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Abigail Roulston, vp of marketing, Blis
The growth of connected TV has been nothing short of explosive. Viewers are streaming more content on CTV than ever before, eclipsing broadcast and cable viewership combined. This surge presents a valuable opportunity for advertisers to connect with highly engaged audiences.
However, this evolving landscape also brings significant challenges. Many advertisers are struggling to unify these disparate touchpoints into a coherent, effective media strategy. As eMarketer pointed out, the foundational pillars of digital advertising — identity and measurement — are fading and fragmented within the CTV ecosystem. Disconnected CTV buys are increasingly out of sync with the broader omnichannel marketing mix, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
The fragmentation problem in CTV
Fragmentation poses a significant hurdle for marketers. While CTV offers premium content and high engagement, marketers are often limited to narrow, publisher-specific datasets or modeled IDs that don’t translate well across platforms. This makes it difficult to activate audiences at scale or to pinpoint what’s actually driving the impact of marketers’ campaigns. An eMarketer report reinforces this challenge: 55% of CTV marketers cite signal loss as their top concern. And, as more environments go ID-less — particularly on iOS and across device manufacturers — that problem is only intensifying, making it harder to track and attribute conversions.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way.
The path forward for CTV
Unlocking the full potential of CTV — as both a brand and performance channel — requires a strategic shift. CTV must be reconnected to the broader consumer journey and omnichannel ecosystem. This means moving beyond siloed ID-based targeting, which is becoming increasingly unsustainable, and embracing more privacy-forward, omnichannel models. These innovative approaches utilize a non-ID centric framework and take a broader view of the signals available, providing a more resilient, integrated foundation for advertising in a data-conscious age.
Omnichannel audiences provide unified measurement
The real opportunity for advertisers lies in thinking bigger. CTV should not be bought or measured in isolation. Campaigns could be much more effective if they treated CTV as one part of a larger, connected audience plan — spanning mobile, digital out-of-home and desktop.
With the right privacy-safe data inputs, marketers can define an audience once and activate it consistently across every screen. This unified approach not only delivers better targeting precision but also enables more accurate measurement of incrementality, both online and offline.
By tying ad exposure to real-world and digital behavior across all channels, advertisers gain a more complete understanding of media impact and a clearer picture of their return on investment. This shift builds comprehensive campaigns that follow the consumer, rather than being limited by individual platform silos.
Privacy first doesn’t mean performance last
There’s a lingering industry misconception that privacy compliance must come at the cost of precision and performance. In reality, the opposite is true: a commitment to privacy creates space for smarter, more sustainable strategies.
Moving beyond reliance on individual identifiers encourages innovation and taps into a richer mix of signals — from movement patterns to contextual cues — allowing the execution of high-performing CTV campaigns, even in ID-light environments.
The future of CTV strategy doesn’t lie in patching over identity loss with temporary workarounds. It lies in a fundamental rethinking of how to build, activate and measure campaigns from the ground up. This new approach must prioritize signal quality, performance and the full consumer experience, ensuring that advertising remains effective in an increasingly privacy-conscious world.
Sponsored by Blis
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