Why Many Advertisers Are Disappointed With CTV

Connected TV (CTV)  was supposed to be an advertiser's dream. It promised the sight, sound and motion that powered the persuasiveness of linear TV with the targeting and accountability of digital advertising.

Advertisers have shifted a big share of their budgets to ad-supported CTV, but the growth in ad dollars hasn’t kept up with the growth in viewership. 

The industry has been looking for answers as the imbalance between high supply and lower-than-expected demand has led to low fill rates for available CTV inventory and depressed prices. 

A new report from Gracenote, Nielsen’s content data unit, puts forward a possible explanation. 

Gracenote’s report says that while marketers top goal is brand awareness, they are buying CTV as if they are prioritizing short term brand goals including sales. 

As a result Gracenote, in a survey of media professionals, 32% said they did not view CTV to be very effective as a media channel.

According to Gracenote, which recently began making its programming metadata available to advertisers for contextual advertising, branding oriented advertisers should be doing more contextual targeting and less narrowly focused audience-based targeting. 

“CTV has not delivered the scale and premium reach that marketers expect of the largest screen in the house largely based on the use of narrow targeting tactics,” said Jake Richardson, VP of Partnerships at Gracenote. “By taking better advantage of contextual targeting capabilities with their CTV campaigns, they have new opportunities to drive both return on ads spend and the scale they’ve been looking for.”

Gracenote’s study is largely based on its Trends in CTV advertising survey.  The survey was conducted online and was fielded July 10-20, 2025. The report data reflects the responses from 600 U.S. brand and agency associates with influence or oversight of marketing and advertising spend. 

According to the survey, 30% of those responding said that brand awareness was their top objective for CTV spending. That was followed by 28% who were looking for revenue growth and 22% seeking customer acquisition.

Meanwhile most advertisers were prioritizing audience-based targeting when buying CTV, with 29.5% using demographic targeting, 21% employing interest-based targeting, 19% emphasizing geographic targeting and 10.3% using behavioral targeting.

By contrast 11% were using contextual targeting at the channel level and 9.2% using contextual at the program level. 

The bottom line is that while 27.8% said that spending on CTV was extremely effective and 40.5% said it was very effective, there remained 32% who felt CTV was not very effective, including 21.3% who called spending on CTV only moderately effective.

“Despite the addressable nature of CTV, approaching this channel with overly addressable engagement approaches excludes anyone who isn’t already in the funnel. That inhibits future growth and long-term business vitality. Marketers are looking to CTV for brand building, but to capitalize, they’ll need to embrace the reality that what people are watching is just as important as who’s watching,” the report concludes. “With this mindset, contextual-based parameters have a role to play in brand building across CTV. And if advertisers start to leverage contextual signals in their CTV campaigns, they’re likely to find that the scale they’ve been looking for has been there all along.”

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Magnite said it is updating it ClearLine self-service media buying solution to enable discovery, packaging and activation across Magnite’s supply relationships.

The update uses AI technology from streamr.ai, which was recently acquired by Magnite.

“The future of premium media buying lies in creating a frictionless path between advertisers and audiences,” said Mike Laband, Group senior VP, US Revenue at Magnite. “This evolution of ClearLine simplifies this process by empowering advertisers with one tool to curate and activate campaigns across every screen, including streaming TV, where they can directly reach 109 million US ad-supported households.” 

ClearLine users will be able to define deal terms, pricing, and targeting directly, with the additional flexibility to package deals using first and third-party audiences available through Magnite Access.

"Our clients expect solutions that deliver efficiency, scale, and transparency across every screen," said Jean Fitzpatrick, executive VP, commercial strategy at IPG Mediabrands. "ClearLine’s unique capabilities provide us with a more simplified path to inventory, positioning us to drive greater performance and unlock new opportunities across CTV and omnichannel video."

“With Magnite ClearLine, the overarching benefit for us is that we can use a single platform to manage both our data and inventory," added Kelly McMahon, EVP, Global Operations, LG Ad Solutions. “That ability to centralize assets allows us to effectively streamline programmatic monetization, making it easier to preserve performance, maintain transparency, and scale curated offerings with efficiency.”