CTV and AI both have momentum but remain stuck in an early adopter phase, with widespread usage still not translating into true mainstream business adoption.
Alex Persky-Stern, CEO of Waymark, explains that the industry is focused too narrowly on efficiency and spectacle, missing AI’s broader role in widening participation and accelerating real CTV use.
He defines the change as moving from do-it-yourself ad managers to done-for-you solutions.
CTV and AI are living in the same moment: high energy, real traction, and just shy of true mainstream adoption. Viewers have already arrived in CTV at scale, yet many advertisers remain hesitant to fully commit. AI tells a similar story, with everyday familiarity outpacing meaningful business integration. 2026 is shaping up to be the moment when AI and CTV stop evolving in parallel and start working together, moving the industry from testing to meaningful, scalable adoption.
That’s the view of Alex Persky-Stern, CEO of Waymark, who has been inside the evolution of CTV since joining the company’s executive ranks in 2017. He believes the industry is focused on the wrong kind of progress, and that AI’s real promise is its ability to help CTV jump the early-adopter gap and finally reach the mainstream.
"The power of AI is to leap the chasm and bring CTV to the mainstream. the great viral ads are cool, but what really excites me is Spectrum launching 15,000 new SMB campaigns because that’s what really changes the market," says Persky-Stern. The core problem, according to Persky-Stern, is what he calls the "early adopter chasm." While CTV viewership is widespread, the market is still early in advertiser adoption, especially beyond large brands porting over their traditional TV strategies.
Mind the chasm: The gap between current participation and true market potential is still enormous, he says. "The local CTV market is around $3 billion right now, and the total estimated market is more like $60 to $100 billion," notes Persky-Stern. "That shows we're just at the point where people are trying it; it's far from mainstream."
Beyond novelty: Leaping that chasm starts with changing what AI is expected to do. Instead of chasing attention or treating it like a novelty, Persky-Stern frames AI as something far more practical and powerful: a way to make CTV usable at scale. "The interesting part isn’t whether one campaign goes viral," he says. "It’s when thousands of advertisers who never would have touched TV before can suddenly run meaningful campaigns."
It's a step away from the high-stakes, single-creative mindset. He urges brands to treat CTV creative with a social-style iteration, launching numerous ad variations for testing and optimization, which could finally help CTV mature into a routine advertising channel.
Go social: "The power is in treating CTV the way you think about social. A social ad is never a huge event, because you make many of them, some fatigue, some outperform, and you just keep iterating. Nobody is writing headlines when one of them misses." notes Persky-Stern. That change in thinking can unlock strategies that were previously impractical at scale, he explains, making high-volume experimentation a reality.
A whole new world: It marks a point where technology can take on the creative role in a more substantive way. "This is not just an improvement of the tools," he says. "Technology is starting to sit at the center of the creative process. That is what enables automation, optimization, and fresher creative that avoids fatigue. Once you think that way, entirely new possibilities open up."
Crossing that threshold will not come from polishing yesterday’s systems. Persky-Stern believes it will come from platforms that rethink advertising entirely through an AI-native lens. "The platforms that keep building version 1.0s will stay stuck in the early adopter phase," concludes Persky-Stern. "The real mainstream will belong to the AI-native platforms, and they are the ones that will become the category winners."
