• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 4 hours ago

Large-screen devices -- smart TV sets -- account for 57% of U.S. open CTV programmatic ad spending, according to a June 2026 report from Pixalate.

The digital ad fraud and analytics researcher says 43% of open programmatic ad spend is on small- screen devices -- mobile phones, tablets, and other IOS and Android.

Open programmatic streaming ad buys -- public real-time bidding (RTB) auctions open to any demand-side platform buyer -- are roughly 18% to 19% ($6 billion to $7.5 billion) of overall CTV ad spend -- which is around $33.1 billion to $40.4 billion, according to industry estimates.

Amazon Fire TV, the smart TV operating system, accounts for the largest share of open TV programmatic ad spend for CTV on large screens -- 30%. Roku is at 18%; Samsung Smart TV, 5%; and Apple TV, 4%.

Warner Bros. Discovery has five of the top ten networks with the most ad spend from open programmatic deals -- the Food Network (34%), CNN (20%), Investigation Discovery (7%), TLC (4%) and Animal Planet (2%).

Reality-unscripted and news programming pulls in the most open programmatic ad deals-- 41% and 23% respectively.  New programming --64% dominate small screen ad spend.

Morning time periods (6 AM-12p) constitute the biggest ad spend share for large screen open programmatic streaming TV/CTV spend -- 30%. For small screens, overnight hours (11p-6a) have the largest time-period share at 31%.

Overall programmatic ad transactions (which include Private Marketplaces, Programmatic Guaranteed, and Open Exchange) represent around 84% to 88% of all U.S. CTV ad spending.