Connected TV: From reach to measurable performance

A guide to measuring, protecting, and scaling your CTV investment

Ready to make CTV measurable?

How do you measure if CTV is actually working?

CTV advertising has crossed a real threshold. CTV upfront ad spending has overtaken primetime linear TV spending for the first time, and CTV keeps growing at double-digit rates while linear continues its decline. But the bigger shift is in what advertisers expect from that investment. CTV used to answer one question: how many households did we reach? Now it has to answer a harder one: what did this investment do for the business?

This eBook walks through how to protect your CTV budget from fragmented buying and diluted inventory, match your measurement approach to your program's maturity, and get more value out of live and premium placements. Whether you're building a CTV program from scratch or refining one that's already running, you'll come away with a practical framework and a checklist to keep close.

Inside, you'll find:

How interactive formats like QR codes, pause ads, and shoppable overlays are turning CTV into a measurable performance channel, not just an awareness play
Where CTV measurement breaks down, including audience extension and the "screensaver trap," and how to protect your investment from diluted inventory
A five-stage framework for matching your measurement approach to where your program is today, from foundational visibility to marketing mix modeling
What good CTV activation looks like, from choosing the right DSP to planning for live and premium inventory
A CTV measurement checklist you can use to audit your own program

Pro tips from our CTV experts

Kelly Hayes

Head of Agency Growth

"Not every client is ready for a marketing mix model, and that's fine. Think of measurement maturity as a crawl, walk, run progression: get consistent visibility into spend and exposure first, layer in path-based analysis next, and save incrementality testing and full modeling for when your media mix and budget can support it."

Michelle Wilken

Head of Performance Media

"Treat every interactive format as a new measurement question, not just a new creative unit. A pause ad and a shoppable overlay earn their budget in different ways, so measure each against the outcome it's actually built for."

Megan Folkmann

Manager, Media Services

"Do not let the most recognizable inventory make the targeting decision for you. Split your plan between a contextual buy in premium content and a behavioral buy that follows your actual audience, then measure the overlap between the two so you know which one is doing the real work."