Think about how you watched TV five to 10 years ago versus today. Pretty different, right?

Whether you are still holding onto cable (unlikely), are juggling multiple streaming platforms, or have cut the cord entirely, the point is the same: viewing habits have changed, and your customers have changed with them.

The Evolution of Television in a Streaming World

The linear TV viewing experience — tuning into a channel at a scheduled time — is steadily losing relevance. According to Samba TV’s Q4 2025 State of Streaming report, streaming accounts for more than 60% of total TV viewing time. And according to Pew Research, only 36% of U.S. adults still subscribe to cable or satellite TV at home.

Streaming isn’t the alternative anymore. It’s the default. That shift isn’t just a media stat, it’s a signal about where attention actually lives now.

For advertisers, that fragmentation is both a challenge and an opportunity. Yes, your audience is harder to reach in one place, but the technology that powers streaming has made TV smarter than ever. Connected TV merges the impact of television with the intelligence of digital advertising, bringing programmatic precision to the most influential screen in the home.

So what actually is CTV?

Connected TV refers specifically to streaming content watched on a television screen: smart TVs, streaming sticks such as Roku or Amazon Fire and gaming consoles such as PlayStation and Xbox. The keyword is “television.” Someone watching Hulu on their laptop is streaming, but that’s not CTV — CTV is about the big-screen experience. The platforms delivering that content include Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, Peacock and many more.

Here’s the way I usually explain it to clients who are used to thinking in traditional TV terms: With a linear TV buy, you’re purchasing a slot in a program. You pick a show and a network, and your ad runs whenever that show airs for whoever happens to be watching. You have no control over who sees it and very little ability to optimize once the campaign is live.

CTV flips that model. Instead of buying a program, you’re buying an audience and targeting specific people based on who they are, what they’re interested in and what they’ve purchased.

And unlike traditional TV, where you’re committing to impressions bought in advance with no ability to adjust, CTV inventory is bought programmatically. Automated software bids on impressions in real time on your behalf, which means more precision, better pricing and the flexibility to optimize as the campaign runs. The ad finds your audience wherever they’re streaming, on whatever platform, at whatever time. That kind of flexibility simply doesn’t exist with traditional TV advertising.

How CTV Is Different From Traditional TV

To really understand the opportunity, it helps to put the two side by side.

Traditionally, TV advertising has been bought on the basis of broad demographic assumptions. If you want to reach women ages 25–54, you’d buy programming that overindexes with that group and hope your message lands with the right people. Measurement is limited, and you’re working with estimated ratings and reach projections, not actual verified impressions. And once your schedule is set, it’s set.

Conversely, CTV targets based on actual audience behaviors, including interests, purchase intent, browsing history and household data. You can layer in your own first-party data — your CRM list, your website visitors, etc. — and match it against streaming audiences. You can add third-party audience segments on top of that. The result is a shift from channel-based reach to audience-based precision.

Measurement is more accurate, too. You can track impressions, video completion rates, reach and frequency at the household level and even incremental lift, meaning you can measure whether people who saw your CTV ad were more likely to visit your website or search for your brand afterward. It’s not a perfect science yet, but it’s significantly more accountable than anything linear TV ever offered.

Why CTV Matters for B2B

CTV tends to get discussed in the context of B2C marketing — big brands, mass audiences and consumer products. But for B2B advertisers, it may be even more powerful for one simple reason: business decision-makers are also human beings.

Traditional B2B marketing has long leaned on trade publications and account-based marketing tactics. But the professionals you’re trying to reach — plumbers, contractors, architects and developers — aren’t spending the majority of their day with trade media. They’re streaming. According to Forrester, nearly 40% of business decision-makers turn to CTV daily to stay current on industry trends and business news. Trade publications still have their place, but they capture only a slice of a professional’s daily media attention. CTV is one of the most effective ways to reach them beyond it.

3 Ways To Unlock the Full Potential of CTV

Understanding CTV technology is one thing. Seeing how it works in practice is where it gets interesting.

1. Precision Targeting

One of the biggest mindset shifts in CTV is moving from context-based buying to audience-first buying. With traditional TV advertising, if you sold home improvement products, you likely advertised on HGTV. The context matched, but you were still reaching many people who had no intention of buying what you were selling.

With CTV, you can target homeowners actively researching renovations right now, not just people who enjoy watching renovation shows. You can reach them on HGTV, yes, but also while they’re watching their favorite murder mystery series on Hulu or the NBA Playoffs on Amazon Prime — wherever they happen to be streaming. This is powered by an identity graph, a network of connected data points that ties together a person’s behaviors, devices and household information to create a targetable profile. It’s what makes CTV feel so much more dialed in.

2. Full-Funnel Impact

One misconception I often hear is that CTV is only an awareness play. And while it excels there, that’s far from the full story. A more useful framework is to think less about a linear funnel and more about two things happening at once: demand generation and demand capture.

Demand generation is about reaching people before they’re actively looking and building the kind of brand familiarity that puts you top of mind when they’re ready to buy. Demand capture is about showing up at the moment of intent, when someone is already in research or purchase mode. CTV can do both, often within the same campaign.

Think of it as orbital rather than linear. Marketing doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and neither does CTV.

• At the top of the funnel, high-impact video on the biggest screen in the house generates demand by telling your brand story to audiences who may not know you yet.

• In the middle, sequential ads reinforce that message, moving people from awareness into active consideration.

• At the lower funnel, IP-based retargeting on phones and laptops captures demand, reaching the same viewers at the moment they’re closest to converting.

Picture this: Someone sees your ad on TV Thursday night, gets a related display ad on their phone Friday morning and is on your website by the weekend. That journey from brand exposure to action is something traditional TV could rarely close the loop on.

3. Measurable Performance

CTV measurement is where I see the most hesitation, and I get it. If you’ve spent years buying linear TV advertising without being able to prove what it did, “more measurable” can feel like a pie-in-the-sky marketing promise.

Here’s what you can actually track:

• Impressions

• Video completion rates

• Reach and frequency at the household level

• Site visit lift

• Branded search volume

That last one is particularly telling. When a CTV campaign is working, you often see a direct increase in searches for your brand, which is a strong signal that the storytelling is landing. And if you’re working with an identity partner, you can go even further: connecting ad exposure at the household level to specific downstream actions, such as a site visit or a conversion, and directly correlating those to your CTV campaign.

Is it perfect attribution? No. But it’s a far cry from hoping your Nielsen ratings translated into real results.

CTV as a Driver of Brand Awareness

There’s growing evidence that neglecting brand awareness eventually causes performance marketing to plateau. In fact, 38% of tech marketers who reduced their brand awareness investment reported a decline in their overall performance marketing results. And a 2025 Gartner survey of over 400 CMOs found that 85% agree investing in your brand directly drives business results, yet most budgets still skew heavily toward performance.

You can optimize lower-funnel campaigns endlessly, but if people don’t know who you are, there’s a ceiling on how far that gets you. Brand awareness is what keeps raising that ceiling.

CTV is uniquely built for this work. The format is unskippable with 100% viewability on the biggest screen in the home. The combination of sight, sound and motion creates an emotional impact that digital displays can’t replicate. And unlike a banner ad, a CTV spot has room to tell a real story.

Connected TV isn’t just streaming: It’s data-driven television that delivers the emotional power of TV storytelling with the precision and accountability of digital. It’s not a replacement for what you’re already doing, it’s the evolution of it, feeding awareness into search, powering retargeting across devices and giving your entire media mix more momentum.

Ready to put CTV to work for your brand? Our Media team is ready to help you build the kind of awareness that makes every channel perform better. Let’s talk.