TV is getting easier to buy. How interested are SMBs?

UK broadcasters are betting their new ad marketplace will “lure digital-native brands” by making TV trading feel like buying from Meta or Google — but will small and medium-sized brands (SMBs) take the plunge?

“The appeal is obvious,” Luke Bristow, CEO of MNC, told The Media Leader. “Self-serve access, biddable pricing and the familiarity of platform-style buying. For founders/CMOs used to managing every penny in Meta or Google’s dashboards, that will feel natural.”

But Bristow, who works closely with challenger brands such as Grind, Just Eat and Moonpig, warned that the instinct to “chase precision and efficiency” could risk turning TV into “just another performance auction”.

“TV’s incremental value will never be in chasing cheap CPMs,” he argued. “It’s in building the mass awareness and credibility challengers need to catch their incumbent, often more efficiently than upper-funnel Meta or YouTube.”

The announcement that UK broadcasters were collaborating on a new marketplace to make TV easy to buy for SMBs made a splash at Cannes, where commercial leaders from Channel 4, ITV and Sky revealed it will launch in 2026.

Looking to stave off competition from platforms, whose performance-led ad tools have provided attractive ease-of-use to startups and small businesses, TV companies have this year moved to transform the TV ad-buying process.

Comcast Advertising, with which the UK broadcasters have partnered on the new marketplace, launched its own Universal Ads platform in the US this year, kicking off the innovation effort.

Apart from the marketplace, broadcasters are also collaborating on Lantern, an outcomes-based measurement panel set to launch next year. Meanwhile, at ITV’s Showcase in Manchester in the spring, the broadcaster unveiled an outcomes planning tool.

Separately, ITV and Channel 4 have also each begun developing AI-driven processes to make creative cheaper and easier to develop.

The hope is that by making planning, buying, creative development and measurement cheaper, easier and more suited to digital brands’ marketing teams, new investment from these brands will flow.

Channel 4, ITV and Sky roll out ad marketplace to attract new advertisers

Strings attached?

Alex Barrett, AV director at The Specialist Works, told The Media Leader that the new marketplace “changes the game” for emerging and entrepreneurial brands that had previously perceived TV as “complex, opaque and out of reach”.

“It offers a clean, self-serve path to high-impact, premium environments — without needing deep media know-how or chunky budgets,” he said. “It’s great progress.”

The marketplace covers both addressable streaming and on-demand inventory, with a “user-friendly interface” designed to appeal to digital-first marketers.

However, given the marketplace is aiming to be more platform-like, the buying process is likely to be more opaque, with less clarity over precisely where an ad runs compared with traditional linear buys.

Barrett acknowledged that there “may be slightly less transparency” on this front. Still, for the digital-first businesses his agency works with, the priority is “hitting the right audience”.

“Programme precision matters less than strong targeting and solid reporting,” he explained. “TV’s long relied on the ‘adjacency effect’ — the idea that obviously being near great content can improve how people see your brand. And for established brands building long-term equity, that still matters.

“But for many of the digital-first brands we work with — especially those shaped by performance marketing — their priorities can be different. They care less about where an ad runs and more about who it reaches, how it performs and what it drives.”

A spokesperson on behalf of Channel 4, ITV, Sky and Comcast told The Media Leader: “The broadcasters’ compliance frameworks will each ensure rigorous control over ad placement with every ad placed via the marketplace subject to the same high quality bar set by Clearcast for all TV advertising.

“The marketplace presents a landmark opportunity to reduce friction and simplify choices by democratising access to premium inventory across BVoD and streaming—especially for SMEs and digital native, new to-TV-advertisers—without compromising on quality or accountability, ensuring that every campaign is delivered in a secure, brand-safe, and premium environment.”

Bristow nevertheless agreed that SMBs care less about where their ads show up than if they deliver — at least in the short term.

“As they grow up, they realise growth isn’t just about acquisition costs, it’s about credibility,” he continued. “TV carries weight precisely because ads sit alongside trusted, culturally resonant content — the kind of placement that makes a brand feel bigger, safer and more established in the eyes of customers.

“Strip that away and you’re left with an expensive version of YouTube.”

Podcast: Channel 4 at Cannes — a new SME marketplace and ‘superpower’ of friction

Best of both worlds

Barrett is bullish that the mix of new initiatives developed by broadcasters will act as a “leveller” for many of The Specialist Works’ clients by making the medium “truly accessible”.

For SMBs, he argued, TV is in the process of becoming a performance channel.

“Smart targeting, clear reporting and trusted environments are what make TV a powerful tool for this new wave of advertisers,” he explained.

Bristow added: “Done right, it’s the best of both worlds: efficiency of biddable buying with the stature of appearing alongside trusted, resonant content.”

The risk, he warned, is that the effort collapses into the worst of both: “Inflated CPMs for back catalogue filler content, with none of the cultural association that comes from primetime shows.”

Such a risk assessment could mean that not only are SMBs able to access TV inventory for the first time, but they also have leverage “to demand exactly that balance [of] access and credibility”.

Bristow concluded: “The brands that seize it won’t just be happy to be here; they’ll shape how TV buying works for the next decade.”

This article was updated after publication to include comment from the UK public-service broadcasters and Comcast.