CANNES — Television may be evolving, but one thing remains constant: advertisers still face the challenge of finding and measuring their audiences across an increasingly fragmented landscape. So says Dave Morgan, founder and chief executive of Simulmedia, in this interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“Television is still the big platform in front of consumers,” Morgan said. “But today, TV means a lot of different things. It might be coming from cable, satellite, broadcast, digital antennas or one of the countless streaming services, which are really fragmented.”
For Simulmedia, which specializes in helping advertisers locate audiences across all forms of TV, this complexity has only increased as viewers spread across platforms. The key, Morgan said, lies in harnessing advanced data and AI-driven tools to predict where those viewers will be.
“Agentic approaches with AI make a really big difference now,” Morgan said. “You can use data sets to divine, at least with high predictable confidence, where your audiences are, and we’ve been investing a lot against that.”
Nielsen’s milestone: Streaming surpasses linear
The Cannes conversation followed a milestone announcement from Nielsen: for the first time, streaming content has officially surpassed linear TV in U.S. household viewing. But Morgan urged caution in interpreting the headline.
“For years, Nielsen never changed — we had decades of stability, maybe not accuracy, but stability,” he remarked. “Now, content that is viewed on TVs in the U.S. today, in some areas, streaming is surpassing linear.”
However, Morgan pointed to a critical detail often overlooked in the streaming narrative: the actual availability of advertising within that content.
“Most of the streaming today is still ad-free or ad-lite,” he said. “It’s only about 15% of the time that ad time is being streamed as compared to linear.”
This creates a major challenge for marketers trying to shift dollars toward streaming platforms while still maintaining reach. The recent news from Amazon, announcing plans to double the ad load on its Prime Video service, could signal a pivotal moment in addressing that imbalance, Morgan said.
Blending linear and streaming
Ultimately, the future of television advertising isn’t about choosing one platform over the other but integrating both.
“You have to knit the two together,” Morgan said. “You can’t just do linear without streaming. You can’t do streaming without linear. You need both.”
For advertisers navigating the changing TV landscape, Simulmedia’s focus remains on helping brands reach audiences, wherever they may be, with greater precision, even as measurement standards and consumer behavior continue to evolve.
“It’s exciting,” Morgan said. “The game is changing, and with AI and better data, we’re finally starting to connect the pieces.”
Dave Morgan Is in Ukraine Building Tech and Drawing Inspiration
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lion 2025. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
