CTV ad spend lags viewership growth despite rising engagement

Innovid has released its 2025 CTV Advertising Insights Report, revealing significant trends and opportunities in the connected television (CTV) advertising sector.

The report, based on analysis of hundreds of billions of video ad impressions served throughout 2024, examines current CTV viewing behaviour, advertiser spending, campaign reach, and the impact of interactive ad formats.

The findings highlight a growing gap between viewership and spending in the CTV marketplace. While consumer engagement with CTV platforms continues to increase, advertising investment has not kept pace at the same rate. According to Innovid's data, CTV ad impressions increased by 18% year-over-year, yet brands allocated only 7.4% of their overall media budget to CTV in 2024.

Among U.S. households, the average CTV campaign reached just 19.64% of Innovid's addressable base of more than 95 million households, with an average frequency of 7.09 exposures per campaign. This finding points to what Innovid describes as a "major opportunity for advertisers to expand their reach and improve efficiency."

The report also found that as the size of CTV campaigns grows, there is an increased risk of ad oversaturation. While the average campaign frequency remained at seven, high-investment campaigns that delivered more than 200 million impressions recorded a frequency of ten or more.

Innovid indicates that recent technological advances allow advertisers to better manage frequency by diverting spend away from households that have been overexposed to ads and toward new, untapped audiences, resulting in less waste and greater campaign performance.

As for engagement, interactive CTV ad formats—such as product galleries, overlays, and QR codes—were shown to boost viewer interaction. The report states that these formats elicit an average of 71 seconds more viewer engagement per ad when compared with standard pre-roll advertisements.

Moreover, QR code utilisation has more than tripled year-over-year, suggesting both advertisers and viewers are increasingly receptive to interactive and shoppable content formats.

These shifts come as live sports and high-interest content, previously hosted primarily on linear television, are increasingly streamed through CTV channels, supporting broader adoption and audience migration to digital environments.

"With the rise of live-streamed events and shoppable formats, CTV has reached a new era of scale and sophistication. The opportunity is massive – and it's here now. Advertisers have powerful tools at their fingertips: smarter frequency control, immersive interactivity, and real-time optimisation. Publishers can also tap into this momentum to prove the value of their inventory through better outcomes and viewing experiences. This is a definite moment for TV," Jackie Vanover, Senior Vice President of Measurement at Innovid, commented on the findings.

The report's release follows the 2025 merger between Innovid and Flashtalking, which aimed to provide greater transparency and scale across CTV, digital, linear, and social media channels, in collaboration with Mediaocean's omnichannel planning and ad infrastructure.

Innovid's annual CTV Advertising Insights Report serves as a benchmark for advertisers and platforms seeking to understand shifts in video ad performance and to identify strategies for greater efficiency, audience reach, and viewer engagement within the rapidly evolving CTV space.