2025 Marketing Trends in Review: Connected TV - New Performance Media Darling

In 2025, CTV crossed the line from awareness-only to measurable, performance-driven media, especially for ecommerce and subscription brands. CTV ad spending in the US will near $46 billion in 2028 and surpass linear TV ad spending for the first time (eMarketer).

Streaming-first ad buys on Hulu, Roku, YouTube TV, and Amazon Prime Video replaced linear TV for many brands. CTV crossed a psychological threshold in 2025. It was no longer framed as “the new TV,” but as measurable, performance-capable media with direct advertisement beyond agency models.

In Practice:

Ecommerce, fintech, automotive, and entertainment brands used CTV alongside QR codes, retargeting, and dynamic creative to drive action—not just awareness. Linear TV continued to lose share as streaming-first plans became the default.

DirecTV Elect uses AI to analyze millions of signals from Large Language Model (LLM) responses, news, social media, donation patterns and recent voting behaviors to help political campaigns know where to focus, what to say, and ultimately, who to reach via CTV.

Roku (39%) and Amazon (30%) control 69% of CTV device market share, locking advertisers into their ecosystems. 

(Source: eMarketer)

Search Interest: 

Searches for “CTV advertising,” “connected TV ads,” and “streaming TV advertising” showed stronger relative interest in the U.S., Canada, and Australia—markets with the highest streaming penetration.

Consumer Reaction: 

Consumers accepted ads as the trade-off for streaming, but attention was fragile. Shorter, higher-quality, story-driven ads performed better. Repetition and low-effort repurposing did not.

What is Clear: CTV delivered TV-level reach with digital-level targeting—something uniquely powerful in the U.S. market.