TV viewership has changed more in the past decade than in the last thirty years combined. While linear TV still boasts massive audiences, streaming platforms are rapidly gaining ground, changing the dynamics of how content is consumed and how brands reach their audiences.
TV Viewership Trends
According to Nielsen, streaming now accounts for approximately 38.4% of total TV usage in the United States, with services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ leading the charge. Despite this growth, linear TV’s presence remains strong, making up 51.3% of TV usage thanks to live events and sports.
Plus, while there are more cord-cutters than ever, most viewers continue to use linear. In fact, 70% of households use streaming services in combination with cable TV. If consumers can’t seem to choose one or the other, why should advertisers?
The Power of Linear TV
Linear TV remains one of the most prestigious marketing channels available, drawing large and engaged audiences, especially during live events. An analysis by WARC found that the most effective marketing campaigns use TV as the lead medium. And a study by Thinkbox found that linear’s signaling power causes people to perceive brands advertising on TV as more financially strong, high quality, and popular.
There’s good reason for this.
Since the first TV commercial aired in 1941, the channel’s mass reach and visibility have made it an excellent platform for brands to build awareness and trust. Today, those benefits are as real as ever—and achievable at much lower CPMs compared to CTV.
The Advantages of Connected TV
On the other hand, Connected TV advertising provides advanced targeting capabilities beyond what traditional TV offers—while maintaining the prestige of showing up on the biggest screen in people’s homes. Brands can deliver personalized ads based on viewers' interests, online behavior, and viewing habits. This ensures ads reach relevant audiences, boosting engagement and conversions.
Plus, CTV allows for retargeting, so brands can follow up with viewers who interacted with their website or previously purchased from them, ensuring a cohesive brand experience across multiple touchpoints.
Benefits of Using Both Linear and CTV
So how do you access the benefits of linear and CTV advertising? Include both types of TV in your campaign, making the most of each of their strengths and enhancing overall campaign effectiveness.
1. Reach your audience wherever they watch.
Combining CTV and linear TV advertising means you can get in front of your audience regardless of how they’re watching TV. Best of all, you can reach your audience wherever it’s more cost-effective to do so. Sometimes, new streaming advertisers will pay steep targeting fees to reach certain audiences through CTV when those same audiences are reachable for less on linear. When advertising on both, you’ll gain the ability to decide which audiences to target through each form of TV.
2. Reinforce brand messaging.
Keeping your campaign consistent across both traditional TV and CTV only helps with building recognition and trust. When viewers see the same brand messaging repeated, it reinforces the brand's identity and benefits. This consistency ensures that whether the audience is watching live sports on cable or binge-watching a series on their favorite streaming service, they view a cohesive message that strengthens brand recall and loyalty.
3. Tap into incremental reach.
Just because many households still watch cable, doesn’t mean everyone does. Younger demographics especially spend more time with streaming compared to older age groups. So if you really want to reach all potential customers, using both linear and CTV is important.
A report by Comcast found that 57% of reach achieved from streaming is incremental beyond a linear campaign. This means complementing an established linear TV campaign with CTV does help brands get in front of fresh audiences. According to the report, campaigns achieve the greatest reach when 10-40% of the TV budget is dedicated to streaming and the rest goes to linear. When more than 40% of budget is dedicated to streaming, campaigns tend to run into frequency challenges and begin sacrificing reach.
Challenges of Integrated TV Advertising
However, managing campaigns across both forms of TV comes with challenges, including:
1. Frequency management becomes a must.
Overexposure to the same ad can lead to viewer fatigue and inefficiency. In fact, CTV viewers already cite seeing the same ad too often as their top problem with the channel. And frequency becomes even harder to manage when using both linear and CTV.
The solution is careful planning and monitoring. Balance ad frequency across linear and CTV to avoid overwhelming your audience. Often, this will come down to making sure your reach on streaming truly is incremental.
2. Measurement practices are inconsistent.
Accurate TV measurement isn’t easy for any advertiser. But trying to evaluate linear and CTV together only makes it harder. Linear TV measures impressions by person, while CTV measures by household. This disparity makes it difficult to compare the performance of campaigns across both formats directly. It’s apples and oranges.
At Marketing Architects, we developed our own reach and frequency model, TruReach, to better understand and optimize campaigns across both linear and CTV. This helps ensure brands achieve truly incremental reach without excessive overlap and clarifies the impact of both types of TV.
Find a Partner that Buys Both
Despite these challenges, getting the best of both worlds isn’t a pipe dream. To access the benefits of using linear and CTV together (while sidestepping the challenges), work with the same partner for your linear and CTV campaigns.
A single TV partner with an understanding of all forms of TV will be better equipped to manage frequency and provide integrated analysis and insights—making your campaigns even more effective.
Learn more about how Marketing Architects buys both linear and streaming TV with our media-buying AI, Annika.
Source: marketingarchitects.com
