Future of TV Briefing: CTV ad market’s transparency problem hits a boiling point

Seemingly everyone in the advertising industry knows that the connected TV market has a transparency problem. Ad buyers have been pretty vocal about it. But the tenor of that talk seems to have reached a new, exasperated pitch.

“We’re being blinded. The publishers control all the inventory, and the middlemen control all the ability for us to check that inventory. They don’t let us run Javascript; they don’t let us run much to check that. So what we’re left with is trusting people who historically don’t have our best interests at heart. They’re just down to make margins for their shareholders,” said an agency executive during a behind-closed-doors town hall session at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in Palm Springs, Calif., in which participants were granted anonymity for candor.

The CTV transparency issue is multi-dimensional. One part of the problem is that the CTV ad infrastructure is not designed to pass information — such as CTV device type — that would help advertisers and agencies know where their ads ran. Another aspect is that CTV ad sellers, including CTV platforms and streaming services, still don’t typically provide show-level data for advertisers to know what programs their ads appeared in. But the more worrying element is that CTV ad buyers are finding the data they do receive cannot be trusted.

“There’s a pervasive lack of trust for all of us,” said one agency executive during the town hall.

“A lot of what they’re selling us is lies or not good quality inventory,” said another agency executive.

And a compounding factor is agencies’ advertiser clients not comprehending that ads on CTV can be targeted to specific audiences so not everyone sees the same ad as they do on traditional TV (a confounding lack of comprehension but there we are).

“When we start talking about audience-first, we say [to clients] ‘We can’t really necessarily tell you where this might run, but we can tell you who it’s going to reach. And then if the client doesn’t see [the ad themselves], they say, ‘Well, I never saw it.’ It’s like, but you’re not our audience,” said an agency executive.

“I don’t know why but more recently clients [are saying] ‘But I can’t see the ad.’ That is something we [heard from clients] 20 years ago, and now it’s back,” said another agency executive.

Confounding as that lack of comprehension is, it could be cleared up if CTV ad sellers were to pass information disclosing which specific movie or show carried an ad. But they don’t. But it gets worse: Agency executives don’t feel they can trust the data they are getting about where their clients’ ads ran. 

 “The biggest networks are obfuscating what they’re selling,” said an agency executive.

In some cases, ad sellers are labeling online video inventory running on their websites as CTV or streaming inventory. In other cases, the sellers are just refusing to engage in conversations about the seeming lack of transparency.

Another agency executive said they have run into issues with “three very prominent supply sources” and had instances where a CTV campaign is showing it’s received 3,000 clicks, a signal that the ad was not actually running on CTV because when was the last time you saw a CTV ad that could be clicked. After questioning the vendor about the anomaly, the vendor simply suggested the agency stop working with the vendor rather than clarifying the issue. 

“It’s been a very strange process. I’m like, I have thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars to give you, but the minute we question [the vendor], it’s ‘We don’t want your money; we don’t want your budget,’” said this agency executive.

At least some of this seems to stem from the fact that the CTV ad infrastructure is still underdeveloped because it is primarily web architecture that has been ported over to CTV. As a result, it has not been adequately adapted to the nuances of CTV.

“There’s no standard user agent for CTV. There’s no web standards to govern CTV televisions. There’s dozens of manufacturers, dozens of different operating systems of differing versions — most of them not very well built — and then you have on top of that a sub-operating system of all these app ecosystems,” said an agency executive.

Additionally, because advertisers and agencies cannot run Javascript on CTV platforms, they are not able to verify for themselves where their ads ran. Which leaves them reliant on signals like user-agent, which is a native web signal but doesn’t really work on CTV. “There’s no user-agent for Samsung TV,” said an agency executive.

Which leaves the agency executives hoping for an industry organization like the Interactive Advertising Bureau and/or IAB Tech Lab to step in and not only set standards for CTV but ensure their adoption. 

“Unfortunately there’s not a lot we can do until IAB or someone steps in and says, ‘There needs to be a standard of what needs to be supported,’” said an agency executive.

What we’ve heard

“[Advertisers and agencies] want to lay down money for the long term — or at least set those budgets for the long term — but they’re very much expecting sellers to let them out of commitments in much, much shorter time frames than ever before [in this year’s upfront market].”

— Digiday senior media buying editor Michael Bürgi on the latest Digiday Podcast episode

Numbers to know

100%: The tariff value that President Donald Trump has ordered to be imposed on movies produced outside of the U.S.

$185 million: How much money Roku will pay in cash to acquire streaming pay-TV service FrndlyTV.

$200,000: The minimum spending commitment that Walmart is asking advertisers to make in order to purchase ads on Vizio’s connected TV platform.

42%: Streaming’s share of the time people spent watching ad-supported programming on TV screens in the first quarter of 2025.

460 million: Number of average daily active users that Snapchat had at the end of Q1 2025.

-200,000: Number of paid subscribers in North America that streaming pay-TV service Fubo lost in Q1 2025.

What we’ve covered

Google’s CTV updates show how the DSP arms race is accelerating:

• In March, Google’s DSP started offering household-level targeting and conversion measurement for CTV campaigns.
• The move is meant to bring parity with other DSPs like The Trade Desk that already offer household-level options.

Read more about Google here.

Ad dollars stay the course on TikTok, ban or no ban:

• More than half of Digiday+ Research survey respondents said they plan to continue advertising on the platform while in limbo.
• Roughly a quarter said they are on undecided on their TikTok spend.

Read more about TikTok here.

What’s in and out in this year’s TV and streaming ad upfront market:

• Flexibility and principal-based buying are set to be fixtures of this year’s upfront.
• Fixed commitments and non-Nielsen measurement currencies are less likely to feature in the annual TV and streaming ad haggle.

Listen to the latest Digiday Podcast episode here.

LinkedIn emerges as a serious player in the creator economy:

• B2B influencer marketing agencies are benefiting from the business-centric social platform’s recent video push.
• LinkedIn’s share of Notion’s marketing budget has increased from 25% to 40% since last year.

Read more about LinkedIn here.

Why some creators are returning to traditional jobs and side hustles as brand deals slow:

• Burnout and slowing brand deals is pushing some creators to seek the financial security of full-time employment.
• Some creators are taking full-time jobs at influencer and marketing agencies, while others are starting their own businesses.

Read more about creators here.

What we’re reading

Trump’s tariffs target Hollywood:

Trump has ordered 100% tariffs on movies produced outside the U.S., though it’s unclear how those tariffs would be calculated, to what extent they would cover production vs. post-production as well as TV shows and whether other countries would impose retaliatory tariffs, according to Bloomberg.

Roku’s children’s privacy problem:

Michigan’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Roku alleging that the connected TV platform owner violated children’s privacy by collecting and sharing their personal information, according to Variety.

LinkedIn’s original shows slate:

The business-centric social network plans to premiere five original video series starring creators, celebrities and business people, according to Business Insider.

YouTube’s AI slop:

AI-powered YouTube channels are posing videos of cartoon animals being abused and sexualized, according to Wired.

Creator economy crunch:

Spotter — a company that provides monetization and analytics tools to creators — has laid off employees, citing the economy and profitability plans as the reasons why, according to Business Insider.