Where does CTV belong in advertisers’ strategies? We surveyed marketers to find out

TV streaming officially surpassed traditional TV in reach among 18-to-49-year-olds back in 2023. So it’s no surprise that ad spend on CTV continues to rise. A 2026 IAB report projects an expected rise of 11% this year, reaching $29.3 billion.

However, a survey of Marketing Brew readers found a lack of consensus and conflicting viewpoints on the channel. Marketers agree that CTV is growing, with 38% of respondents expecting it to be a larger share of their marketing mix in the next 12 months. But questions remain around the channel and its effectiveness.

To find those answers, we teamed up with Roku. Their platform reached a major milestone in April 2026 when it surpassed 100 million streaming households. So together, we looked at what our survey results reveal about the channel, its challenges, and its capabilities.

Here’s what we found.

Where do CTV budgets come from?

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We found very little consensus on how advertisers allocate CTV budgets.

Nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents said CTV spend comes from the performance budget, 17% said CTV is its own dedicated line item, and just 8% said it comes from the TV/video budget.

How CTV dollars are allocated varies significantly from one advertiser to the next, suggesting views on the channel’s role aren’t yet solidified.

But the biggest barrier to entry for CTV isn’t budgeting confusion; it’s that few have made a compelling case to prioritize it.

Roku Ads Manager, aka the ad platform from Roku, makes it easy for marketers to launch a campaign and start seeing results. Advertisers can spend as little as $500 to get their campaigns up and running on the self-serve platform. And companies don’t need to spend additional money on creative. Roku has tools that let you upload preexisting social video creative and repurpose it for CTV.

The ad formats themselves also make a pretty clear case. Roku’s interactive Action Ads allow viewers to convert using their remotes. These ads deliver a +47% increase in purchase intent and a +31% increase in brand awareness compared to standard video ads.

Is CTV a performance or branding channel?

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Marketers might be funding CTV like a performance channel, but they describe it as a brand channel.

42% of respondents view CTV as a brand channel, while 33% see it as a hybrid of brand and performance. And despite being part of a performance-focused media mix, only 9% say CTV is primarily a performance channel.

Marketers using Roku Ads Manager don’t have to choose between brand and performance. You can get the rigor and accountability expected of performance while fulfilling the brand objectives long associated with TV.

How is this possible? It mainly comes down to measurement tools. Roku’s Pixel and Conversions API allows marketers to track meaningful events, understand how streaming campaigns influence behavior, and use those metrics to improve performance over time.

Unlike TV advertising that measures effectiveness chiefly through reach and household impressions, CTV measurement looks much more like search and social. Tracking deeper insights like web visits and conversions is possible (and actually simple) with Roku.

How’s the reporting, really?

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CTV has a bad rap with reporting. But that’s an opportunity.

73% of respondents said clear, transparent reporting that’s tied to business outcomes would grow their confidence in CTV.

What marketer doesn’t want clear reporting? To make it easy, Roku leverages visualized reporting, pixels, and APIs—all requiring minimal up-front effort.

Roku’s pixels allow marketers to understand which viewers are taking action. From there, Roku can optimize delivery toward the households that are most likely to convert. Meanwhile, the Conversions API lets you share conversion data directly with Roku. That kind of data sharing allows for reduced cookie dependency and deeper insights than pixel-only measurement.

Rounding out those tools is the visualized performance dashboard, which gives a breakdown of ad delivery, reach, and actions taken. So if you want to know how many times your ad was shown, how many unique homes saw your ad, or how many actions your ads drove, you can find it there. You’ll also find interactive charts showing location reports on geographic delivery, impression distribution across genres, and creative insights showing how different ads performed.

Reporting problem? Solved ✔️.