Welcome to part two of our Connected TV (CTV) 2026 predictions series. Our CTV Working Group’s predictions spotlight both the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of CTV, and to dive deeper we’ve split this content into a mini-series. Across the week, we’re sharing perspectives from Working Group members to build a broader picture of where CTV is headed and what needs to happen next.
Today, we continue the conversation with insights from the next set of voices in the Working Group.
Thank you to the following contributors for sharing their expertise in this instalment:
Nick Welch, Senior Director, Programmatic & Publishers, Integral Ad Science
Antonia Faulkner, Senior Director Corporate Communications Ads Marketing, Analytics & Insights EMEA, Samsung Ads
Max Deyerl, Manager Product Innovator, Virtual Minds
Plus, don't forget. If CTV is on your radar for the new year, now is the perfect time to get involved. You can explore more of our work on our Knowledge Hub and reach out to Marie-Clare Puffett at puffett [at] iabeurope.eu to learn how you can participate, contribute, and share your expertise in the Working Group.
Nick - "As audiences transition from linear TV to CTV, advertisers are increasingly focused on leveraging its advanced targeting and measurable outcomes. To maximise ROI, it’s crucial to accurately measure and optimise campaigns, ensuring ads are delivered on real CTV devices, within brand-safe apps, and in the right locations, with transparent reporting. However, CTV advertising faces ongoing challenges: viewability issues can arise when impressions are served on unintended devices or when the television is off, and rapid growth in CTV inventory and spend also brings increased risks of fraud, including device and app spoofing. These can lead to greater IVT fail rates, which means more waste for advertisers and revenue being diverted away from premium CTV publishers. Given that most inventory is currently purchased at the app level, transparency is also more important than ever: advertisers need clear insight into where and alongside what content their ads appear to safeguard their brand and budgets, and drive meaningful results."
Antonia - "Increased fragmentation is a major challenge. With more content available across more streaming TV platforms, the battle for eyeballs is immense. One specific answer to this fragmentation is the Smart TV home screen, which is where viewers start their TV journey. Samsung Ads Europe, in partnership with MTM research, shows that viewers visit the CTV home screen more than five times per session on average, searching for what to watch or play next. Advertisers can reach these viewers on the Samsung TV home screen with high-impact immersive native formats from the moment they switch on their TVs, and again as they navigate back to the home screen to switch between content."
Max - "Viewers are consuming CTV across dozens of apps, devices, and OS environments, each with its own data policies and ad-tech integrations which means the market remains highly fragmented, additionally due to different booking offerings and models, technologies and “walled gardens” created by some streaming providers. This makes it difficult to implement unified standards for booking and measurement as well as an integrated campaign management and creative delivery.
In terms of opportunities, fragmentation also fuels innovation: more premium inventory, more retail and commerce integrations, richer identity signals, and a clearer path toward outcome-based buying. Further, tech players are well-positioned to consolidate reach across providers by building data-driven cross-platform solutions. At the same time, alliances among European broadcasters and/or saleshouses are gaining strength and positioning as a counterbalance to big platform players by providing more transparency, privacy and adherence to European standards. The industry is moving towards more cooperation, integration, and automation."
Max - "AI will play a transformative role in the future of connected TV and will be the foundational across the entire CTV value chain:
AI won’t just enhance CTV – it will define the competitive advantage of every publisher, platform, and advertiser. Furthermore, AI will help unify the fragmented (C)TV ecosystem and drive innovation. At the same time, however, the industry must also address unresolved and new questions, such as data protection and transparency."
Antonia - "It will be pivotal, making advertising more streamlined, efficient and intelligent. It will also enable advertising platforms to refine their targeting capabilities, by even better leveraging a range of data sets to match the right ad with the right audience at the right time. But we also
believe firmly in the human element - that the best application of AI is when it’s used in conjunction with human intuition to guide its outputs."
Antonia - "Joint Industry Committees, a collection of media agencies and publishers focused on defining common standards for cross-platform video measurement, including CTV, are key to making this a reality and we are currently engaged with JICs across Europe to help find better measurement for CTV. For instance, we are the first CTV partner to join the UK Origin project, which seeks to integrate CTV into cross-media measurement efforts. What’s more, we offer advertisers our own Insights Planner tool, combining our own ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) first- party data with third-party sources for more effective, streamlined campaign planning."
Nick - "By partnering with companies like IAS (and Publica by IAS), CTV publishers can deliver the transparency advertisers are asking for by using measurement tags and bid stream data to show exactly which content ads appear within. As more publishers share content metadata, the CTV ecosystem becomes more transparent and enables smarter optimisations, better campaign performance, and clearer insights into reach and outcomes. Additionally, the OM SDK for CTV provides a standardised framework for viewability measurement, allowing buyers to distinguish between active and wasted impressions. Broader OM SDK adoption will further enhance transparency, targeting, and engagement across programmatic CTV buying."
Max - "Basically, we need three things, that must be accepted and adopted by all stakeholders, including broadcasters, streaming providers, tech platforms, and advertisers:
Standardisation won’t come from one company or one side alone – it will come from cross-industry coalitions combining broadcasters, OEMs, tech providers, and measurement companies operating under the same framework."
Max - 2026 will be the year CTV becomes a full-funnel medium – performance will no longer be an edge case. As retail media networks integrate with CTV inventory, as shoppable formats mature, and as AI improves household-level attribution, CTV will prove its ability to drive incremental conversions, not just incremental reach. That said, CTV’s strongest advantage remains premium content at scale. It won’t stop being an awareness channel; it will simply add measurable lower-funnel value and start competing directly with digital performance budgets.
Nick - "Top of my wish list for Connected TV in Europe in 2026 is greater transparency, specifically providing advertisers with actionable media quality signals directly linked to campaign outcomes. As device misrepresentation and fraud (like spoofing and bots) increase, really only broadcasters who embrace transparent programmatic practices with trusted partners will thrive. Buyers need clear insights into where their ads are actually displayed, distinguishing true TV impressions from those on mobile or desktop, so they aren’t paying TV rates for non-TV inventory. This level of transparency, connected to meaningful outcomes data, is essential for advancing trust, accountability, and campaign effectiveness in CTV."
Antonia - "My wish is that advertiser budgets continue to follow the eyeballs. Linear TV’s share of TV consumption is falling year-on-year, so we know the audience is there on CTV. Added to that, the targeting capabilities on CTV just keep getting better and more interesting for advertisers. In terms of ad formats, too, CTV is leading the way. Our own GameBreaks ad unit reinvents the traditional ad as a mini-game or trivia quiz, inviting everyone exposed to the ad to join in the fun and engage with the brand. And it works - a recent European campaign for Domino’s delivered an engagement rate of 3.84%, and a 31% uplift in brand consideration."
Max - "For me, three priorities stand out:
But, above all, I would like to see the silos broken down and more convergent offerings of CTV and linear TV. Both genres offer significant advantages that can be combined to achieve maximum impact for advertisers and their brands. Linear TV still has a massive reach, while CTV has incremental reach that can be targeted pointedly. To achieve this, all relevant market players must find standards and use technology, alliances and uniform marketing models to lay the base for meeting the needs of the demand side."
