Why CTV performance advertising is the missing link for streaming’s next growth phase
Partner content
By enabling performance advertising, streaming publishers can unlock a new growth cycle.
The television and streaming advertising market is reaching a turning point. Traditional TV has long relied on brand advertising as its primary source of revenue. While formats and delivery have evolved with streaming, the underlying model has remained largely unchanged — and today, it is under pressure.
Traditional TV advertising has been steadily declining since 2021, driven by audience fragmentation and shifting media consumption habits. Although digital extensions such as BVOD and live addressable TV have provided some relief, they are not sufficient to offset the overall decline.
Streaming, including AVOD and FAST, has delivered strong growth over recent years. However, that growth is beginning to plateau. Taken together, these trends suggest that the combined TV and streaming advertising market could see little to no growth over the next three years.
At the same time, other digital channels are thriving. Paid search, social media, and retail media are growing by +15% to +25%, fueled by their performance-driven models. The implication is clear: advertiser demand is strong, but much of it is flowing elsewhere because the performance frameworks that advertisers rely on are not yet established in streaming, specifically CTV.
This creates a structural gap — and a major opportunity. By enabling performance advertising, streaming publishers can unlock a new growth cycle. Even more compelling, this opportunity could accelerate by connecting two powerful ecosystems: CTV and retail/e-commerce.
The movement has already started
Some industry leaders have already begun capitalising on this shift.
YouTube introduced “send-to-phone” functionality on CTV in 2021, allowing viewers to act beyond the TV screen. By 2025, this feature alone generated $1bn in revenue — proving that bridging awareness and action is both possible and profitable.
Amazon Ads has gone further. In 2024, it announced shoppable ad formats on streaming, enabling brands on Prime Video to display real-time pricing, promotions and stock availability directly within ads. This tight integration of commerce and advertising redefines what TV can deliver.
Roku has also entered the space with ActionAds and partnerships with platforms like Shopify, enabling seamless interaction between viewers and brands.
Meta offers another perspective on the power of performance ad models. After adapting to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency changes, it increased both impression volume and pricing — achieving around 10% quarterly growth in price per impression through performance-driven optimisation.
Meanwhile, Walmart’s 2024 acquisition of Vizio highlights the strategic importance of combining retail ecosystems with CTV operating systems, paving the way for deeply integrated commerce experiences on TV.
Together, these moves show that performance advertising on CTV is already becoming a reality — particularly in more integrated, less fragmented environments.
The challenges for broadcasters
For broadcasters, the shift to performance advertising is not straightforward.
This reflects a classic Innovator’s Dilemma. Broadcasters have traditionally excelled at negotiating brand budgets with agencies. Performance TV advertising represents a fundamentally different model — one that can feel misaligned with existing structures and revenue streams.
As a result, many broadcasters focus on defensive innovation, such as “Total TV” strategies that unify linear and digital inventory. While valuable, these approaches reinforce the current model rather than enabling a new one. Structurally, broadcasters are not always equipped to meet performance-driven demand.
Two core challenges illustrate this gap.
Fill rate remains a persistent issue. Many publishers struggle to sell all their inventory and rely on programmatic channels for backfill. While combining direct sales and programmatic helps, performance advertising introduces a new lever: incremental demand. Because programmatic is the default for performance campaigns, enabling this demand type can significantly improve monetisation.
Engagement is another opportunity. TV has traditionally been a lean-back experience, but performance advertising introduces simple, non-disruptive ways for viewers to interact. For publishers, this is not only about revenue — it is also an opportunity to enhance the user experience and differentiate their platforms.
What publishers need to enable performance TV advertising
To unlock this opportunity, three capabilities are essential.
1. Interactive Inventory
Publishers need to offer interactive ad formats, such as those recently highlighted by the IAB. Among these, shoppable formats are the most commercially relevant.
Crucially, this does not require turning TV into a full e-commerce interface. The most effective approach is simple: enabling a viewer to take action with a single click of the remote control. This creates a clear call to action while preserving a seamless viewing experience.
2. Data Connectivity
Data is key to linking ad exposure to outcomes. Typically, this means sending a product link from the TV to a companion device, such as a smartphone.
For advertisers, this is straightforward — creatives already include product links. For publishers, success depends on first-party data and user identification. Broadcasters distributed via operators have a strong advantage, as ISPs can use subscriber data (such as mobile numbers), to enable direct communication. Otherwise, pairing between a streaming app and a companion device can establish the connection.
3. Strategic Partnerships
The next step goes beyond “send-to-phone” toward deeper integration — for example, enabling “add to cart” functionality directly from CTV.
This requires partnerships with e-commerce platforms, particularly retail media networks. Achieving this level of integration depends on identity resolution, user matching, CDPs and cross-audience targeting. While more complex, this unlocks significantly greater scale and value.
A defining moment
Performance advertising represents both a major opportunity and a clear risk for the streaming ecosystem.
The ingredients are already in place: strong advertiser demand, underutilised inventory and proven models in other digital channels. The technology needed to enable performance TV advertising is available today, and early adopters are already generating incremental revenue.
The next step is experimentation. Broadcasters, operators and aggregators need to test these models and adapt their capabilities accordingly.
Those who move first will gain a clear competitive edge — attracting more demand, improving revenue efficiency, increasing engagement and unlocking new growth through a broader ecosystem.
Performance advertising is not just an evolution for streaming. It is the key to its next phase of growth.
Olivier Karra is the cloud solutions director at Broadpeak