Commentary
Global CTV Investments Rising, But 66% Of Buyers Still On Sidelines
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, May 7, 2025
Although 54% of media buyers have increased their investments in connected TV (CTV) advertising, there are still 66% of media buyers who said they are not currently spending on CTV, according to a global study of more than 2,000 marketers and media executives by DoubleVerify.
That said, media buyers who are not currently doing CTV media-buying plan to do so in the next 12 months, with global marketing executives pointing to top-level streaming platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime as places for significant growth.
Of those spending on video --- CTV and traditional TV -- 63% say they will spend via one of three CTV sales platforms: programmatic (23%), private marketplace (20%), or direct buys (20%). Almost one-fifth (19%) look to spend on traditional linear TV, with 18%, spending on traditional addressable TV.
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Looking for motivation to spend more on CTV, media buyers say the top lure for them --51% -- would be sellers offering improved audience targeting and verification; 43% say its "transparency" as it concerns "content alignment and performance."
Digging deeper into transparency, the authors say advertising can be bundled within pools of publisher content, as well as with inventory from external platforms.
“This limits visibility into the type of content and screens where ads are served, creating challenges in measuring ad effectiveness, ensuring compliance with brand guidelines and avoiding low-quality inventory.”
That said, better efforts around transparency are growing -- 64% of those surveyed attest to that, up from 51% in the second half of 2024 and from 46% in the same period in 2022.
The research also determined that media buyers also want "consistent performance measurement” (39%) and increased “reach/freqency controls” (38%).
Still, there is even better news for CTV platforms: 65% of marketers are willing to pay premium CPMs for advertising that sits next to “ professionally produced content. Not only that but more than 25% are willing to pay above 50% premiums.
Authors say 72% of marketers say ads placed in CTV environments outperform “their campaign baselines.”
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
Wayne, that figure --66%--of "media buyers" who are not spending on CTV currently makes me wonder how reprsentative the sample was for this study. One way to lok into this would be to see what percent of that 66% uses any form of TV--mostly limear I would assume. If many don't use "TV" at all, then it's not necessarily true that a large percentage of likely CTV users are sitting on the sidelines. Many are simply not interested in using any form of TV or are too small--- ad budget-wise---to consider it.