September 23, 2025With the average consumer requiring 56 branded touchpoints before making a purchase, connected TV (CTV) has emerged as one of the most effective ways to bridge those touchpoints across channels. Once considered a top-of-funnel tool for building brand awareness, CTV has quickly evolved into a high-performing, full-funnel channel with better targeting, measurement and retargeting capabilities.
Now that the future of CTV has arrived—no longer just an experimental top-of-funnel branding tool—the next step for many marketers has become integrating CTV more intentionally into cross-channel campaigns, using it to support every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to consideration to purchase and beyond.
Brand Building Through Broader Reach
CTV’s early reputation as a brand awareness tool wasn’t wrong, but I see it as just the beginning. Its ability to deliver high-impact, full-screen, often unskippable ads gives brands the real estate and time to tell compelling stories and create lasting impressions. As consumers spend more time on niche or fragmented platforms, it’s becoming harder to achieve mass reach, making CTV a strategic avenue that offers it at scale.
These immersive ad experiences capture more attention than typical desktop or mobile placements. Viewers spend an average of 9.7 seconds per CTV ad, which is significantly longer than the average time spent on standard digital formats. That attention pays off: CTV campaigns have shown a 25% lift in both brand awareness and brand recall.
Essentially, CTV helps enable an increase in attention, which is the currency in our digital economy. But just because CTV excels at building familiarity doesn’t mean its role ends there.
How CTV Guides The Middle Of The Funnel
When expanding your CTV strategy, it's important to go beyond passive storytelling. Your mid-funnel strategy should leverage CTV’s interactive capabilities to drive engagement and decision making. Dynamic elements, such as QR codes or one-click email integrations, help bridge the gap between the TV screen and mobile devices, encouraging users to take action in the moment.
Whether the goal is to drive traffic to product pages, build an email list or promote limited-time offers, CTV is uniquely positioned to support these objectives. And with real-time optimization capabilities, marketers can adjust creative, targeting or frequency mid-campaign to boost efficiency and relevance.
Closing The Loop With Bottom-Funnel CTV
The idea that CTV can’t support direct response or lower-funnel conversions has become outdated. With advancements in cross-device tracking and attribution, brands can retarget users who have seen a CTV ad across multiple channels, such as display, social and email, offering a consistent experience and reinforcing the path to purchase.
Bottom-of-funnel CTV ads often feature longer-form content, personalized messaging or time-sensitive calls to action. They’re especially effective in driving conversions when synced with mobile ads or website visits, taking advantage of the fact that nearly 80% of viewers are on a second device while watching TV.
When using CTV for this approach, segment and personalize creative based on behavior, geography or customer relationship management (CRM) data. This can make it possible to serve different messages to lapsed customers, cart abandoners or high-intent audiences.
CTV Doesn’t Work Alone (And That’s The Point)
CTV is powerful on its own, but it becomes truly transformative when paired with other channels. Many marketers struggle when layering CTV into existing strategies due to three main challenges: inconsistent messaging, lack of unified measurement and overexposure.
One best practice is aligning creative across teams so that CTV introduces a narrative, while search, native or email follow through with deeper product education or incentives. It’s especially impactful in orchestrated full-funnel strategies. A viewer might first see a CTV ad introducing the brand, later receive a follow-up display ad with product specs and finally convert after clicking on a timely email offer. This ensures that each touchpoint feels like part of the same story, which is the kind of connected experience modern consumers expect.
Another best practice is setting cross-channel frequency caps to avoid ad fatigue—one of the biggest risks in multi-channel campaigns. Alongside this, marketers should create a shared measurement framework that looks at CTV results in the context of the entire campaign, not as a silo. Even small steps, such as centralizing reporting dashboards or scheduling regular cross-team syncs, can reduce ad spend and strengthen overall performance.
Breakthroughs Fueling CTV Adoption
What may have previously held marketers back from adopting CTV is being resolved. Advancements in attribution models, data integration and analytics tools now offer clear insights into how CTV influences consumer behavior from site visits to conversions.
Additionally, brands can optimize CTV campaigns in real time, allowing for adjustments to creative, targeting and frequency to maximize performance and budget efficiency. The rise of co-viewing adds another advantage, with 69% of CTV and OTT advertisers recognizing its value. This similarity makes CTV and OTT easier to plan, measure and evaluate alongside linear TV buys.
The rapid advancement of generative AI tools has also lowered the barriers of cost, speed and production for digital video creation. While not yet eliminating the need for human creativity, these tools are enabling a new era of high-quality, scalable video content to fuel CTV adoption.
As consumers demand greater privacy, marketers are turning to channels that prioritize first-party data and consent-based targeting to meet expectations and maintain trust. CTV’s ability to support behavioral and interest-based targeting—without relying on third-party cookies—positions it as a privacy-smart option for the future.
What Happens Next?
As streaming and on-demand viewing become the norm, I believe CTV’s prominence will only grow. The brands that succeed with CTV will be the ones using it strategically, optimizing its role across the full funnel and orchestrating it with their broader media plans.
The future of CTV isn’t coming; it’s already here. What happens next is up to marketers: Will they continue to treat it as a siloed awareness play, or will they harness its full-funnel potential to drive measurable business growth?
