Future of TV Briefing: Sports throws a curveball in advertisers’ streaming investments

Case in point: During the fourth quarter of last year, UM Worldwide had seen that one of its clients had experienced a decline in the return on investment of its CTV advertising. In fact, the agency observed that 83% of the people it was reaching on CTV were also being reached on other platforms, UM Worldwide chief investment officer Marcy Greenberger said at the CTV Advertising Strategies event. 

“Our hypothesis is it’s because we’ve been leaning so much more into live sports in linear TV, which tends to have a really broad reach. And historically, I think the overlap was very minimal between linear and CTV. And the more that we’re leaning into this really broad-reaching, premium linear inventory, the more that we’re starting to see less of that incrementality,” Greenberger said.

Honestly, that overlap doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Considering CTV offers more performance-oriented ad formats like QR codes and shoppable video ads, the dynamic means CTV can serve as mid-funnel channel for advertisers to move the people they initially reached through sports on traditional TV to get closer to a point of purchase. 

But it also means streaming would be playing the part of relief pitcher while traditional TV gets the starting nod, which is how traditional TV networks are largely selling their sports inventory anyway.

Aside from games that are exclusive to streaming services like NBCUniversal-owned Peacock’s NFL playoff games – we’ll get to Amazon, Netflix, etc. in a second – companies like NBCUniversal typically run – or “pass through,” in industry parlance – the same ads on their TV networks as they do on their streaming services when simulcasting games across both platforms. And this can be advertisers’ preference anyway.

“Our preference is always to have pass-through,” said Horizon Media president of global investment David Campanelli at the CTV Advertising Strategies event. “We want the largest audience possible with a single unit running. Streaming is now 5% to 10% of the audience, maybe larger. So it’s a significant add-on to the linear [audience] when there is a simulcast. So we want the whole audience in one shot. That’s our preference.”

But what about all the opportunities left on the table by not taking advantage of streaming’s unique capabilities, like ad targeting and interactive ad formats? Well, they’re kinda counterintuitive. Advertisers aren’t buying sports to carve up their audiences into pockets of people who share certain characteristics or according to who’s able to be seen a different piece of creative. 

“You’re looking for immediate mass-scale. When you make that 30-second spot that can reach 15 million people at once [into an] addressable [ad placement], you’re defeating the purpose of paying this high CPM, high premium to be in such a big event and maximize the scale,” said Campanelli.

None of this is to say that advertisers should be content to strap on streaming as a supplement to their traditional TV-oriented sports spending. Amazon and Netflix, for example, obviously only selling streaming sports inventory. So is NBCUniversal with the upcoming NBA season that will air 50 games exclusively on Peacock. Therefore, as more sports viewership becomes exclusive to streaming, more sports ad buying will become oriented around streaming.

Of course, that can introduce its own ROI headache.

“As you’re bringing streaming live sports into the [media mix modeling] equation and it’s being calculated alongside CTV, it’s a very different price point. So you’re even doubling down on the efficiency challenges, but I think that’s also confusing the model a little bit because now there’s also more overlap,” said Greenberger. “If I’m watching Peacock, for example, and I’m watching ‘Sunday Night Football’ on Peacock and I’m watching ‘Love Island’ on Peacock, I might be apt to have more overlap there.”

What we’ve heard

“Basically, brands no longer want to work with agencies ad-hoc on single campaigns. They’re looking for longer term partnerships with an agency that can effectively oversee their entire creator marketing strategy.”

— Digiday platforms reporter Krystal Scanlon on the latest Digiday Podcast episode

Numbers to know

$9.8 billion: How much ad revenue YouTube generated in the second quarter of 2025.

40%: Percentage share of self-identified sports viewers who say they only watch sports through streaming services.

-80,000: Number of pay-TV subscribers that Charter lost in Q2 2025, compared to a 408,000-subscriber drop in Q2 2024.

10%: Percentage stake that the NFL would take in ESPN as part of a deal between the league and Disney-owned TV network that involves the NFL Network and NFL RedZone.

120,000: Number of unique viewers, on average, who are watching MLS matches through MLS Season Pass this year.

16%: Percentage year-over-year increase in Netflix’s overall revenue in Q2 2025.

What we’ve covered

The upfront is still not done — why and who’s benefiting from it:

• Most agency holding companies are still working to wrap up their upfront negotiations.
• Independent agencies have moved past the halfway point.

Read more about the upfront here.

TikTok invests in growing team to build out search ads as spending grows:

• TikTok is looking to hire a sales leader for its search ads team in New York.
• The platform has been trying to tap into advertisers’ search budgets since launching search ads last year.

Read more about TikTok here.

In creator marketing, loose disclosures are finally catching up:

• Recently at least six companies have faced class-action lawsuits over undisclosed paid influencer posts.
• Creators and marketers said they have noticed a recent and significant uptick in undisclosed brand deals.

Read more about creator marketing here.

Advertisers expand affiliate efforts as creator marketing matures:

• Walmart’s creator program includes tens of thousands of creators, per a company executive.
• Rival retailers Amazon and Best Buy are also investing more in creators to drive sales.

Read more about creator affiliate marketing here.

What we’re reading

Skydance secures Paramount but at what cost?:

The $8 billion sale of CBS’s parent company seems to finally be coming to a close, but as part of the deal reported by The New York Times, Paramount’s new parent had to agree to back away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appoint an ombudsman at CBS News ostensibly whose job would seem to be making sure the news organization doesn’t upset the Trump Administration.

NBCUniversal’s ESPN:

The Comcast-owned media company may have just shed a bunch of its cable TV networks, but it’s looking at launching a new one centered on sports, per The Wall Street Journal, just as the predominant sports TV network ESPN is preparing to launch a standalone streaming service.

Netflix’s video podcast push:

The streaming service aims to hire an executive to oversee its video podcast operation, per Business Insider, as it tries to keep pace with its primary competition on TV screens: YouTube.

Late night TV’s last days?:

Political reasons for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”’s cancelation aside, the show was also losing a lot of money at a time when the traditional TV business continues losing viewers, which begs the question by CNBC of what future is there for the remaining late night talk shows?