV continues to evolve over time and understanding how to best use that, that medium is only going to continue to drive better results for, for a brand.
C
Well, you know, one of CTV's biggest draws is targeting.
A
Yeah.
C
How are programmatic platforms like StackAdapt helping advertisers take advantage of those capabilities?
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I think the way we've seen even CTV shift over the past five plus years is moving away from, hey, let's just take our direct IO buys and put them into a programmatic platform and focus on really inventory being the prime mechanism for purchasing the media. Now we're moving back from inventory in a lot of ways being front and center towards targeting. So because we can get so specific and granular in the way we target audiences from a CTV perspective today, it's exciting to see, you know, brands can bring in their own first party CRM data and target those specific consumers. We can understand, you know, geo if you want to have a specific heavy up in a location or demographic targeting intent based audiences. Really the world is, the world is your oyster when it comes to really trying to be specific from a targeting perspective. Which I think makes things so exciting in a time where historically, you know, you're buying a 30 second spot on a linear channel and you're reaching who you're reaching. And now we can make sure that every dollar that a brand wants to spend goes as far as possible and reaches that specific audience that the brand intends to, to eventually really drive significant ROI for a client and not just kind of throw spaghetti on the wall and see and kind of see what happens.
C
So how do you see AI improving the way advertisers optimize CTV campaigns and with their audience targeting?
A
Yes, I think one of the things about AI to recognize in the programmatic world is that it's, it's not new. I know it's a buzzword that's really been coming to the forefront more and more. But DSPs like Stack adapt predictive artificial intelligence for years to optimize campaigns to make sure that every impression is going to the consumer that's most likely to convert based on the goals that have been set out for that campaign. I think where AI has really started to get interesting for us specifically is moving into more of the generative AI space and also agentic AI. So when we talk about agentic AI, it's more of how can we use internal agents like ours is called Ivy, to actually type in prompts and have that agent deliver the results based on the prompt. So for example, we say, hey, how is my CTV campaign performing during this time period against this audience? And the results are exciting. We're actually seeing our agents be able to deliver the results based on the, the prompts that, that our programmatic buyers are typing in. Which is just, you know, another way that CTV is, you know, continuing to advance from a measurement capability perspective beyond what we'd historically seen from on the linear side.
C
Well, speaking of Measurement what innovations are helping marketers get closer to real time insights on ctv?
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Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways that we do this. One of the benefits of consolidating programmatically is you don' have, you know, disparate campaigns. One over here for this publisher, one over here for this publisher. By consolidating an entire portfolio of CTV campaigns into a single platform like Stack Adapt, you're able to actually measure and understand the impact of all of those media providers holistically so we can understand, hey, what is my ideal frequency, not just for one provider, but across the board. So we're tracking more on a user level versus on a publisher level, which is really exciting as we try to optimize for more incremental reach to reach more people over time as opposed to just reaching, you know, the same consumer multiple times. So from, you know, kind of a consolidation perspective, measurement has, you know, really advanced. I think there's also new ways to understand brand lift in real time against CTV campaigns. So we have the ability within our platform to understand how a specific campaign is impacting the awareness of a specific brand. And we don't have to wait till the campaign's over. We can actually see that in real time and adjust targeting or adjust messaging just based on those campaign results. So really trying to get every dollar to work as hard as possible for the brand. And I think I'd be remiss if I didn't actually mention the end goal is, you know, in most cases the purchase of a product or service. Because we're able to target individual users, CRM data or the like, we can actually understand the lift that a CTV campaign has on actual purchase decisions based on retailer provided data, or being able to connect with the CRM system to understand, you know, of consumers who were expanding, exposed to an ad, who then later went on to actually purchase a product. So really exciting time to not, you know, just target the television set, but really the living room experience kind of.
C
As a whole with brands adjusting their campaigns mid flight. Do you think that's something that tends to lead to better results than if they just set it and forget it?
A
I think definitely, you know, one of the benefits of optimization just in its entirety is, is the ability to not just put your money aside and then hope for the best. It's understanding in real time, are there certain channels that are performing better? Is there a certain time of day that's lending the the best results? So, you know, one of the benefits of AI as a co pilot is not actually Having to, you know, live with what you initially decided to do, it's really adjusting in real time and, you know, launch and iterate until you can kind of get the best, the best results.
C
Where do you think the next competitive edge in CTV will come from?
A
Oh, let's, let me look into my crystal ball. That's a great question. I think we're, we're starting to see more and more advancements all the time from, you know, different companies experimenting with new ad formats. So we've seen a lot of the shoppable or interactive TV units where, you know, you can click and send an ad to your phone. I also think right now AI in the age of personalization is a really exciting time to tailor ad experiences not for the masses anymore, but because we do understand user behavior, we can actually create ads that speak directly to the consumers and being able to really optimize those ad units and based on consumer behavior that's happening. So understanding the consumer journey all the way from brand awareness down to purchase. So I think, you know, those are, those are kind of some of the areas that we're really starting to see speak to brands and also to consumers as well at the end of the day.
C
Yeah, you know, so when I was giving my presentation, I went over how we're at that point where there's going to be more households that don't have a TV bundle than those who do pay for it. Does that change what reach means for a television ad buyer?
A
Oh, good question. I think some of the, the fast or the, that those types of streaming services do allow buyers to, you know, perhaps get slightly more efficient CPMs. There's more of an opportunity for multiple buyers to get in on the age of the wave of ctv. But there's still, I think more of like a two strong strategy. So you know, all of the, the streaming services like the Netflix, etc, you're going to get a lot of your premium content there. It's probably going to be a little bit more expensive to do so and then you're going to be able to really get your, your frequency and your reach by using some of the ad subscription types subscription services.
C
With all those expansion of those ad supported services you mentioned, is that affecting inventory quality or availability?
A
Inventory availability, definitely more available inventory now just seeing how well received those types of services actually are. So really have the ability to, to drive that, to drive that scale from a quality perspective. You know, it's always important to make sure that the quality of your inventory that your ads are running against does meet your Brand safety quality standards. You know, we've come a long way in the industry of trying to create as much transparency into where ads are showing, but there is still a lot of noise there. So, you know, working with a trusted partner that has the ability to put in those brand safety settings that are important to your brand, that, you know, can, can make sure that your standards are being adhered to is, is extremely important.
C
And what does the next generation of CTV innovation look like?
A
So I think like I mentioned, it's going to be a lot around what is a shoppable ad. How can we create more interactivity between the experience that you're watching on TV and what you're actually doing outside of that. So being able to actually purchase a product directly from a CTV ad and then, you know, further ensuring that the creative matches the consumer. So, you know, being able to really understand where a consumer is spending their time when they're not watching TV and serve them relevant ads to help make that purchase decision just, you know, maybe a little bit easier. And I think one of the things that's really starting to come to the forefront is, I think I mentioned it a couple times, the ability to tie upper funnel brand awareness to a lower funnel conversion. I think for a long time marketers have thought that, you know, if my end goal is selling my product directly from this ad, I can't, you know, I can't use ctv. But what we're actually learning now is with the ability to have a cross device graph, so being able to tie an experience on a television to an experience on your phone, we can link that view to a conversion on another device. So, you know, kind of really for the first time being able to see that cross device conversion rate and the path to conversion that is definitely not linear and being able to see that, hey, there's actually six or seven touch points that are required to get to that purchase. And building that brand awareness using CTV and being able to tie that at the end of the day is really been game changing in, you know, unlocking different opportunities to build a brand but also to drive sales.
C
Well, that's all we had time for. Thanks again, Kim for joining us.
A
Of course, thank you so much for having me.
In this special summit edition, eMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes delivers a data-packed keynote on the accelerating evolution of connected TV (CTV) and streaming advertising, highlighting market inflection points up to 2026 and beyond. The episode continues with an in-depth fireside chat between Ross and Kim Marchon (StackAdapt), exploring actionable advertising strategies, leveraging AI and programmatic innovation, modern targeting, and measurement in a shifting media landscape.
YouTube’s Disruptive Role
Streaming vs. Linear TV
Growth of Cord-Cutting
Dramatic Price Increases
Rapid Growth of CTV Ad Spend
Platform Shifts in Ad Revenue
The conversation is data-driven but practical, with frequent, clear explanations; Ross Benes’ insights are direct and analytical, while Kim Marchon's responses are positive, encouraging strategic flexibility and hands-on experimentation in the evolving world of CTV/streaming advertising.
This episode offers a comprehensive primer on the state and future direction of CTV and streaming advertising—emphasizing YouTube’s dominance, the inevitability of streaming’s rise, strategies for brands to leverage targeting and AI, and the continued, if narrowing, importance of linear TV for live sports and large-scale reach. With actionable advice and expert predictions, it’s essential listening (or reading) for anyone in media buying and digital advertising.