Hello, readers! I’m back in the writer’s corner covering the convergent TV advertising world and delivering today’s CTV dispatch for AdExchanger after a stint at Magnite doing corporate communications. Going forward, I’ll be sharing AdExchanger’s CTV newsletter with Associate Editor Victoria McNally, since the beat is just too big to be a one-woman job.
Returning to the news desk after a year away from CTV beat reporting feels like discovering a time capsule containing the industry’s core dilemmas, priorities and pain points. It’s easy to feel like I never left when so much of the landscape is the same.
Here’s my quick summary of what I missed: The science of frequency capping still eludes the market, and measurement remains a mess as media sellers and trade orgs continue criticizing Nielsen.
But there is one notable change. Believe it or not, I remember getting worthwhile pitches about CTV product and strategy that didn’t mention AI. Nowadays, AI seems deeply embedded into any headline or pitch worth its salt. Especially agentic AI.
Let’s dig deeper into what has and hasn’t changed in CTV Ad Land – and why.
Hitting the right frequency
One of the first articles I read this month was about frequency capping. After checking the time stamp again, I realized the CTV ad industry is just as stumped about frequency capping as it was a year ago. But to its credit, the industry is ramping up efforts to address the age-old frequency problem.
At CES last week, Omnicom Media touted an expanded partnership with Amazon Ads. The partnership will integrate TV viewing data from Roku and audience data from Acxiom alongside Amazon shopper insights within its Omni intelligence platform. Translation: More data from both sides of the purchase funnel will hopefully help identify frequency caps that are beneficial to business goals without bombarding viewers.
Speaking of Amazon, the ecommerce giant has a new pitch deck designed to woo buyers with closed-loop attribution thanks to an unmatched supply of shopper data and TV viewing data. The push comes as marketers face intensifying pressure to justify every media dollar.
Still, buyers aren’t entirely sold on Amazon’s CTV offering. Some buyers feel Amazon lacks in frequency capping capabilities, in part due to reportedly limited visibility into non-Amazon publishers. It’s ironic to see Amazon play nice with agency holdcos seeking interoperability while a lack of visibility beyond Amazon’s owned-and-operated platforms continues to frustrate buyers. Looks like being a walled garden and being good at frequency capping are mutually exclusive.
Still, the lack of TV measurement standardization certainly doesn’t help. Measurement messiness and industry infighting intensified in the year I was away from the reporter’s desk.
Last month, the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) publicly criticized Nielsen’s endorsed Big Data + Panel offering. Despite incorporating more granular data sets as Nielsen expands beyond panel-only ratings, the combined offering is unstable and inconsistent, according to the VAB.
Naturally, Nielsen refutes the accusation. The VAB doesn’t know how to properly conduct a ratings analysis, according to Nielsen. (Ouch.) But the VAB isn’t the only one complaining. Nielsen made headlines in The Wall Street Journal in September after the NFL claimed the currency provider underestimated audiences for the league’s games.
Buyers and sellers don’t have time to wait for the yearslong measurement debate to settle, though. In the meantime, they’re taking measures into their own hands by seeking out new data partnerships and AI capabilities to help fill gaps in their understanding of consumption behavior and campaign performance across platforms.
CTV 🤝 Agentic AI
Speaking of AI, it has taken on a much more meaningful role in CTV advertising compared to just a year ago. Generative AI captivated the industry throughout 2025, but, this year, agentic AI is the top buzzword, if announcements timed to CES are anything to go by.
NBCUniversal, for one, is testing agentic systems with indie agency RPA, Newton Research and FreeWheel to automate campaigns across linear and streaming portfolios, including live sports. Also at CES, programmatic tech companies, including Magnite, PubMatic, Yahoo DSP and Viant, all touted new agentic offerings designed to simplify and improve media workflows.
And AI agents aren’t limited to publishers and programmatic players. Creative tech company Kargo also unveiled a new agentic offering of its own, designed to turn creative into usable ads that fit the specs required by a growing slate of ad formats.
As media sellers search for better ways to automate as much of their workflows as humanly possible (ha), agentic workflows present opportunities to automate tasks that traditional programmatic simply cannot, such as communications between partners and approving creative. Which is why the potential of agentic AI stands to dictate the next phase of CTV advertising’s growth.
If you’re itching to learn more about AI’s role in the future of CTV advertising growth, be sure to snag a ticket to Convergent TV World in New York City on March 5–6.
Have any tips to share? Want to reconnect? Looking for someone who wants to see pictures of your cat being adorable while doing absolutely nothing? Drop me a line at alyssa@adexchanger.com.
