Glossary
What is connected TV (CTV)?
Connected TV is television content streamed over the internet through smart TVs, streaming sticks or games consoles — inventory that can be targeted and measured in ways linear television never could.
What CTV changed
Linear television sold demographics and averages: a programme reached a certain audience, and everyone watching saw the same advertisement. Measurement came from panels rather than from census counts.
CTV delivers over the internet, which means each stream is addressable. Different households can receive different advertisements during the same programme, and delivery is counted rather than estimated.
That combination — television's attention with digital's addressability — is why budget moved quickly, and why the inventory prices well above other video.
What it inherits from digital
- Household-level targeting, usually by IP address rather than by individual.
- Frequency capping, though fragmented across apps and devices so it works less well than it should.
- Counted delivery rather than panel estimates.
- Programmatic buying, increasingly — see programmatic TV.
The measurement gaps
CTV is measured better than linear and considerably worse than it appears.
Household, not person. IP-based targeting reaches a household; who was actually watching is unknown.
No click. There is nothing to click on a television, so response is measured by subsequent behaviour on other devices — which requires a cross-device link that has become unreliable.
Fragmented frequency. A viewer using several apps on several devices can be capped separately in each, and over-frequency is the most common complaint about the channel.
The practical consequence is that CTV, like AI media, is a channel whose influence largely arrives without an attributable click — and the honest instrument for both is a geo holdout rather than a last-click report.
Common questions
What is the difference between CTV and OTT?
OTT describes the delivery method — content bypassing traditional providers. CTV describes the device class. Streaming on a phone is OTT and not CTV; the same service on a smart TV is both.
How do I measure CTV performance?
Geo-based incrementality testing is the workable method. Attribution based on cross-device matching exists and is far less reliable than its reports suggest.
More in channels and surfaces
Screens beyond the phone, and the commerce that happens on them.