As streaming services and digital apps become the primary screens for today’s audiences, Connected TV (CTV) enables advertisers to reach viewers directly where they’re most engaged—whether on streaming platforms, gaming consoles, or smart TVs. This powerful format allows advertisers to deliver immersive, interactive, and trackable ads, creating connections that go beyond what traditional TV commercials can offer.
With streaming viewership surging, CTV has quickly become a cornerstone of modern media strategies. In the U.S. alone, CTV ad spending reached $24.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow by 72% to $42.4 billion by 2027. This growth underscores CTV’s unique ability to capture attention, boasting an impressive 98% average view completion rate. This high engagement is largely due to CTV’s “lean-back” viewing experience, which promotes passive yet sustained attention as ads seamlessly integrate with streaming content.
Automating the manual processes involved in building, launching, and optimizing CTV programs enables you to explore new channels like CTV without straining resources. In turn, you can reach untapped audiences at scale.
Let’s take a look at how automation can help you simplify, enhance, and scale your CTV initiatives.
Shifting screens: the rise of Connected TV and what it means for advertisers
The rise of streaming platforms and CTV programming directly correlates with the decline of cable TV. Millions of households have “cut the cord” and switched to online platforms that let them watch the content they want, whenever they choose. This shift is more affordable for many viewers.
But this shift is also driven by the added convenience and personalized content that streaming platforms offer. This freedom clearly captivates viewers: U.S. adults spend an average of 123.4 minutes per day on CTV programming in 2024. CTV is one of the fastest-growing major ad channels, second only to mobile in total usage time.
Traditional linear TV no longer holds the same appeal it once did, especially among younger audiences. As a result, you have to rethink how to reach key demographics in engaging ways that align with the personalized experiences viewers now expect.
CTV’s competitive edge: enhanced targeting and engagement
If you’re shifting from traditional TV to CTV, it’s essential to understand the unique advantages this dynamic medium offers.
One of CTV's primary benefits is its powerful, data-driven targeting capabilities—a feature that 84% of advertisers believe gives it a superior edge over linear TV. Unlike traditional TV ads, which broadly target general demographics, CTV leverages rich viewer data such as demographics, geographic location, interests, device types, and contextual targeting. This enables you to deliver highly relevant ads to specific audience segments, resulting in more precise and impactful advertising.
CTV’s engagement potential is also a key differentiator. Unlike traditional TV, CTV ads often feature interactive elements that enable viewers to take direct action—such as clicking on a call-to-action button or exploring product details—right from their screens. This interactive experience creates two-way engagement, providing you with real-time, actionable feedback and highly attributable results.
The advantages of CTV extend to measurement as well. Unlike traditional TV, CTV provides robust analytics. You can track campaign performance, measure ROI, and optimize ad placements with real-time insights. This data enables you to make adjustments on the fly so campaigns achieve maximum effectiveness.
Finally, CTV is key to creating a unified, omnichannel strategy that enhances brand narratives across platforms. Integrating CTV with other digital channels, such as social media and display ads, helps you create a consistent, engaging message across the many touchpoints users encounter throughout their day.
Research shows that CTV can amplify the performance of other channels, increasing the overall impact of your campaigns. For example, one study demonstrated a 22% increase in conversion rates for paid search and a 9% increase for paid social following a CTV campaign. In other words, bringing CTV into your overall ad strategy can pay off dividends across other channels, too.
How automation empowers agencies to scale and succeed in their CTV strategies
For many advertisers, managing CTV campaigns within today’s complex digital landscape can be overwhelming. Ad strategists and agencies are already stretched thin across multiple channels, constrained by resources, and bogged down by the manual, repetitive tasks necessary to align every channel within a cohesive strategy.
Automation tools, like those found in Fluency’s Digital Advertising Operating System (DAOS), can help you address these specific challenges. They also free up your capacity so you can test new strategies at scale. With the right automation tools, you can innovate confidently and expand into new channels like CTV without overextending resources.
Here’s a look at how automation can help you scale efficiently and achieve impactful results with CTV advertising:
Efficient cross-channel campaign management
Automation gives you bulk management and editing capabilities at scale, simplifying your overall campaign management. For example, Fluency enables you to automate key campaign tasks like bid adjustments, scheduling, and targeting—all from a single, unified interface.
This centralized approach eliminates manual tasks, reduces errors, and accelerates campaign launches. Reducing the amount of time you and your team spend on repetitive, “rinse and repeat” tasks frees up valuable time for strategic, high-impact initiatives.
For teams managing campaigns across multiple channels, you can even consolidate oversight into one platform. You can eliminate the need to switch between disparate tools and systems, saving you keystrokes, stress, and time.
Enhanced targeting and personalization for hyper-relevance
As previously discussed, CTV offers a rich data landscape with advanced targeting capabilities. But to fully harness CTV’s unique potential, you need more than just access to data—you need an efficient way to utilize it at scale.
Traditionally, maximizing CTV’s data for highly targeted campaigns demanded significant manual work: carefully segmenting audiences, setting precise targeting parameters, and constantly adjusting campaigns to optimize them. This process is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and nearly impossible to maintain across complex, multichannel ad programs.
Automation transforms this process, enabling you to unlock scalable, sophisticated targeting for CTV campaigns. Gone are the hours spent fine-tuning targeting settings across campaigns. With solutions like Fluency, you can automate these critical tasks and leverage CTV’s diverse targeting options, including contextual targeting, geotargeting, dayparting, and retargeting.
These capabilities enable the delivery of highly personalized ad experiences that drive engagement and conversions, allowing campaigns to tap into the full potential of CTV’s data-rich environment without straining internal resources.
Real-time performance analytics for rapid optimizations
CTV offers unprecedented opportunities for an immediate feedback loop. People can take action on CTV ads directly on their device, making it possible to quickly test, iterate, and improve your advertising efforts—but only if your teams can move as fast as the findings come in.
Utilizing a DAOS can give you comprehensive, real-time analytics for CTV ads, making performance tracking both clear and actionable. Key metrics (such as video completion rate (VCR), reach, impressions, cost per completed view (CPCV), and frequency) are instantly accessible in real-time dashboards. As a result, you gain immediate insight into ad performance and the flexibility to make on-the-fly adjustments.
This dynamic adaptability maximizes the effectiveness of each ad dollar spent. At the same time, you can quickly identify and address inefficiencies to ensure you’re continually driving the best possible campaign results.
Cross-channel synergy for holistic campaign performance
CTV serves as an ideal entry point for any brand’s story. This is part of why CTV helps bolster performance across other channels.
With automation, you can effortlessly extend your narrative across channels like search, social, and display. This integrated approach strengthens brand cohesion, broadens audience reach, and guides users through the buying journey regardless of where they’re engaging with your ads.
By providing an operationally efficient, seamless omnichannel experience, tools like those found within Fluency enable you to deliver a cohesive and connected narrative wherever consumers engage.
CTV with Fluency: gain new opportunities for growth and engagement
As CTV continues reshaping the media landscape, you have an unparalleled opportunity to connect with streaming audiences in impactful, measurable ways. Managing CTV campaigns in today’s complex digital ecosystem requires a scalable and efficient solution
Ready to make CTV a high-impact component of your omnichannel strategy? Contact us today to discover how Fluency can elevate your CTV strategy and drive meaningful, measurable results.
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