This year marks the first time US connected TV (CTV) upfront ad spending has overtaken primetime linear TV. More budget is moving into connected TV than ever, which raises the stakes on a decision brands have historically made on instinct: which CTV partner (or partners) should you commit budget to?
In this blog, we'll cover what premium CTV is, why audience behavior matters more than shiny content when choosing a partner, and how to match CTV partners to your goals and budget.
Everyone's definition of “premium” CTV is subjective. Some buyers tie it to the streaming provider itself. Others define it by the content environment, the ad format, or some mix of the three. All three of those answers can be right depending on who is asking.
The flagship subscription platforms people already pay for and open daily are one version of premium, and they're the version most buyers default to. But mid-market brands are often buying more inventory from value-oriented, ad-supported FAST platforms and smart TV manufacturers' own ad inventory, simply because the cost per impression works better for their budget. That inventory isn't less premium just because the CPM is lower. It just comes down to what the brand actually needs.
That said, premium CTV usually starts from a shared baseline: brand-first, top-tier apps that people already download and pay a subscription for, with placements tied to live TV moments or major tentpole events. Tentpole inventory requires reserving well in advance of an event like a championship series or an awards show, since that inventory sells out fast.
The real starting point with any client is asking what matters most to them, such as:
The last one is the one we hear most often from clients. In that case, the search becomes less about finding the most recognizable platform and more about finding whichever supply path delivers that outcome, which is where audience behavior starts to matter more than the content itself.
The biggest advantage in CTV buying comes from pairing a premium placement with a clear read on where your audience spends its time, rather than treating a platform's reputation as a stand-in for performance. Our approach is a two-pronged one:
Splitting budget across both keeps a plan from over-indexing on prestige inventory that doesn't reach the intended audience. Even within CTV, pure branding and upper-funnel prospecting are different jobs that call for different partners.
This is really the shift from linear thinking to digital thinking. The instinct is to assume the single most talked-about placement is automatically the right buy, when consumer viewing habits usually tell a different story.
We don't always know enough about what our audience likes to watch going in, and while we can work with publishers to see where an audience indexes, a plan can't lean on one form of inventory alone. When we understand an audience beyond basic demographics and share that fuller picture with CTV partners, campaigns get built around where people are actually watching, not just where a brand wants to be seen.
Tentpole reservations are where this pairing matters most. CTV campaigns tied to major live event moments (think sporting events, award shows, etc.) have produced some of the strongest brand lift results we have seen in years. Even reaching fringe segments of the target audience during those windows is worth the spend, since sitting out a tentpole moment simply hands that attention to a competitor. Pairing the reservation with behavioral targeting is what makes lift durable rather than a one-time spike.
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A recent CTV test We recently ran this framework for a retailer client, testing two audience personas, one sports-centric and one outdoors-centric, across a curated CTV supply layer instead of a single platform's bundled package. Narrowing a broad persona like in-market for trucks into in-market for off-road vehicles sharpened results in the next round of testing. We also measured overlap between platforms, tying exposure on one app and activity on the curated layer back to the same site visit. |
Once the audience fit is right, the next decision is how to split budget across partner types. We believe that split should follow the campaign goal rather than a fixed rule:
| Partner type | Best for | Budget consideration |
| High-reach, high-visibility apps | Short-term brand push with new creative | Cost climbs fast with each added targeting layer |
| Curated premium supply | Evergreen, always-on tactics | Optimizable on the back end as goals shift |
| Top-tier subscription apps | Guaranteed reservations on named platforms | Needs its own dedicated carve-out, separate from broader bundles |
In our work, we always come back to outcomes. No media budget should be spent without a clear line to a business result. If budget is limited, send an RFP to several CTV partners and see who best matches the brief. That beats spreading media dollars too thin across many partners.
CTV is not a conversion channel in the sense that people rarely buy directly from it. It shows up as post-view or assisted conversion, and standard reporting tends to undercount it unless tagging is set up to catch it. What matters is understanding where CTV sits in the path to conversion. We recommend starting with a small, intentional set of partners, then scaling budget once that impact is proven.
As more people use large language models (LLMs) for search, fewer of those conversions trace back to a clean, attributable click. The purchase often still happens, but it shows up as organic traffic after someone saw a CTV ad earlier in their day. That's why branding budgets, and CTV especially, deserve more weight right now. It still builds the recall that shows up later, even if you can't always draw a clean line back to the ad.
We would love to say we know the full impact of CTV on those models, but we don't. Brands that show up more frequently in large language model responses tend to be the ones already showing up everywhere, and few brands have the budget of an industry giant to buy that frequency outright. Our advice is to start monitoring how often a brand appears in those responses and pair that with paid media data. That combination is the clearest way right now to see what's actually moving the needle, especially as CTV measurement shifts from view-through metrics to frameworks tied to real business outcomes.
Choosing a CTV partner well means juggling contextual against behavioral targeting, evergreen against brand push budgets, and named-app carve-outs against broader bundles, often across several platforms managed separately. A curated approach to supply path economics can simplify this decision.
Advertisers need to be pickier about when they run CTV. Off-the-shelf packages are easy to activate, but they don't always match what a brand envisions when it thinks about showing up on CTV. A good agency partner asks the right questions about the environment a brand wants to appear in, then finds the most effective way to access that inventory.
Choosing the right CTV partner starts with knowing what your brand needs from the channel. If you'd like a second set of eyes on your current mix, we'd love to talk.