Connected TV advertising is the fastest growing part of the UK television market, and in 2026 it finally became something most brands can buy rather than just read about. Connected TV, or CTV, means ads served through internet connected television sets: the streaming apps of ITV, Channel 4, Sky and 5, the ad tiers of Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+, YouTube on the living room screen, and the home screens of smart TVs themselves.
This report sets out what the numbers say about reach and spend, how buying actually works, what you can and cannot measure, where the risks sit, and what we would do with a CTV budget next quarter. It is written for marketing leaders who want the big screen without the old TV price tag, and it builds on our earlier report asking whether TV advertising is still worth it. We have not repeated that report's viewing and profitability data here.
The short version
- The audience is already there. Seven in ten UK homes have a connected TV and weekly reach of broadcaster video on demand rose from 38% in 2022 to 46% in 2025 (Ofcom).
- The money is following. ITV now earns £540m a year from digital advertising, up from £293m in 2021, and Channel 4 takes 34% of its revenue from digital.
- Access has changed. Universal Ads launched in the UK in June 2026 as a self serve route into ITV, Sky and Channel 4 streaming inventory for small and mid sized businesses, with no minimum spend published.
- How you buy matters more than where. Buyer confidence in where CTV ads actually ran falls from 57% for direct deals to 33% for open exchanges, and fraud on unprotected CTV campaigns is a real cost.
- Measure outcomes, not impressions. Pixels, clean data partnerships and Barb campaign reporting make CTV more accountable than linear TV ever was, but cross platform frequency is still the weak spot.
What is connected TV advertising?
Connected TV advertising is video advertising delivered to a television set through an internet connection rather than through a traditional broadcast signal. The screen is the same one families have always watched; what changes is the pipe. Because each ad is served by software, it can be targeted to a household, capped, sequenced and measured in ways a linear spot cannot.
In practice CTV covers four kinds of inventory in the UK. First, broadcaster video on demand (BVOD): ITVX, Channel 4 streaming, Sky and 5. Second, the ad tiers of subscription streamers: Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. Third, YouTube watched on the TV set, which Barb began measuring for 200 channels in July 2025 (Barb). Fourth, the TV platforms themselves: smart TV makers such as Samsung and LG, and operating systems such as Roku, which sell home screen placements and free ad supported channels.
CTV vs OTT vs BVOD: what is the difference?
The terms are used loosely, so it helps to pin them down. OTT (over the top) describes any video delivered over the internet, on any device, including phones and laptops. CTV is the subset of OTT watched on a television screen. BVOD is the broadcasters' own streaming inventory, which can be watched on a TV set or on a phone. When a sales house quotes "streaming" or "addressable" figures, always ask which screens are included, because a mobile impression and a living room impression are not worth the same to most brands.
That distinction matters because the TV set still dominates home viewing. Ofcom reports that 88% of all in home video viewing in 2025 happened on TV sets (Ofcom Media Nations 2026). For YouTube specifically, Barb found TV sets accounted for 43% of in home YouTube viewing among people aged 16 and over in Q2 2025, ahead of smartphones at 32% (Barb).
How big is connected TV advertising in the UK in 2026?
The cleanest UK signal comes from the advertising expenditure data. The AA/WARC Expenditure Report projected that TV video on demand advertising grew 16.1% in 2025 while total TV fell, and forecast a further 13.8% rise in 2026, "the most growth" of any channel (Advertising Association, January 2026). The last published full year value we could find was £1,332.7m for 2024, up 25.7% (Advertising Association, April 2025). The July 2026 update reports an "addressable" TV line growing 15.5% in Q1 2026 (Radiocentre, citing AA/WARC); the report appears to have changed its label, so we treat those two series as related rather than identical.
IAB UK adds a wider view. UK digital video spend reached £9.3bn in 2025, up 20%, and what it calls TV+ (BVOD, streamer ad tiers, free ad supported channels and YouTube on the TV screen) made up 34% of all video investment (IAB UK). In the first half of 2026 a third of the £5.1bn invested in video went to TV+ (InPublishing, reporting IAB UK).
The broadcasters' own accounts show where that money lands. ITV's digital advertising revenue has almost doubled in four years, and rose another 13% to £268m in the first half of 2026 (ITV interim results). Channel 4 took £346m from digital advertising in 2025, 34% of total revenue, and is targeting half of revenue from digital by 2030 (VideoWeek, Channel 4 annual report).
ITV digital advertising revenue, 2021 to 2025 (£m)
The streamers have moved even faster. Barb's establishment survey shows how quickly ad tiers have become mass reach media in their own right. Netflix's ad tier grew 50% year on year and Disney+'s 68%, while Prime Video moved most of its UK customers onto ads by default, which Barb notes reflects "a different approach to moving homes to its ad tier" (Barb).
UK homes with a streaming ad tier, Q1 2026
Netflix told its first UK upfront in September 2026 that its ad plan now reaches "over 14 million viewers in the UK" on Barb measurement (Netflix), and Amazon says Prime Video averages more than 22 million monthly ad supported viewers in the UK (Amazon Ads, platform data). Globally, Netflix reported 2025 ad revenue of over $1.5bn and expects it to roughly double in 2026 (Netflix Q4 2025 shareholder letter).
The US shows where the UK is heading. CTV ad spend there is forecast to reach $29.3bn in 2026, almost double the 2021 level, according to IAB research with spend estimates from Guideline (IAB, July 2026). The same report notes that social video spend overtook CTV in 2025.
US connected TV ad spend, 2021 to 2026 estimate ($bn)
“Social video ad spend notably overtook CTV in 2025.” IAB, Digital Video 2026: Ad Spend and Strategies
How does connected TV advertising work?
Every CTV ad is a decision made in milliseconds. When a viewer starts a show on ITVX or presses play on Netflix, the app calls an ad server, which checks what campaigns are eligible for that household, applies targeting and frequency rules, and returns the ad. Brands reach that moment through four main routes, and the route you choose shapes your price, your control and your risk.
| Buying route | How it works | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct with the sales house | Insertion order with ITV, Channel 4, Sky, Netflix or Amazon, often with sponsorship or premium formats | Larger brands wanting guaranteed delivery and premium shows | Minimum budgets are set case by case and rarely published |
| Self serve platforms | Universal Ads (ITV, Sky and Channel 4 streaming) and ITV Planet V: set budget, audience and creative yourself | Small and mid sized brands testing TV for the first time | Inventory and targeting are narrower than a full direct deal |
| Programmatic guaranteed and private deals | Fixed price or curated deals bought through a DSP such as DV360, The Trade Desk or Amazon DSP | Brands already buying programmatically who want TV in the same plan | Private does not always mean transparent; check the supply path |
| Open exchange | Real time auction across many CTV apps and devices | Cheap scale | Lowest transparency and highest fraud exposure |
Advertain guidance based on the platform information cited in this report.
The trade off between those routes is not theoretical. In IAB's 2026 survey of US video buyers, high confidence in CTV inventory transparency, meaning knowing the legitimacy, source and placement of where ads ran, peaked at 57% for direct and programmatic guaranteed deals and fell to 33% on the open exchange (IAB). Even private marketplaces, despite the name, scored only 45%.
High confidence in CTV inventory transparency, by buying method
Where can UK brands buy connected TV advertising?
The UK market is more concentrated than the US, which is good news for buyers: a handful of sales houses and platforms cover most of the premium audience. Here is the landscape as it stands in October 2026.
| Platform | How brands buy | Notable formats | Audience figure (source) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ITVX | ITV Media direct, Planet V self serve, Universal Ads | Addressable spots, sponsorship | 17.9m monthly active users, H1 2026 (ITV) |
| Channel 4 streaming | Direct, partner DSPs, Universal Ads | Solus and Lite breaks, retailer data targeting | 1.9bn streaming views in 2025 (Channel 4) |
| Netflix | Direct, programmatic via DV360, Amazon, Yahoo and The Trade Desk | Pause ads, interactive formats | 14m+ UK viewers (Barb, via Netflix) |
| Prime Video | Amazon DSP or Amazon Ads direct | Interactive pause ads, interactive video ads, shoppable | 22m+ monthly ad supported viewers (Amazon) |
| Disney+ | Direct | Standard video ads | 2.8m UK homes on ad tier (Barb) |
| YouTube on TV | Google Ads with TV screen device targeting, YouTube Select | Pause ads, QR codes, shoppable CTV, Masthead | TV sets are 43% of in home YouTube viewing, 16+ (Barb) |
| Roku, Samsung Ads, LG Ad Solutions | Managed service or programmatic partners | Home screen placements, free ad supported channels | No UK audience figures published |
Audience figures are as published by each platform or Barb and use different definitions, so they are not directly comparable.
The most important change for smaller brands came on 23 June 2026, when Comcast's Universal Ads launched in the UK as a self serve platform for small and medium sized businesses to plan, buy and measure campaigns across ITV Media, Sky Media and Channel 4 Sales from one interface. The process is set budget, choose audience, upload creative and launch, with measurement through a first party pixel and the cross broadcaster Lantern panel joining in 2027 (Channel 4 press release). It sits alongside ITV's own Planet V, which has taken £1bn in bookings since 2020 and brought more than 1,100 advertisers new to ITV (ITV).
Connected TV ad formats: beyond the 30 second spot
The standard 15, 20 or 30 second video spot still does most of the work on CTV. But the platforms are competing on formats that use the fact that the screen is connected.
Pause ads
Shown when a viewer pauses, these static or lightly animated units are now offered by YouTube, which rolled pause ads out to all advertisers in September 2024 (MediaPost), by Prime Video as interactive pause ads (Amazon Ads), and by Netflix, which made pause ads available programmatically across partner DSPs from October 2026 (Netflix).
Are CTV ads clickable?
Not with a mouse, but increasingly yes in effect. QR codes, "send to phone" prompts and remote control actions turn a TV ad into a response channel. YouTube launched shoppable CTV in 2025 (Google) and in May 2026 announced that viewers can complete purchases on their TV in two clicks with Google Pay (YouTube). Netflix introduced Send to Phone and Frame Ads in its 2026 US upfront (Netflix).
Ad break design
Broadcasters are also selling cleaner breaks. Channel 4 reported that its Solus format, a single ad in a pre roll break, delivered 73% higher immediate brand recall than a standard break in its own testing (Channel 4, December 2023). Treat platform studies like this as directional, but the principle is sound: fewer ads per break means more attention per ad.
How do you measure connected TV advertising?
CTV is more measurable than linear TV, but less measurable than its sales decks imply. UK measurement now rests on three layers. Barb provides the currency: it has reported Netflix and Prime Video audiences within its Advanced Campaign Hub since 2024, alongside ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky and others, and began reporting TV set viewing of YouTube channels in 2025 (Research Live). ISBA's Origin cross media measurement programme reached general availability in summer 2025 and in August 2026 entered exclusive investment talks with Fifty5Blue (ISBA). And outcome measurement is moving into the sales houses: Lantern, a joint panel from Channel 4, ITV and Sky (Marketing Week), Channel 4's Attribute product, Amazon Marketing Cloud and Netflix's measurement partners.
For most brands the practical question is simpler: did people who saw the ad do something they would not otherwise have done? That means three things. Put a pixel or server side tag on your site before launch so you can match exposed households to visits and sales. Hold out a control group or region where you can. And read results against a baseline built before the campaign started, not against the platform's own benchmark.
The second measurement problem is frequency. Each platform caps frequency inside its own walls, but nobody caps it across them. Innovid's analysis of the campaigns it serves found an average CTV campaign frequency of 7.09 with household reach of only 19.64% (vendor data, mostly US, 2024 campaigns) (Innovid). That is the risk when brands spread budget thinly across too many CTV sellers: the same homes see the ad repeatedly and the rest never see it.
The fraud problem
Where there is programmatic money there is fraud. DoubleVerify, which sells verification, reported 140% more CTV fraud schemes in Q1 2026 than a year earlier and estimated unprotected campaigns lose about $1.8m per billion impressions (DoubleVerify via ExchangeWire, vendor data). In IAB's survey, 56% of US buyers flagged fraud in open programmatic CTV exchanges (MediaPost). The fix is mostly in the buying route: buy premium inventory directly or through curated deals, demand app level reporting, and verify.
| Question | What to use | Who provides it |
|---|---|---|
| How many people saw it? | Barb campaign reporting where available; platform reach with clear definitions | Barb, sales houses |
| Did it reach new households? | Reach and frequency reports by platform, deduplicated where possible | DSP, sales house, Origin as it scales |
| Did it drive visits or sales? | Pixel or tag matching with a holdout or regional control | Universal Ads pixel, Channel 4 Attribute, Amazon Marketing Cloud |
| Did it build the brand? | Brand lift survey against an unexposed control | Platform lift studies, independent research |
| Did the ad run where we paid for it? | App and placement level reporting, independent verification | Verification vendors, direct deals |
Advertain guidance.
For the brand question, our guide to running a YouTube brand lift study covers the method in detail, and our marketing ROI report explains why CTV should be judged over months, not days.
Is connected TV advertising expensive?
Less than it used to be, and less than linear TV for a first test. None of the major UK platforms we checked publishes a minimum spend on an official page, and Universal Ads launched without a stated minimum (Channel 4). Sky's addressable AdSmart product has long been the proof that TV can work for small budgets: by 2020, 2,380 brands had run more than 28,000 campaigns and 75% of those brands were new to TV (Sky Media). We have not quoted CPM ranges because we could not find a credible, open UK source; treat any single figure you see online with caution, and ask sellers for rate cards in writing.
The bigger cost is often creative. A CTV ad plays full screen, sound on, on the largest screen in the house, so it needs to look like it belongs next to television. That does not mean a broadcast budget. In our view, many of the ads that work best on CTV are well shot, simply edited cuts of content a brand already makes for YouTube. Our guide to video production costs in the UK breaks down what that costs.
Published results are mostly platform self reported, so read them as proof of possibility rather than benchmarks:
| Brand | Platform | What they did | Reported result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cadbury | Prime Video ads plus Amazon DSP, 2024 | Anniversary campaign across Prime Video and retail media | 2m new consumers reached via Prime Video ads (Amazon Ads) |
| Morrisons | Prime Video, 2025 | Sponsorship of Clarkson's Farm | Ad awareness up nearly 20%, Kantar measured (Amazon Ads) |
| Center Parcs | Sky AdSmart | Addressable TV to lapsed bookers and modelled prospects | 15x ROI among lapsed bookers (Sky Media via LBB) |
| Sky AdSmart advertisers | Sky AdSmart, 2020 to 2025 | 2,400 campaigns from 535 advertisers | Awareness 2.1x linear alone (Sky Media via LBB) |
All results are self reported by the platform or sales house. Campaign years for Center Parcs are not stated.
The independent picture is more modest but still positive. Thinkbox's BVOD study with PwC and Gain Theory found BVOD adds on average 4% incremental adult reach to a linear campaign (8% among 16 to 34s), and that combining linear and BVOD was up to 10% more effective at delivering return than linear alone (Thinkbox, 2023). That is the right way to think about CTV for most brands: a reach extender and a sharper targeting layer, not a replacement for every other channel.
Where does YouTube fit in a connected TV advertising plan?
YouTube is the CTV channel most brands already use without realising it. In Google Ads, TV screens are a separate device type, so you can see how much of your YouTube spend already lands on the living room screen and set different creative or bids for it (Google Ads Help). Barb's inclusion of YouTube channels in TV measurement means the big screen view of YouTube is now visible to planners in the same currency as broadcast TV (Barb).
For brands that run their own channels, this is the overlooked advantage. The same long form video that earns organic views on YouTube can run as a paid CTV ad on the same screen. Brand content we have produced, such as work for Formula E (7M+ views across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok) and the Sony Alpha 7 V launch (17M+ views across socials), shows how far well made video can travel, and assets like these can also run as paid CTV ads. Our YouTube Shorts strategy report covers how Shorts now reach TV screens too, and our paid vs organic social report explains how to split the budget between earning and buying attention.
The rules: who regulates streaming TV ads in the UK?
Advertising on video on demand services sits under the CAP Code, the non broadcast code, with the ASA as regulator and Ofcom as backstop (ASA). In practice the broadcasters require Clearcast approval for their VOD advertising, and Clearcast operates the clearance system for both TV and video on demand commercials (Clearcast, ASA). Check clearance requirements with each streamer before you book, because they differ.
Two changes are worth tracking. The Media Act 2024 is bringing the largest streamers, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Channel 4 and ITVX, under an Ofcom video on demand standards code, which takes effect one year after Ofcom publishes it (VideoWeek). And the less healthy food advertising restrictions took legal effect on 5 January 2026, with no such ads on TV before 9pm (Advertising Association). Food and drink brands should take advice on how the rules apply to their CTV plans.
