Most brands have been grading CTV on a curve that was never designed for it. Last-click attribution doesn't capture a viewer who sees an ad Tuesday night and converts through paid search Thursday morning. So CTV looks like it's underperforming, budgets stay flat, and the channel gets stuck in "awareness only" purgatory where nobody has to prove anything.

That framing is now outdated, and brands that haven't updated their thinking are leaving real revenue on the table.

Why Marketers Have Been Slow to Commit

Digiday recently polled 125 brand and agency marketers for their latest CMO Strategies report, and the main headaches with ad-supported streaming were exactly what you'd expect: we can't measure it properly, it's too expensive, and we don't have enough budget. Sound familiar? Those were the same gripes last year. But if you look closer, a real transformation is happening. The full report is available here: Digiday's latest CMO Strategies report.

The Infrastructure Finally Caught Up

Suddenly, the tools are here. We're seeing clean room solutions that allow brands to follow a person from a streaming ad right up to the moment they make a purchase. Netflix is experimenting with conversion APIs. Both Amazon and Google have opened up their clean room services. Plus, retail media partnerships are closing the loop, directly linking ad exposure to sales. The measurement infrastructure brands have asked for has mostly arrived.

The issue is that many brands are still using old report cards.

Two Measurement Traps Holding Brands Back

Today, CTV measurement is usually in one of two camps:

• The Last-Click Crowd: They judge everything on last-click ROAS. Since CTV rarely works like that, it always looks like it's underperforming.

• The "Pure Awareness" Crowd: They use CTV just to build awareness, with zero accountability. This strategy is fine... until the person holding the budget asks, "What are we actually getting for this?"

Both of these approaches totally miss the point. Digiday's findings confirm it: most marketers are still focused on basic metrics like impressions and watch time. These are okay for general direction, sure. But they don't answer the only question that truly matters: Is CTV actually driving new, incremental revenue?

What the Models Are Actually Showing

From what we're seeing across our client base at Direct Agents, the answer is pretty clearly yes. CTV has become one of the most valuable channels in the media mix, and not just for awareness. When we run our MMM models through KanopyAI, CTV consistently shows up as a driver of attributed revenue that other channels aren't capturing on their own. It pulls double duty: building top-of-funnel reach in premium environments while contributing measurable lift further down the funnel. That's not theoretical. It's what the models are showing us, repeatedly, across different verticals and spend levels.

The catch is you need the measurement framework to actually see it. Last-click will never give CTV credit for the customer who watched an ad Tuesday night and converted through paid search Thursday morning. The right MMM will.

A Narrowing Window for Favorable Inventory

The timing matters too. CTV CPMs have been falling as the market has fragmented across 11 or 12 major ad-supported platforms. That's been a great deal for advertisers. But with Disney+ and Hulu merging, Paramount+ and Max likely combining, the consolidation wave is going to stabilize pricing. The window where you can secure premium streaming inventory at favorable rates is probably narrowing.

Make the Case Internally, Then Scale

Brands that have their measurement sorted can take advantage of that window strategically. They can prove the lift, justify the spend internally, and scale into CTV with confidence while the economics are still working in their favor. We now have the tools to hold it accountable, and the results are consistently strong. If you're a brand using the right framework, you'll see that CTV is an essential channel that deserves a consistent budget.