49% of CTV Ads Are Still Traditional TV Spots - And That's a Huge Missed Opportunity According to TripleLift
Despite record streaming viewership and soaring ad spend, most connected TV advertising still relies on decades-old formats - leaving billions in potential brand impact untapped.
NEW YORK, March 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Streaming has officially surpassed traditional television viewing in the United States. But while consumer behavior has rapidly evolved, advertising creative on connected TV (CTV) has largely stayed the same.
A new industry report released today by TripleLift finds that 49% of CTV advertising still relies on traditional placements, with most campaigns built around 15- and 30-second video spots originally designed for linear TV.
The report, "The Architecture of Attention: Why Nonstandard CTV Is the New Standard for Impact," argues that despite the explosive growth of streaming, the ad formats on those platforms remain rooted in decades-old creative models.
"CTV is one of the fastest-growing channels in media, but creatively it's still operating like the three-network era," said Dave Helmreich, CEO of TripleLift. "The industry promised the best of TV and digital. Instead, we recreated traditional commercials in a new pipe."
The Streaming Boom
The gap between consumer behavior and advertising innovation is widening quickly.
In May 2025, streaming surpassed cable and broadcast television for the first time in U.S. viewing share, according to Nielsen.
At the same time, ad-supported streaming has rapidly become the dominant model for connected TV, accounting for 74.2% of overall TV viewing.
Global advertising spend is expected to follow a similar trajectory, with CTV ad spending projected to surpass linear television by 2030, according to WARC.
Yet despite this transformation in viewing habits, the advertising experience itself has barely changed.
Most brands continue to run traditional TV-style commercials in streaming environments - even though CTV enables the creation of entirely new types of advertising experiences.
The Creative Opportunity
The research suggests that advertisers may be leaving significant performance gains on the table.
Campaigns that combine traditional CTV spots with high-impact formats - such as pause ads, overlays, and native streaming units - deliver dramatically stronger outcomes than standard video ads alone.
Among the findings:
Consumers are also receptive to these formats.
The study found that 67% of viewers say innovative CTV ads are more memorable than standard ones, while 77% describe pause ads as informative rather than disruptive.
In other words, audiences are open to new ad experiences—but the industry has been slow to adopt them.
The Real Barrier Isn't Creativity
According to TripleLift, the problem isn't a lack of creative ideas. Instead, the biggest barrier is infrastructure.
As streaming platforms have launched ad-supported services, many have introduced custom ad formats tailored to their user interfaces and viewing environments. While these formats often perform well, the lack of standardized specifications across platforms makes them difficult for brands and agencies to scale.
This fragmentation has led many marketers to fall back on traditional creative formats that can run everywhere—even if they are less effective.
"Agencies are built to produce 15s and 30s," said one executive quoted in the report. "Creative teams need formats that are easy to deploy across platforms."
A New Layer of Creative Infrastructure
TripleLift believes the next phase of CTV advertising will require infrastructure designed specifically for modern streaming environments. As the Creative SSP, the company is built to orchestrate creative formats, audience signals, supply paths, and measurement into a single outcome-driven system.
Rather than treating creative as a static asset, the system adapts formats across channels, including CTV, the open internet, and retail media.
"The goal is to move the industry beyond simply delivering impressions. Today's ecosystem optimizes delivery," Helmreich stated. "Our approach is to optimize impact."
Why Creative Standards May Be the Next Industry Battleground
The report suggests that solving the creative infrastructure challenge may require broader industry collaboration.
Past digital media innovations—from online video formats to native advertising—only scaled once standards were established across platforms.
CTV may be approaching a similar moment.
With streaming audiences continuing to grow and advertising budgets shifting toward connected TV, the pressure to create scalable, high-performing creative formats is intensifying.
Without that evolution, the report warns, CTV risks replicating the limitations of traditional television instead of realizing its full potential.
"Streaming rebuilt television distribution," the report concludes. "Now the industry must rebuild television advertising."
Download the full "The Architecture of Attention: Why Nonstandard CTV Is the New Standard for Impact" report here.
About TripleLift
TripleLift is the Creative SSP built for the orchestration era, helping brands and publishers maximize the impact of advertising across the open internet, retail media, and connected TV.
Powered by TL Spark, TripleLift's intelligence layer interprets campaign goals and orchestrates creative, supply, audience data, and measurement to drive measurable business outcomes.
The platform enables advertisers to reduce media waste, improve performance, and prove campaign impact while helping publishers preserve premium user experiences.
For more information, visit www.triplelift.com.
SOURCE TRIPLELIFT