Performance marketing on streaming TV in 2025

Channels like digital, mobile, and social now command 70-80% of overall ad budgets, which have traditionally been driven by performance marketing campaigns. While viewer engagement on CTV is growing, ad investment is still lagging relative to its viewership, leading to unsold inventory and fierce competition for demand.

However, with highly engaging ad units and under-valued ad impressions, CTV is a ‘blue sky’ opportunity for performance marketing — a media channel where creativity, expertise, and innovation can unlock rapid growth.

While there’s still a long way to go before streaming TV is a mature performance marketing ecosystem, this guide explores the challenges and opportunities of performance marketing on streaming TV, the unique advantages of Wurl, and key strategies for advertisers looking to maximize return on ad spend (ROAS) in 2025.

The rise of performance marketing on streaming TV

Historically, TV advertising has been positioned as a brand-building medium. However, CTV’s internet connectivity, combined with advancements in data, AI-driven targeting, and interactive ad formats are starting to unlock the potential of CTV to be a truly results-driven channel.

The viewers are there, for marketers who are willing to reach out to them. Recent data from Wurl’s CTV Trends Report March 2025 underscores this momentum. Average daily hours of viewing (HOV) are holding strong, with Q1 2025 up 3.13% quarter over quarter. Meanwhile, average session lengths grew 7.24% from Q3 to Q4 2024.

With audiences waiting to be tapped and the technology for performance now coming to maturity, how can you make the most of this opportunity?

Key strategies for performance marketing on CTV

By approaching streaming TV with the right strategies, advertisers can enhance performance while maintaining efficiency. Below are five key tactics shaping the future of CTV advertising.

First, choose the right approach based on your KPIs

With attribution models for every marketing intent, advertisers can track the KPIs that matter to them. Whether that is digital activity like search uplift, online conversions, app installs, or even offline sales, it can all be directly tied back to CTV campaigns. Your strategy should depend on your specific goals.

• If your KPIs are digital-first (like app installs, online purchases, or free trial starts), AI-powered feedback loops that optimize based on real-time ROAS are ideal.
  
  For brands focused on direct response, AI-powered CTV advertising solutions like AppDiscovery optimize campaigns in real time. These solutions ensure that bids, creative rotation, and audience targeting are continuously refined for peak performance. By leveraging real-time data, advertisers can allocate budgets toward more performant opportunities, minimizing waste and improving return on ad spend (ROAS).

• If your KPIs are offline (such as in-store visits or brand favorability), you may not have access to the digital signals that can power AI-automated optimization models to make instant optimizations. In this case, you can still run programmatic CTV campaigns based on your selected targeting criteria. When combined with performance-oriented measurement, these campaigns can deliver meaningful, provable impact — even if it takes a little bit more work than tying a webshop purchase directly to an impression.

When dipping into programmatic performance marketing on CTV, focus on:

Targeting the right person at the right time

For best performance on streaming TV, advertisers should layer contextual targeting data over their existing targeting criteria. Ads delivered at the right time to the right person are proven to improve performance. As an example, Wurl’s BrandDiscovery utilizes AI-powered scene analysis to align ads with relevant content, ensuring a more natural and engaging viewer experience. BrandDiscovery campaigns have been proven to drive results from brand lift, all the way down the purchase funnel to in-store sales.

Optimizing supply path efficiency (SPO)

Efficiency in ad buying is critical to maximizing CTV campaign performance. For instance, Wurl provides direct publisher integrations and curated pre-bid packages that enable advertisers to streamline the supply path, reducing expensive intermediaries and improving transparency. This approach ensures that ad spend is directed toward quality inventory, cutting down on wasted impressions, unnecessary fees, and driving higher campaign efficiency.

What every marketer needs to do:

Focus on cross-platform measurement & attribution

CTV performance marketing requires robust attribution models. By integrating attribution data into your streaming marketing analytics, advertisers can measure:

• Incremental lift in brand awareness and conversions.
• Cross-device customer journeys from CTV to mobile or web.
• ROAS optimization based on real-time performance data.

Since conversions for most marketers will take place either digitally or offline, in order to fairly attribute the impact of CTV, marketers will need to look beyond last-touch attribution, which can often over-emphasize digital. Luckily, there are several attribution and marketing effectiveness models that can highlight the channels that are really driving performance. For instance, by using multi-touch attribution models — such as W-shaped, time-decay, or weighted — marketers can identify early touchpoints that drove awareness or shaped conversion. Combined with tactics such as incrementality testing or econometric systems like mixed media modeling, data-driven marketers can find the unsung channels that are driving real results.

Create ads with a clear CTA & test new interactive formats

Every CTV ad should guide viewers to a clear next step — whether it’s visiting a site, scanning a QR code, or making a purchase. Make the CTA unmissable: use on-screen text, visual cues, and voice-over to reinforce the action. Be specific (“Scan to shop now”), not vague (“Learn more”). Test CTA placement, timing, and phrasing to see what drives the highest response.

Interactive ad formats are gaining traction in CTV, allowing viewers to engage directly from their screens. Advertisers can leverage creatives with QR codes or test unique and innovative ad units such as those offered by Transmit. These can provide seamless, engaging, and lower-funnel options that close the loop between interactivity and conversion, turning the TV into a bottom-funnel tool.

Why Wurl is a game-changer for CTV performance marketing

Wurl’s inventory and pre-bid optimization advantage

Wurl powers the monetization and distribution of streaming TV content, providing seamless ad integration across platforms like Roku and LG. Key benefits of working with Wurl include:

• Supply chain optimization: Wurl connects advertisers directly to content owners, optimizing QPS efficiency.
• Pre-bid curation: As the originator of a huge portion of free ad supported content appearing on streaming TV, Wurl enriches and standardizes metadata to improve transparency within the ecosystem.
• Massive reach: Wurl provides access to billions of ad impressions monthly across several hundred million connected TV devices.
• Proven performance lift: Wurl’s innovative ad solutions like scene-level contextual targeting can improve memorability by 40% and conversion rates by 2-3x.

The future of marketing on streaming TV

Wurl’s relationship with AppLovin gives us a template for a previous performance transformation, on mobile, showing the way for a paradigm shift in CTV advertising — one that prioritizes performance, measurable outcomes, and efficiency. As streaming continues to dominate consumer attention, advertisers can no longer afford to overlook CTV as a high-performing, data-driven marketing channel.

By implementing the strategies outlined in this guide, brands can elevate their CTV advertising game, maximize ROAS, and capture the untapped potential of performance marketing in streaming TV.

Discover how Wurl and AppLovin can transform your CTV advertising strategy. Check out our Full-Funnel Guide to marketing on streaming for more information.