CTV Advertising 2026: The State of Connected TV and What Publishers Need to Know

US advertisers will spend between $29 billion and $38 billion on connected TV in 2026, depending on whose forecast you read: IAB puts it at $29.3 billion, up 11%, and EMARKETER at $37.95 billion, up 14.5%. For an independent publisher, the size of the market matters less than what buyers check before they bid: who is allowed to sell your inventory, whether impressions can be verified, whether the request carries consented identity, and whether viewers stay through the breaks. This guide turns what the 2025 and 2026 data shows into six steps you can act on, with a checklist at the end.

1. Make your supply path easy to trust

Buyers want to see who sells your inventory and how many companies it passes through before it reaches them. Three free IAB Tech Lab standards let you prove it:

• app-ads.txt. Publish the list of ad systems authorized to sell your inventory on the developer website named in your app store listings. If a platform such as Roku or Samsung sells ad slots in your app, declare it with the INVENTORYPARTNERDOMAIN directive, added in 2021 (IAB Tech Lab). Our ads.txt validator checks the file, and the ads.txt and app-ads.txt guide explains each field.
• sellers.json. Each SSP publishes who it sells for and marks each seller as the publisher or an intermediary (IAB Tech Lab). Check that your entries are correct with every SSP you use.
• The SupplyChain object (schain). Each bid request lists every company that sold or resold the impression, and complete=1 means the chain traces all the way back to you. It is a core field in OpenRTB 2.6.

Fees along that chain are real, but smaller than often claimed. In the ANA's programmatic benchmark for Q3 2025, which analysed log-level data from 21 advertisers, CTV transaction costs had a median of 21%, and the median share of spend reaching sellers was 79% (ANA benchmark). The practical goal is a short, visible path: a small number of SSPs with direct relationships to the buyers you want, rather than resale through chains of intermediaries.

2. Make your impressions measurable

Verification vendors now hold Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for CTV: DoubleVerify for viewability since April 2024, and IAS and Pixalate for invalid traffic (DoubleVerify, IAS, Pixalate). Oracle's Moat, once a fixture of these lists, shut down on 30 September 2024 (Oracle).

Measurement support is uneven across TV platforms, so plan it one platform at a time:

• Open Measurement. IAB Tech Lab's OM SDK covers tvOS and Android TV (since 2022) and Samsung Tizen and LG webOS (since May 2024). Roku is not on its list (IAB Tech Lab).
• VAST versions. VAST 4.3, published in December 2022, is the current specification, but support still varies by buyer. Amazon's DSP only began accepting VAST 4 on third-party supply in September 2026, and Amazon's own inventory, including Fire TV, still takes VAST 2 and 3 (Amazon Ads). Serve the version each demand path accepts, and test your tags with our VAST tag validator.

3. Pass identity signals, with consent

Every major TV platform exposes a device advertising ID: RIDA on Roku, the Advertising ID on Fire TV, TIFA on Samsung, the IDFA on Apple TV (behind App Tracking Transparency) and the Google advertising ID on Android TV. LG is the exception: its LGUDID is a device ID that needs the viewer's consent, not a resettable advertising ID. Pass the platform advertising ID only when consent, applicable law and platform policy allow it, and always pass the applicable privacy signals, such as the limit-ad-tracking flag. Do not substitute a persistent device ID when the advertising ID is unavailable. Our consent guide covers each platform's rules.

Shared identity on TV is consolidating. The Trade Desk still administers Unified ID 2.0, which LG Ad Solutions adopted in May 2024 and Roku in August 2024; its CTV integration guide offers SDKs for tvOS and Android TV, with server-side integration everywhere else (UID2). LiveRamp, which runs RampID, agreed in May 2026 to be acquired by Publicis, with the deal expected to close by the end of 2026 (announcement). Implement a shared ID when the buyers you want require one, and treat any promised CPM uplift with caution until you have measured it against your own yield.

4. Set an ad load viewers will sit through

There is no industry standard for CTV ad load, but the recent data points in one direction:

• Ampere Analysis counted more than 9 ad minutes an hour on Paramount+, 8.2 on Hulu and 7.5 on Disney+ in August 2026, against 2.6 on Prime Video and 2.4 on Netflix, according to its data as reported by MediaPost.
• In a Wurl study of 28 FAST channels, ad breaks took up 6 to 12 minutes an hour but accounted for 20% to 40% of viewer exits, with about 4% of viewers leaving for each minute a break ran (Wurl).
• In a Magnite survey of more than 800 US adults, published in August 2026, 79% said they were open to the same or more advertising per hour in live streams as in on-demand viewing (Magnite).

Treat 7 to 9 ad minutes an hour, roughly the range of Disney+, Hulu and Paramount+, as an editorial starting point rather than a benchmark: Netflix and Prime Video run under 3. Keep individual breaks short, and track exits per break in your analytics before you add more.

5. Describe your content the way buyers filter it

Tag your programming with IAB Tech Lab's Content Taxonomy 3.1, the current version, published in December 2024 (IAB Tech Lab), so buyers' category and brand-safety filters can find it.

New formats are being standardised as well. IAB Tech Lab's CTV Ad Portfolio, finalised in July 2026, defines pause, menu, screensaver, in-scene, squeezeback and overlay ads (IAB Tech Lab). If your player can support formats such as pause ads, they are inventory that sits outside the ad break altogether.

6. Choose your selling mix

How inventory is sold changes what it earns. In the ANA's 2024 benchmark, advertisers paid a $12.90 CPM on average for programmatic CTV: $15.00 in private marketplaces and $5.54 in the open auction (ANA 2024 benchmark). By Q3 2025 the overall CTV average had risen to $16.91 (ANA Q3 2025 benchmark). These are prices advertisers paid, so publishers net less after fees; for more ranges, see our CTV CPM benchmarks.

Private marketplaces carried a clear premium over the open auction in that data. Prioritise private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals with the SSPs whose CTV buyers you want, and let the open auction fill the rest. CTV is now central to the largest SSPs: in Q2 2026 it made up 51% of Magnite's contribution ex-TAC, up 36% year on year (Magnite), and about a fifth of PubMatic's revenue, up 13% (PubMatic).

Your 2026 CTV checklist

1. Publish app-ads.txt on your developer domain, declare any platform that sells your slots with INVENTORYPARTNERDOMAIN, and check your sellers.json entries.
2. Keep the supply path short, and make sure bid requests carry a complete SupplyChain object.
3. Plan measurement per platform: the OM SDK where it exists, and the VAST version each demand path accepts.
4. Send the advertising ID only where consent, law and platform policy allow it, and the privacy signals on every request.
5. Start at or below 7 to 9 ad minutes an hour, an editorial starting point, and track exits per break.
6. Tag content with IAB Content Taxonomy 3.1.
7. Favour private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals over the open auction.

The bottom line

CTV rewards publishers whose inventory is easy to buy: a transparent supply path, measurable impressions, consented identity and an ad load viewers tolerate. OTTEngine's players request pre-roll and mid-roll ads from your VAST ad tags, through the Roku Advertising Framework on Roku, and fill in device and content details on every ad request. Start a free trial to set up ads with your own VAST tags.

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