CTV Ads: Why 42% of Marketers Lack Confidence in 2026

That $30 billion projected for U.S. Connected TV (CTV) ad spend by 2026 is a number everyone loves to quote, but it hides a messy reality. The money is pouring in, but advertisers are struggling to make it count. Most so-called “video ad strategies” are just old linear TV habits forced onto a new platform, which explains why they’re not keeping up with CTV’s unique problems. The bottom line is that huge chunks of those budgets aren’t turning into measurable, effective campaigns.

Only 42% of Marketers Feel Confident in CTV Measurement

A late 2025 IAB report showed that less than half of marketers feel confident they can actually measure their CTV campaigns. I find that number pretty jarring given the cash being spent. The real problem is accurately attributing business outcomes, not just counting impressions. The issue almost always comes down to fragmented measurement. Too many organizations are still running CTV in a totally separate silo from linear TV, but that’s not how people watch content. This separation creates a nightmare when you try to deduplicate audiences and figure out your true reach and frequency across your entire video buy.

I see this all the time with the brands I work with. They’re trying to make sense of a half-dozen different dashboards for CTV, linear, and digital video, and it’s impossible to get a clear picture of what’s happening. The only way out is to adopt a unified measurement framework. This means you have to pull data from every video touchpoint into one place, use identity resolution to get a single view of the customer, and apply the same attribution model everywhere. If you don’t make this foundational change, you’re just guessing, and you won’t be able to prove ROI or intelligently decide where to put your next dollar. It’s a massive flaw that breaks the whole promise of data-driven advertising.

Programmatic CTV Ad Fraud Rates Approaching 20% in Some Segments

CTV’s targeting is powerful, but it’s also become a gold mine for ad fraud. A recent study from Pixalate found that in Q3 2025, some programmatic CTV inventory had invalid traffic rates climbing toward 20%. This is a huge drain on ad budgets, not a small leak. It means millions of dollars are vanishing into thin air, paying for bots or ads running in fake apps. The fraudsters are smart, too, getting better and better at mimicking real CTV environments and finding holes in the programmatic supply chain. It’s a constant battle.

Just letting your demand-side platform (DSP) handle fraud filtering isn’t going to cut it. Advertisers have to get their hands dirty. This means you need to hire an independent, third-party ad verification vendor that lives and breathes CTV fraud, like a DoubleVerify or Integral Ad Science. We tell all our clients to run pre-bid blocking, constantly audit their supply paths, and demand total transparency from their programmatic partners. You also have to actually look at your app lists. If you see a ton of impressions coming from some obscure app you’ve never heard of, that’s a red flag. Ignoring this problem is the same as just setting a pile of your budget on fire.

Interactive CTV Ad Formats See 50% Higher Engagement Rates

The passive TV experience is dying, but you wouldn’t know it from all the static 30-second spots still running on CTV. Innovid put out research in early 2026 showing that interactive CTV ad formats, things with QR codes, shoppable overlays, or quick polls, get engagement rates up to 50% higher than a standard TV ad. That data points to a massive missed opportunity for any brand that wants to drive a direct action or get people more involved with their message.

The whole point of CTV is that it’s digital. It allows for personalized experiences that linear TV just can’t deliver. Think about an ad for a sneaker where you can use your remote to see different colors, or scan a QR code on the screen and go straight to the product page. This isn’t some future fantasy. It’s available right now on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung TV Plus. We push our clients to start running small tests with these formats and think beyond simple awareness. What can you get a viewer to do? Can they add a product to a cart directly from the ad or sign up for a list with their remote? The future of CTV advertising is about participation, not just watching.

The Rise of Retail Media Networks: 30% of CTV Ad Spend Forecasted by 2028

One of the biggest things changing the game in CTV is the explosion of retail media networks. eMarketer is projecting that these networks will pull in almost 30% of all CTV ad dollars by 2028. Why does this matter so much? It solves a problem advertisers have had forever by offering closed-loop attribution. When you advertise on a retailer’s own platform, like Walmart Connect or Amazon Ads, you can directly connect someone seeing your ad on their TV to them buying your product on the retailer’s website. For anyone focused on performance, this is huge.

From what I see, a lot of brands aren’t taking these networks seriously enough. They aren’t just for CPG anymore. If your product is sold through any major retailer, you should be looking at this. The first-party data inside these walled gardens lets you target with incredible precision based on what people have actually bought in the past, their loyalty status, and sometimes even their in-store behavior. For instance, a brand could serve a CTV ad to households that recently bought a competitor’s product. That kind of targeting, tied directly to sales attribution, makes retail media a complicated but powerful part of any CTV video ad strategy.

My Take: The “TV Everywhere” Illusion Persists

Here’s my big disagreement with the common narrative: the whole concept of “TV Everywhere” is mostly an illusion for advertisers. Yes, people watch content on all their devices, but the ad tech and strategy haven’t caught up at all. There’s this mistaken belief that you can just take your linear TV campaign, stretch it onto CTV, and get the same results, or that one creative works on every screen. That’s a lazy and expensive oversimplification.

The truth is, CTV viewers are a different audience with different expectations. They are leaning in, more willing to interact with an ad, and have zero patience for irrelevant or repetitive creative. That 30-second spot that performs fine on broadcast TV can feel incredibly annoying or just fall completely flat when someone is binge-watching a show on their smart TV. On top of that, the technical specs and ad-serving rules change wildly from one CTV app to another. A creative you made for a YouTube pre-roll might look awful and pixelated on a 65-inch screen. You have to abandon the one-size-fits-all mentality. It means investing in dynamic creative optimization (DCO) built specifically for CTV, creating ads in multiple lengths, and trying different calls to action depending on the app environment. Treating CTV like it’s just a bigger phone screen is the biggest mistake I see brands make.

Dealing with the hot-button issues in CTV requires more than just a bigger budget. It demands a total rethink of measurement, fraud prevention, creative, and interactivity. The brands that adjust their video ad strategy right now, by focusing on unified attribution and making dynamic, engaging content, are the ones who will actually capture the massive opportunity this channel represents.