Streaming TV and the Effectiveness of Modern TV with Nikki Erkkila

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Marketing Architects

Episode: Streaming TV and the Effectiveness of Modern TV with Nikki Erkkila

Date: February 10, 2026
Host & Team: Alaina Jasper (Marketing Lead), Angela Voss (CEO), Rob DeMars (Chief Product Architect), Guest: Nikki Erkkila (VP of Media Partnerships)

Episode Overview

This episode explores the modern TV landscape, focusing on streaming (CTV), the persistent importance of linear TV, and actionable advice for marketers navigating a fragmented media world. Drawing on recent research, industry reports, and the expertise of guest Nikki Erkkila, the conversation dives into shifting audience patterns, the role of sports in TV advertising, the promise and pitfalls of CTV targeting, measurement challenges, and creative opportunities across TV formats.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Evolving TV Landscape: Fragmentation, Not Decline

• TV is Alive, but Fragmented: Despite the growth of streaming and cord-cutting, traditional TV (linear) remains a vital part of media consumption. The core challenge is no longer access but making smart decisions in a complex environment.

  "TV is not broken or disappearing, it's just fragmented. We are still watching a massive amount of high quality video. It's just across so many different platforms now..."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 04:06

• 2025 Data Highlights: TV usage is rising, propelled by live sports and events; November 2025 set record streaming numbers ("103 billion minutes" on Thanksgiving Day alone), but linear TV also surged due to major sports broadcasts.

  "[Nielsen] showed that at the end of 2025 we had some of the biggest TV months ever. ... Streaming hit record highs accounting for 47% of all TV viewing."
  – Alaina Jasper, 02:55

2. Misconceptions About Streaming

• Stats Can Be Misleading: Marketers often overestimate how much viewership has shifted to streaming (thinking it's 90%, but it's closer to half).

  "Streaming isn't one thing. It's dozens of unique platforms with unique experiences, different ad loads ... the power of linear and streaming together, it still exists and it is still growing."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 05:41

• Platform Complexity: Streaming encompasses AVOD, SVOD, FAST, and platform-specific experiences; each has its own audience and ad opportunities.

3. The Role of Sports in Modern TV

• Sports Drive TV Audiences—But Beware of Overinvestment: Sports create high-impact moments and reach unique (often light) TV viewers, but ad placements can be costly and shouldn't be the only strategy.

  "Sports programming is super, super powerful, but I don't think they're always required for success. ... There's incredible reach on some of your broadcast channels and your sports cable networks."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 07:00

• Strategic Balance: Mix high-profile/expensive spots with "shoulder programming" (pre/post games, related shows) for more cost-effective reach.

4. CTV Feels Like Digital—But Isn’t

• Buying Similarities (and Differences):
  • CTV provides familiar tools for digital marketers—platform buying, dashboards, programmatic targeting.
  • However, attention, emotional impact, and measurement challenges differ from traditional digital media.
• CTVs Real Superpower:

  "Its superpower is scale and emotion and memory building, not necessarily precision. ... The real opportunity with CTV is it can do both, right? Generate that near term response and build that long term brand growth."
  – Angela Voss, 11:22

5. Navigating CTV Buying: Strategy Over Tactics

• Audience-First Approach: Start with audience research (cord studies) to balance linear and streaming spend appropriately.

  "First step is really understanding your target audience and where are they consuming media. ... We do an extensive cord study to really understand where is that target audience watching..."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 12:29

• Buying Direct vs. Programmatic:
  • Direct deals with publishers (e.g., Hulu) can be cumbersome, expensive, and lead to frequency management issues.
  • Working through Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) like the agency’s Annika enables broader, more flexible, and efficient reach.

6. Common CTV Buying Mistakes

• Overtargeting: Tempting to hyper-focus, but restricts reach and efficiency.

  "CTV, it's a beautiful type of medium where you can get very hyper targeted. But I would say don't go in with such a laser focus that you can't broaden it out..."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 16:14

• Siloing Linear and Streaming:

  "Don't silo all the time. ... Once you're watching, you're watching TV."
  – Nikki Erkkila & Angela Voss, 17:16

• Attribution & Measurement Pitfalls: Attribution models from digital often don’t translate; relying solely on dashboards risks assigning credit inaccurately. True incrementality requires more robust approaches (geo-holdouts, triangulation).

  "Too many advertisers are building CTV plans around targeting ... It looks efficient in a dashboard, but it's often not creating that new demand, new awareness, new buyers..."
  – Angela Voss, 17:16

7. Linear vs. Streaming—Do Both Matter?

• No “Either/Or”: Testing and blending both is vital, as most audiences split their attention.

  "It's rarely an either or decision. Right. It's. They both play such a role in just reaching your overall audience."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 21:06

8. Targeting: A Double-Edged Sword

• Incremental Reach vs. Cost: Use targeting to avoid waste or for necessary exclusions (e.g., geography), not to micromanage audiences.

  "We are not anti targeting, we're anti excessive targeting. ... So it's finding that right balance."
  – Alaina Jasper, 22:24 / Nikki Erkkila, 22:46

• Segment, Don’t Suffocate: Lean into broader segmentation where logical, but beware expensive micro-targeting unless it’s justified by ROI and proven incrementality.

9. The Ongoing Need for Reach and Big Moments

• Intentional Reach Planning: No channel delivers automatic reach. Requires cross-platform design and vigilant frequency management.

  "...You don't accidentally achieve [reach] anymore. In an old TV model, you could buy a few big networks and you could deliver scale by default ... Today, viewing is spread across many platforms..."
  – Angela Voss, 25:05

• Big TV Moments Still Matter—But Don’t Overdo It: Shared experiences can have cultural impact, but brands shouldn’t bet everything on “tentpole” events at the expense of consistent presence.

  "Shared attention is rare today... but efficient impressions that create memorability and long term demand is really important."
  – Angela Voss, 27:06

10. Creativity in TV: New & Old Rules

• Customization at Scale: Streaming opens doors to creative customization by geography, weather, events, and more—but the “big idea” must remain central.

  "You can create a thousand pieces of different creative right for streaming ... But what if you take that one big ad, the one big idea ... and you execute it a thousand different ways?"
  – Rob DeMars, 28:52

• Sequential Storytelling: Streaming allows for story arcs/sequences, unlike linear, which often shows creative out of order.

11. Optimism for the Future of TV

• The Fundamentals Still Work: Video continues to build brand memory, emotion, and deliver results—ad-supported models are thriving, tools are improving, and more brands are embracing research-driven, long-term strategies.

  "Video builds an incredible amount of memory and emotion and it continues to drive strong business results."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 31:55

• Democratized Creativity: Easier and cheaper production, along with AI tools, allow brands of all sizes to look “big” on TV.

  "It's easier to buy. It's also easier to create on television. ... with AI, you can show up on the world's biggest stage looking better than anyone else."
  – Rob DeMars, 34:00

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the real challenge of modern TV:

  "The challenge isn't access anymore, it's just making those smart decisions and how to get your media into market at the right time."
  – Nikki Erkkila, 04:06

• On measurement and incrementality:

  "We're not solving for that true incrementality. So we're just then working with bad insight and therefore the cycle repeats itself..."
  – Angela Voss, 17:16

• On the dangers of hyper-targeting:

  "Getting too hyper targeted is paying more to ignore your future customers."
  – Angela Voss, 32:38

• On creative customization in CTV:

  "You can create a thousand pieces of different creative right for streaming ... But what if you take that one big ad, the one big idea ... and you execute it a thousand different ways?"
  – Rob DeMars, 28:52

• On the optimism for TV’s future:

  “Video builds an incredible amount of memory and emotion and continues to drive strong business results.”
  – Nikki Erkkila, 31:55

---

Key Timestamps

• 02:55 – Recent TV & streaming stats: Nielsen’s “Gauge” Report and sports dominance
• 04:06 – Nikki Erkkila on TV’s fragmented reality and strategic implications
• 05:41 – Misconceptions about streaming viewership
• 07:00 – Sports programming: importance, costs, and alternatives
• 09:47 – CTV vs. digital: similarities, key differences, real advantages
• 12:29 – Cord studies and audience-first media planning
• 16:14 – Common CTV buying mistakes: overtargeting, siloed thinking
• 17:16 – Attribution, incrementality, and how to avoid “bad data”
• 21:06 – Linear vs. streaming: the case against either/or strategies
• 22:24 – 23:38 – Targeting: when it’s worth it and when it’s overkill
• 25:05 – How to design purposeful, modern reach
• 27:06 – Do “big moments” still matter in TV?
• 28:52 – Creative best practices: mass customization opportunities
• 31:55 – The fundamentals still work: optimism for TV’s future
• 34:59 – Fun wrap-up: streaming subscription confessions

---

Final Reflections & Tone

The conversation is both optimistic and practical. The hosts and guest emphasize the enduring power of video and TV advertising, but urge marketers to adapt to fragmentation with research-driven, audience-first planning. Precision targeting and data dashboards are useful only to a point—broad, creative, and consistent reach remains foundational for brand growth.

The language throughout is accessible, candid, sprinkled with humor ("How can you ask to choose which child is your favorite?"). The team's real-world approach and willingness to poke fun at themselves (streaming subscription overloads, inside industry habits) make for an engaging, approachable listen.

---

For Listeners:

If you want strategic, research-driven insights on how to maximize your investment in streaming and linear TV, while avoiding the hype and pitfalls of overtargeted or underplanned campaigns, this episode delivers pragmatic advice from insiders with hands-on experience.

Transcript

[Nikki Urkla]

Even now, with emerging CTV platforms and so many people cutting the cord and things like that, there is still a mix of people watching both platforms. I'm always in the camp, and I think everybody here is always in the camp of we gotta test both because there's so much power in where people are still consuming their video.

[Angela Voss]

Marketing Architects.

[Alaina Jasper]

Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Alaina Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.

[Rob DeMars]

Hello.

[Angela Voss]

Hey there.

[Nikki Urkla]

Hi.

[Alaina Jasper]

And we're joined by Nikki Urkla, our VP of media partnerships at Marketing Architects.

[Nikki Urkla]

Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me.

[Rob DeMars]

Okay, I just throw something out really quick because we love having guests in this podcast and we like to do a little research just in case to see if there's any interesting factoids to listeners might want to talk about. Tell us a little bit about this Rip Van Winkle thing. Apparently you can.

[Nikki Urkla]

Oh, my goodness.

[Rob DeMars]

Apparently you can sleep anywhere. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

[Nikki Urkla]

Okay, so clearly you got the inside scoop from somebody else at this place. And I know exactly who that is.

[Angela Voss]

So she'll be here going down later.

[Nikki Urkla]

Yes. Apparently when I travel now, I can sleep anywhere. Plane, train, sprinter, van. In between meetings. I don't know. I used to never be able to do that. And all of a sudden, people will be traveling with me and going to a meeting and they look over. She's taking a little cat nap.

[Rob DeMars]

So that's a superpower. So media is your superpower and sleeping is your superpower.

[Nikki Urkla]

Exactly. I think after I got my aura ring this year, it said you need to work on your sleep, and I've really taken that to heart. So. Nice. Nice. Yeah.

[Alaina Jasper]

Good for you. Oh, my goodness. My. I got an aura ring this year, too. And the stress levels, I don't know about you, but it's like, what's wrong with you? So, yeah, those naps tend to help, like, bring that down a little bit.

[Nikki Urkla]

Exactly.

[Alaina Jasper]

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Nikki. We are back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions in data research and what drives business results. And today we're talking about all things streaming tv. And I have a few, actually two different articles I want to feature today. It was honestly hard to pick because there are so many articles just every day about streaming. But the first I chose was Nielsen's latest gauge report. Nielsen puts out this report I think every quarter and I find it helpful. Nielsen put this out and they were showing that at the end of 2025 we had some of the biggest TV months ever. This was driven largely by live sports, but for November specifically, total TV usage grew 5.5% month over month, with broadcast capturing its highest share of TV since last year, fueled by sports like NFL, college football and the World Series. At the same time, streaming hit record highs accounting for 47% of all TV viewing, with five of the top 10 most streamed days ever, which is crazy, occurring in November. Thanksgiving Day alone generated over 103 billion minutes of viewing. And then one other article I found is about sports because that always comes up a lot when we talk about streaming tv. It's called the Strange State of Sports on Fast tv. This was written by Manny Soloway and published by Liam McGuire in January of 2026. Sports dominate live TV overall and they are a constant part of the streaming TV conversation. And this article found that free ad supported streaming TV currently makes up only about 6% of total TV viewing. With low awareness and small fragmented audiences. Some major sports have experimented with fast, but most are moving games back to larger, more established platforms. And those sports rights for TV are complicated, as many of us know, I'm sure just by being consumers, especially YouTube TV consumers I think probably have a special pain with sports and streaming. So Nikki, thanks again for joining us firsthand because of your job, how complex the TV landscape is right now for both brands and agencies. How would you describe the TV landscape in general for a marketer who's trying to make sense of it today?

[Nikki Urkla]

Great question, you know, and thanks for sharing some of those stats. Those are just incredible. And the growth and how many people are tuning in. I'll start off by saying, and I think we can all agree that TV is not broken or disappearing, it's just fragmented. Right? We are still watching a massive amount of high quality video. It's just across so many different platforms now and in different mediums. We have linear, we have streaming, we've got OTT out of home, we've got like you were mentioning Alina, fast channels, like all of these different ways to consume media. And so I think for marketers really the challenge isn't access anymore, it's just making those smart decisions and how to get your media into market at the right time. The great thing here at Marketing Architects is that we focus on simplifying that complexity and we really anchor to what drives growth, which Is your reach and your consistency super strong, creative in market and kind of that trifecta as we place plans, right?

[Alaina Jasper]

Because there used to be. At one point, I remember we even had these conversations as streaming was becoming a thing. I remember it was very common for people to say that advertising might just be done, like, why would anyone watch an ad again when you could pay for no ads? But clearly that's not happening. One question that I had for you was, from your perspective, there are a lot of kind of misconceptions when it comes to streaming. I know we encounter it every day when you hear a stat like streaming is now nearly half of TV viewing. When I think of that, I think most marketers might be surprised actually to hear that. Like, I think if you asked a random marketer, they'd probably think it's 90%. So what do you think is the biggest misconception that's out there when it relates to stats like that?

[Nikki Urkla]

It's a great point. And I think that without some context and without kind of like diving into it, you really have to just understand, like, what you're reading and what you're seeing. Because we've all been there, right? You get releases and different pieces of information that come over. And depending on what's in that pie chart. Right, or what they fielded in that study, it can be misleading. Because what are we looking at? Are we looking at avod, svod, the specific streaming platform? So you really kind of have to dive into there, because streaming isn't one thing. It's dozens of unique platforms with unique experiences, different ad loads, ad units that are placed on there. So I would just say make sure that you understand what you're looking at. But really the power of linear and streaming together, it still exists and it is still growing.

[Alaina Jasper]

So like you said earlier, the challenge isn't can I find my audience like they're watching, but it's just how exactly I'm going to reach them. Because they could be in many different places and sometimes it might be surprising. The streaming conversation also seems to, at least from my perspective, come back to sports quite a bit. I think TV in general, marketers get really interested in sports. I mean, I've even talked to some marketers who just want to be in sports programming. Like, when they think about entering tv, they're like, I'm going to buy a sports package with a team. Do you think that marketers overestimate how important it is to be in sports programming?

[Nikki Urkla]

I'm a sports fan. I grew up playing sports and watching sports and we had the NFL on all the time within the house and college football and all those good things. So I'm a sports enthusiast and so I just love it and gravitate towards it. And I do think that sports programming is super, super powerful, but I don't think they're always required for success. Right. Live sports are going to really deliver that high profile, exclusive event that we're going to be able to see a lot of incremental reach and those light TV viewers that are coming in during those particular moments. But sometimes those live events, especially right now as we're getting into NFL playoffs and we're getting into the super bowl and we're getting into all Olympics, definitely those moments that are going to capture audiences and bring in those light TV viewers. But it can be expensive, right? So I think it's a great balance of just being able to work with a team and work with your media team to really understand, okay, if we can't get into those really exclusive moments like we just had on Monday night with the college football championship, what other types of programming can we get into? Feed that sports bucket, right? There's shoulder programming, there's incredible reach on some of your broadcast channels and your sports cable networks. And that can be just a really fantastic way of still dipping into that sports pool without having to go full fledged into one of those live sporting events.

[Alaina Jasper]

Would you say it's more of like a cost decision then? Because that's really what becomes prohibitive to marketers, right? Is if you're only focused on I need to be in, in the big games, it's just going to become too expensive. So how do you supplement it with other inventory too?

[Nikki Urkla]

So it's really finding that balance of, okay, we're going to allocate maybe some high impact budget here or this piece of our marketing dollars are going to be used for those high profile events. I think we do a fantastic job here at MA just like really trying to understand o where can we find the floor on that? Just making sure that we're going in with as opportunistic pricing as possible to really drive home that reach and those efficiencies.

[Alaina Jasper]

At the end of the day, that makes sense. When I was thinking about CTV or streaming, however you want to call it, and the excitement there, I do think a big part of it is reaching new audiences or marketers, believing all my viewerships aren't now in streaming, or a lot of it tends to be, you know, sports rights. Moving into streaming is very exciting, but I also think a Pretty justified. Part of the excitement is that marketers see it as an easier bridge to TV from digital than traditional linear television seen as easier to buy. What about CTV is familiar to digital marketers and where do you think that comparison tends to fall apart?

[Nikki Urkla]

So I think that's always a great thing when you are working with digital marketers and they have a really strong background with that and they bring that knowledge base over. It translates really easy to ctv, right, because it's bought through platforms with targeting, with unique dashboards, really interactive, it's all programmatic. So it's practically real time. Very different than the linear world where it's just a little bit slower, a little bit still rooted in some archaic practices and just like a longer lead time and things like that. Not to say that's bad, but it's just a different experience, right. Coming in and really looking at both ways to buy, I think that the differentiation there really comes into just attention and your viewer brewing mindset and just the impact of it. Both mediums are super impactful. It's just really knowing exactly like how to navigate each and you just have to have a smart team behind you to help you navigate that world.

[Angela Voss]

Totally agree, Nikki. I think the other thing I think of too related to familiar versus differences between the two is similar to digital. CTV can really drive immediate sales. We know this to be true on the linear side too. But I think to your point, the dashboards, the impressions, the CPMs, the platform, the targeting, et cetera, feels so similar to the digital side that then we go, we're just really capturing demand as it exists in market. That's how we're going to use the channel that feels very familiar and safe as they come into that channel. But CTV is still fundamentally television.

[Nikki Urkla]

Yes.

[Angela Voss]

And its superpower is scale and emotion and memory building, not necessarily precision. Although on the CTV side arguably we can be more precise. We can get into debate over that too. That's a different episode. But the real opportunity with CTV is it can do both, right? Generate that near term response and build that long term brand growth. And I feel like sometimes we forget that second part, even though that's really where the power should be held.

[Nikki Urkla]

Yep. No, totally agree. It's a great point.

[Alaina Jasper]

One thing that I think isn't talked about enough is just the different ways to buy ctv. If you talk to a marketer of CTV experience, they could have gotten that experience in a lot of different ways. Like they could be buying through a self serve platform, they could be working with a large platform like the Trade desk. They could be going direct to any number of name the platform they could go and be buying directly from them. Nikki, I, I find that confusing. Like, just if you look like, how am I going to buy ctv? There's all these options. So given how fragmented it is, how do you think marketers should be thinking about buying CTV today?

[Nikki Urkla]

1 First step is really understanding your target audience and where are they consuming media. I think that we do such a fantastic job within our teams here when we're bringing on clients and we're first working with them. And even throughout the entire life cycle here, we do an extensive cord study, right, to really understand where is that target audience watching, how are they consuming media, what is the percentage on linear versus streaming? And that really informs how we go into market initially with their media plan. Now within that, of course, we have our media buying engine, Annika, which is our AI driven platform that really informs our buys, tells us about clearance patterns, things like that. But the great thing with that is that on the streaming side and on the CTV side, we are constantly adding publishers, adding different ways to reach your audience with different platforms. So I would say that it's such a dynamic world that's always changing, but we are on the forefront of that. And once we do learn from a cord study, okay, about 40% of their audience is watching linear and 60% is watching streaming. We'll go in with a really holistic approach, knowing that we can capture those audiences and really maximize the reach across both. And then we let the performance dictate where we go from there. Right. Just making sure that we are seeing the conversions and seeing where really is driving that roi and then that that kind of goes on and throughout the entire life cycle. So it's a really smart and informed way to place their media.

[Alaina Jasper]

Do you think it's fair to say, And I might be jumping into the next question a little bit as far as like CTV buying mistakes, but is it fair to say that buying direct from publishers is not always the best route? I'm not saying that. I know we love our publisher partners, but when you go direct, if you're buying from a Hulu separately and then a peacock separately, it can be hard to control for frequency and what audiences that I'm hitting. And it can be expensive. I know at Marketing Architects, we built a DSP that can look for where is my audience watching? Then choose the most efficient ways to get in front of them from multiple publishers. Do you think that's fair to say? Like, if that's the way you're approaching. Maybe it's a fun way to test or get started in it is a direct relationship. But then it's probably going to be more efficient to work with a demand side platform that can find your audience like where they're watching at the most efficient price.

[Nikki Urkla]

The nice thing with both Annika or DSP on the CTV side and the linear side is that we know that there are so many different ways to reach that audience, right? So whether you're going to a certain network direct and negotiating that way to really like see that reach on a national scale, but that's not always the most effective way to, or the most efficient way. It can be sometimes, but it just depends on that time of year and different marketplace dynamics. But the great thing is that we have ways to not only reach those audiences and that same network, different ways through different paths. And that's all connected within Annika, within the dsp. But we also have ways to say, okay, if we know that a certain buyer or a certain audience is watching on this particular sports network, whether that's ESPN or FS1 or whatnot, well, how can we contextually target that? How can we broaden out that particular viewing audience to say if they're watching here, they're probably going to be watching on these fast channels, they're probably going to be watching on these particular other stations. And so then we'll expand that into the media plan.

[Alaina Jasper]

So having optionality is a. Is going to help you get a more more efficient business being able to be flexible. Well, and speaking of some mistakes we can make when buying connected tv, what do you think, what do you think is the biggest mistake a marketer might make when they're approaching the channel?

[Nikki Urkla]

I think that a lot of people, and we did the same thing right when we were first learning about the space is we have to be so hyper targeted, right? We have to go in and we have to find the exact audience and the exact person. And if Rob and Angela and Elena and Nikki are this particular person, we're just going to target them. So I think that ctv, it's a beautiful type of medium where you can get very hyper targeted. But I would say don't go in with such a laser focus that you can't broaden it out and think of it as really reaching incremental audiences within that at an efficient price point. And then the last thing I will say that sometimes people and marketers still delineate is don't silo. Rob, I think you were saying earlier, and we were just discussing TV is tv. Now, I know sometimes when I turn on my TV that, okay, I'm going into this streaming platform or I'm going into this linear channel, but once you're watching, you're watching tv.

[Angela Voss]

Don't silo all the time. I'm so annoying to my husband because in the field that we work in, of course, ads, or maybe it's new ad formats. And how many times a week do we all go, what are we watching right now? Sorry, is this Hulu? What are we in right now? Because I. I need to know where this is happening. I think the other thing that ties to what you were saying first, Nikki, is what are we buying? And how do we understand what's working versus what's not? You talked about incremental reach. Super important. But the other mistake that we see is just marketers assuming that they're getting an incremental gain, but never actually proving that it is. So you're just working with bad data. Too many advertisers are building CTV plans around targeting and retargeting style segments, or to your point, overly narrow audience definitions. That all happens for sure, but they end up giving credit, being assigned to people who are already likely to convert. And so it looks efficient in a dashboard, but it's often not creating that new demand, new awareness, new buyers, new reach. But because the reporting is detailed, we feel confident in what we think that outcome is. So we're not solving for that true incrementality. So we're just then working with bad insight and therefore the cycle repeats itself when it comes to buying Angel, I've.

[Rob DeMars]

Got a question about that, because I'm the last person that can and should pop off on CTV with you gurus in the room. But when it comes to what you're talking about, Angela, with measurement, is there a tendency for people, because they're coming into ctv, seeing how it can behave like digital, that they get attribution wrong because they're looking at clicks versus impressions and things like that?

[Angela Voss]

Absolutely. I think that's setting right back to what we're saying here. Is the difference between digital and ctv. What's the biggest difference? We're talking about a screen on the wall. So regardless of the amazing targeting plan that we've pulled together, we don't even know if someone's in the room, the right person's in the room. Is it my daughter versus me? And then with measurement and the precision that we like to think is there? Yes, in theory, we're trying to close the loop on attribution. Okay. An impression was delivered to an ip. Now we've got data that supports that IP address. Also hit a website. Okay, what's the device graph that's being used? How broad is it was their marketing that person saw before that CTV ad was delivered? And so are we really measuring incrementality? We talk about multiple measurement methods is the way to look at any top of funnel channel, frankly. But specifically to linear and ctv. How many models can we put in place to try to triangulate performance? Because no single model is going to give us an accurate outcome. And so even going back to things like geo test holdouts, like one of the greatest ways to get true incrementality is still being used today across the entire nation with very modern marketers. Because incrementality is really hard to come by.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, I think it's kind of natural to feel like this should be easier to measure, Rob, because if you can target it like more like digital, which again, Kenny, we're gonna talk about that in a second. But then it naturally feels if I can target the exact person I want, I should be able to measure. Then did that person respond to the ad? But it's not quite that simple. Before I get to targeting, Nikki, I wanted to ask you about linear versus streaming because I think this comes up a lot too with marketers. They think, all right, I'm ready, I wanna invest in tv. And I think the instinct today is to go right to streaming. But how do you think a marketer should decide if they want to invest in linear verse streaming? And I'll say at Market Architects, we don't love this question because we look at it as more holistic. But if you're just starting to approach it, how do you think you should decide?

[Nikki Urkla]

I think you said that really nicely. It's rarely an either or decision. Right. It's. They both play such a role in just reaching your overall audience. And when we, as I mentioned before, when we do these court studies and really understand down to your target audience, very, very rarely do we ever see 100% on one versus another. Right. Even now with emerging CTV platforms and so many people cutting the cord and things like that, there is still a mix of people watching both platforms. And I think that they both serve such a vital role. Within Linear, you have your one to many. You can often really get in at certain times of the year which are more efficient than others. And if that is tight, then we can move budgets around and whatnot. But really within that CTV environment, that's where we were just Talking about you can be a little bit more precise and whether even if you're not hyper targeting all the way down to such a level that that's really making your media inefficient. You can put those little parameters on there that still get to a little bit more precision than linear. So I mean, I'm always in the camp and I think everybody here is always in the camp of we gotta test both because there's so much power in where people are still consuming their video.

[Alaina Jasper]

A great definition. Rule out linear automatically, which I think sometimes happens. All right, let's talk about my favorite topic, which is targeting. First, like to say, we are not anti targeting, we're anti excessive targeting. That's not worth it. But when do you think, because that's one of the positives like you said of CTV is you can be more precise than linear in who you're reaching. When do you think targeting is worth it and when is it not?

[Nikki Urkla]

I think that it's definitely useful when it adds. We're just talking about incremental reach. Avoids obvious waste. But we don't want it to limit at scale. Right. And so that sometimes can really work against growth. So it's finding that right balance of, okay, how are we going to really go in with this media plan and target our audience and what we know about that, but not to such a degree where we are really limiting the amount of scale because the scale out there is incredible and there is so many additional platforms and ways that even a traditional SVOD platform is now maybe that hybrid type of a platform. And so it's really opening up and we just want to be mindful that we don't go in so hyper targeted that we get to a stop because the growth there is phenomenal.

[Angela Voss]

It really comes down to like, what's the issue with hyper targeting? There's the reach issue, there's also the cost issue. Right. So I think you know where your CPM premium is reasonable. You can define what that reasonable is. It depends on what the base inventory cost is. If your cost of inventory is increasing by 50%, you're sort of like, okay, what's the math on that? That needs to return. Now we're back to the measurement issue and incrementality. Maybe it is worth it, but we should be setting up tests in a way that allow us to really identify whether or not something is incremental and whether or not that CPM premium is worth it or not. I think the other one that's obvious is you have a real exclusion Rule and what I mean by that is you don't sell nationwide. Right. So you exclude non service areas is sort of a no brainer.

[Alaina Jasper]

I was thinking the other day about like targeting versus segmentation and it was a little bit of a tangent. But like targeting when it comes with cost is you have to weigh the cost benefits. I don't think segmentation is a bad thing. I don't know, maybe thinking about it that way could help because targeting has such like a negative connotation to it sometimes. And you mentioned reach. And one of my worries about things becoming so streaming first is that marketers will try to force fit streaming into more of a digital model and will lose some of the benefits of broad reach that you're forced into when you're buying with linear tv. How do you think that marketers should think about reach as we're moving into this more streaming first environment?

[Angela Voss]

Yeah, I think that sometimes marketers are thinking about reach as something you get from one channel. And I think we need to think about reach as a distribution problem that you have to design on purpose. Reach, we've talked about this before. It's still very important, if anything more important because broad reach is still how brands grow. What's changed is that you don't accidentally achieve it anymore. In an old TV model, you could buy a few big networks and you could deliver scale by default just because of consumer audience patterns. Today, viewing is spread across many platforms and streaming share quote unquote doesn't automatically translate into accessible, efficient ad supported reach. Some streaming is ad free, some is walled off. A lot of it is fragmented into smaller pockets that can be expensive to buy at scale. And streaming also introduces the hidden tax of frequency concentration. Because targeting pools and algorithms can be narrow, it's easy to spend a meaningful budget and mainly hit the same viewers again and again, which sometimes I think marketers think is productive. Maybe that's due to dashboard reporting, but it doesn't build that broad mental availability in market. And so the best approach is just to think of modern TV as one reach plan delivered through multiple pipes, linear for efficient scale, assuming you're buying it efficiently. And that's a big caveat there, sometimes I think marketers get that wrong and then streaming for that incremental reach, as Nikki mentioned earlier, that flexibility allowing you to maximize that unduplicated reach to the best of your ability and manage frequency and just build that consistent brand memory over time.

[Alaina Jasper]

Well, speaking of fragmentation, we just had an episode on that a few weeks ago that's been a big Topic in marketing like media is becoming so fragmented and everyone's just in their own unique little viewing environment. Do you still think that big TV moments matter even as your viewership starts to fragment more?

[Angela Voss]

I do. It's a debatable topic, I would say, and I'll get into it a little bit. Nikki's smiling. She knows we have debates like this internally. But shared attention is rare today. And rare things, I think can create outsized impact. They don't always create outsized impacts. Even as viewing fragments across platforms, there are a handful events that pull these large audiences into the same place at the same time. And that kind of, it can create cultural gravity. It doesn't always create cultural gravity. And that's why I think this topic is a little hard. There's a collective experience, there's conversation, there might be emotional intensity depending on what you're viewing, what the commercial is. Where I think this can be overdone is brands become obsessed with only being seen in big TV moments. And that's not right either. We, unfortunately for marketers and for our egos, have to remember that consumers and TV viewers care very little about our brands and about our big creative ideas. So efficient impressions that create memorability and long term demand is really important. And if big TV moments are coming at the cost of doing that and being able to be consistently in front of your audience, then we're overplaying that card to the detriment of growth for the brand.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, it's gotta be a bit of a balance, Rob. This has been a very media heavy episode.

[Rob DeMars]

So good. I'm learning so much.

[Alaina Jasper]

But creative is a big topic in streaming TV also because a lot of brands that are going to streaming TV for the first time, they might have never had a commercial before. Do you think that creative strategies should differ in streaming TV versus what we've traditionally done in linear television?

[Rob DeMars]

I think it definitely can build upon what is working really well in tv. And I'm going to, I'm going to give one, I one idea that is going to draw a lot of fire from this audience. You got to hear me out. We really love that reach. And one of the temptations is you can, you can create a thousand pieces of different creative right for streaming. So you're like, Rob, that's the wrong way to do it because now you're trying to like hyper target and. But what if you take that one big ad, the one big idea, the halo, and you execute it a thousand different ways. And what I mean by that is you can customize that core message by weather. In particular, geographies, like weather events. We talked about sports, like maybe a sports vibe or local news, whatever that might be. And that's a creative exercise in and of itself. But recognizing you can take the big idea and that message, that message that you reach everybody with, but give it a little bit of flavor based on what your needs might be. Streaming allows you to do that. So I think that's a cool thing that streaming has going forward. I think the other thing is with. With linear tv, you're not really sure if people have seen all of your ads. Right. You might be seeing a campaign out of a particular order. So you have to be sure that your. Your ads can stand alone. But with streaming, you can tell a story if you want to. You can make sure that your audiences are seeing the ads in a certain sequence, and that's cool. That invites new creative opportunities as well.

[Nikki Urkla]

No, I think, Rob, you made a great point, too, on just the way that you can dynamically shift and change different creat amount of dime now that we couldn't do three, four, five years ago. And I had. I was talking with Aaron at CES when we were there a few weeks ago, and he was mentioning a piece of creative that we had in market that had different dialects. Right. So we have a different sounding tone for our folks up in the Northeast versus the Southwest. And I think that is so cool that the technology and AI and all these advancements now can really allow us to do that and just make that. That creative. So powerful.

[Rob DeMars]

Yeah, for sure. You betcha.

[Nikki Urkla]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Alaina Jasper]

How does that not work better? Come on. Sounds like home to me.

[Nikki Urkla]

Yeah.

[Alaina Jasper]

But no, Rob. And we are very excited about. I know we have this, a mass customizer as an agency, and I'm super excited about what that could do. I think that's where we could talk about this again. I said earlier, like, targeting versus segmentation. I think there's a difference. So, yes, mass customizing when you're paying a premium to adjust an ad to target an individual starts to be harder for me because. All right, how much better does it have to be? But, you know, in streaming, you can target by geography without added cost. So I think experimenting with stuff like that is really, really exciting. But again, that's like, kind of segmentation. Yes. Like tight targeting. It'd be hard to have that. It could work, but it's harder. So I know we're excited about that.

[Rob DeMars]

That's a great way to put it.

[Alaina Jasper]

Well, speaking of excitement, what gives us the most Optimism about the future of tv. And Nikki, I'll have you start us off.

[Angela Voss]

Yeah.

[Nikki Urkla]

You know what gives me the most optimism is that the fundamentals, they still work right. And video builds an incredible amount of memory and emotion and it continues to drive strong business results. I think. You know, our team was reading something from Emarketer a few weeks ago that said overall video consumption is still up year over year and it's projected to be in 2026. And adults 18 are expected to spend just over five hours each day watching TV which is nearly 40% of their total time that they spend with media. That is optimistic in itself and just really speaks to the power and just the attention that people are still giving it.

[Angela Voss]

I would say too that we like to find inefficiencies and pick apart things that are not being done well in TV or just marketing in general. But we try to stay in our lane here related to tv. And largely modern TV is becoming easier to buy and to manage. As long as you know enough right. And you can guardrail for your own brand. The pipes are more complex, but tools are improving really quickly. I think for better planning, better pacing, better frequency controls and TVs just becoming more flexible without losing that power that you're speaking to. I would also say that there's an evolution happening related to brand versus short term sales activation in general where people are brands today I think, or let's just say in prior years are maybe under leveraging the channel because of short termism thinking and things like that. But I think more and more people are being enlightened by research, by what we talk about here. There's a lot of others that are out there that are sort of evangelizing how you really grow a brand. And more people are starting to realize the things that we've known to be true for a while. Getting too hyper targeted is paying more to ignore your future customers and they're like, oh my God, never thought about it that way. So I'm excited about that.

[Rob DeMars]

I think you point to it, it's easier to buy. It's also easier to create on television.

[Nikki Urkla]

Oh absolutely.

[Rob DeMars]

That used to be just such a huge limiting factor and whether or not you could even choose to do television. And now obviously with all the advancements and with AI, you can show up on the world's biggest stage looking better than anyone else. It's just great. It's like you're a big brand even though you're a small brand. You look huge. So it's exciting.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, I'm Excited about just the basic fact that the consumer has spoken. And we are willing to watch ads in exchange for good content. Because, again, there was a point where we weren't entirely sure. Are ads done video? That'd be such a huge loss for marketers to lose use the traditional TV format. So I think that's a positive thing. Okay, to wrap us up with kind of a fun question, and Nikki, you can get us started. How many streaming subscriptions do you currently have at this moment? And if you could only keep one, which would it be? And I did send this for people to prep beforehand because I knew this would take a while to count them up. So.

[Nikki Urkla]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Okay. I have way more than I hate to admit, but this is what we do every day, so I have to have them, right?

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, I agree.

[Nikki Urkla]

Exactly. It's a baseline of research. I did try to do, like, consolidation around the holidays, because I was like, what is being taken out of my account every single month? Do we have dupes here in the house? And we did, but I think I'm down to about six right now. And gosh, Alena, I can't. I can't just pick one. There is so much amazing content, original content, sports content, you know, coming out on all of them. We have a little list within our media team. We keep a shared doc, and it's media recos. New shows we add to that all the time. So I gotta keep all of them.

[Angela Voss]

Yeah, she's passing.

[Nikki Urkla]

I know. I am passing. Sorry.

[Alaina Jasper]

It's okay.

[Angela Voss]

So we, too, went through consolidation, and I have to tell you how mind numbing it was to realize that both my husband and I were paying for the same or different subscriptions.

[Alaina Jasper]

But this.

[Angela Voss]

God dang it.

[Nikki Urkla]

No. Oh, we both have Hulu. Oh, we both have it used.

[Angela Voss]

Yes. How does that even happen?

[Alaina Jasper]

I don't know.

[Angela Voss]

Oh, my God. We're down to five.

[Nikki Urkla]

Nice.

[Angela Voss]

And two. I agree. This is a really hard decision. I'm down to two. Which would be Netflix or YouTube TV? If I had to do one, I probably would do YouTube TV.

[Rob DeMars]

I think this is a mean question. I actually think, because it's like, how can you ask to choose which child is your favorite? And I don't look at.

[Alaina Jasper]

At.

[Rob DeMars]

You guys keep talking about consolidation. I talk about diversification. I want. I want the basket. So I have 10, You know, between your Disney Plus, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount plus with Showtime. Right. That's kind of a two for your HBO Max, your YouTube TV, your Peacock TV, your YouTube ad free. And of course, Apple One. It's all so good. And I really gave this a lot of thought, and I cheated a little bit because one of my subscriptions is Disney plus and Hulu, and that's a pretty powerful combo because I can get some below deck in and I can watch the Taylor Swift eras tour, like, all in one subscription. That's a nice basket of content. So I'm gonna go with Disney plus and Hulu, but, man, it's a tough one.

[Nikki Urkla]

One that's good. Then you get the Hulu Live channel.

[Rob DeMars]

Yeah, absolutely. It's a. You get a lot. You get a lot with that one. I had to spend a lot of time thinking about this one, so it wasn't perfect, but I can feel pretty good about that choice. How about you, Elena?

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. So I currently have six, but I think at any given time, I could go up to eight. We're one of those households where we'll log on or we'll subscribe to watch a show, you know, to HBO or something. We'll dump it and then come back on. So I think I could be up to eight, depending on the time of year and show. Yeah, that's a hard one. I was deciding between Hulu and Peacock. I end up going with Hulu just because of the live sports element, because that's what I use for my live tv. But Peacock, I've found I watch more and more. I do love Bravo, but they also have Olympics coverage on Peacock, and they have more and more content. So I think that's a really exciting app to watch. But, yeah, if I had to choose, go with. With Hulu for my live tv.

[Rob DeMars]

So great to hear how you guys are choosing things by sports. I'm like, that is the last thing I got. I need to make sure I can get. Get my movies in there.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah.

[Rob DeMars]

Fun stuff.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. We know Rob is one of those viewers where if you're obsessed with sports, you ain't reaching the demars household. So think about that.

[Rob DeMars]

No.

[Alaina Jasper]

And he'll buy anything.

[Rob DeMars]

I actually had. I had to get. Initially, I got YouTube TV because of Thanksgiving, because we have people over and they want to watch a football game. I'm like, I had no other way to.

[Nikki Urkla]

I know.

[Alaina Jasper]

Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Nikki. That was fun.

[Rob DeMars]

So fun. Nikki. Thank you.

[Nikki Urkla]

Thank you guys for having me. This was awesome. I loved the conversation. And, yeah, just get everybody's perspective. So this is great.

[Alaina Jasper]

That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing.

[Rob DeMars]

So you gotta hear me out, because I know we don't like targeting. I know we like targeting.

[Nikki Urkla]

Sorry, yeah.

[Angela Voss]

Do we?

[Alaina Jasper]

Yes, we do, Rob. Great, Kirk.

[Angela Voss]

I literally said that.

[Nikki Urkla]

I know.

[Rob DeMars]

That's why, Craig. We like ourselves some targeting marketing architects.