Seven in ten connected TV advertisers plan to increase their CTV spending this year by an average of 17%, according to the 2026 CTV/OTT Advertiser Survey released by Advertiser Perceptions and Premion. The survey of 151 decision-makers also found that half of all CTV ad buying is expected to go programmatic in 2026, and nearly nine in ten advertisers agree that CTV increases brand favorability.
The headline number is worth celebrating. But the more revealing data point sits a few pages deeper: fragmentation across providers remains the single biggest barrier to achieving scale, with one-third of advertisers citing challenges related to deduplicated reach, cross-provider planning, and walled gardens.
The money is arriving, the infrastructure to spend it well is not: This is the tension that should keep every ad sales leader up at night. The IAB's 2026 Outlook Study projects CTV ad spend will grow 13.8% this year, outpacing every major channel except social media, while eMarketer estimates the U.S. CTV market will reach approximately $38 billion in 2026 and surpass traditional TV ad spending entirely by 2028.
But spending growth and operational readiness are two different things. The survey reveals that while advertisers are pouring money into CTV, they are simultaneously raising their expectations for what the channel must deliver — simpler activation, better frequency control, clearer measurement, and smarter technology. As Tim Fagan, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer at Tegna, put it in the survey release, advertisers want, "partners that can help them turn premium video into real business results."
The creative bottleneck nobody is sizing correctly: Here is what the industry conversation consistently underweights: every incremental dollar of CTV spend requires a finished video ad. Not a display banner. Not a search keyword. A produced, broadcast-quality commercial.
National brands step in: For the national brands driving the bulk of current CTV spend, this is manageable. They have agencies, production budgets, and existing asset libraries. But the growth story in CTV, and the story that justifies the $38 billion forecast, depends on expanding the buyer base beyond those brands. It depends on the hundreds of thousands of small and mid-market businesses that have built their entire marketing stack on social media and search.
Those advertisers do not necessarily have agencies. They do not have production budgets. Most of them have never created a video ad. And every self-serve CTV platform, every programmatic marketplace, every streaming publisher expanding its ad-supported tier is ultimately limited by the same constraint: you cannot run a CTV campaign without a commercial.
What the 17% growth number means for sellers: The data shows that 25% of increased CTV budgets are coming from overall budget growth, while the remainder is being reallocated from other channels. This means CTV is not just capturing new dollars. It is pulling spend away from channels where creative production is either unnecessary or radically simplified.
The great reallocation: That reallocation creates a specific operational challenge. An advertiser moving $50,000 from paid social to CTV does not just need new inventory access. They need a fundamentally different creative asset that meets broadcast quality standards, runs at standard durations, and carries the brand's visual identity in a format designed for the biggest screen in the house.
The sellers who recognize this and build creative production into their sales process rather than treating it as the advertiser's problem to solve will capture disproportionate share of the money flowing into CTV. The industry has spent the last five years building pipes. The next five will be defined by what flows through them.
