LONDON – Connected television and ad-supported streaming are moving firmly into the mainstream, creating rapid growth opportunities and new challenges for advertisers and the programmatic ecosystem, said Cadi Jones, SVP, EMEA, at Index Exchange.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor Robert Andrews at the Beet.TV and WPP Media Leadership Summit, Jones said CTV and ad-supported video on demand, or AVOD, adoption is accelerating across Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom. There, roughly 14% of in-home viewing now comes from ad-supported streaming services. That share is expected to grow quickly as streaming ad spend in the country is forecast to double over the next two years, reaching nearly £3 billion ($4 billion).
“With that growth comes a lot of opportunity,” Jones said, “but also significant challenges around readiness, standardization and collaboration across the industry.”
Curated marketplaces drive success
As more streaming TV inventory becomes available programmatically, Jones said brands and agencies are being forced to rethink how they activate CTV, especially as artificial intelligence and advanced optimization tools play a larger role. The most successful advertisers, she said, are increasingly transacting through curated programmatic marketplaces, which offer greater control, transparency and access to data.
Rather than optimizing solely for delivery, Jones said these brands are using contextual and quality signals to optimize toward engagement and real outcomes.
“It’s about delivering the results that matter,” she said, pointing to analysis that ties real-time optimization to stronger brand metrics.
Jones highlighted a recent campaign executed with agency PMG and contextual intelligence provider Iris TV across Index Exchange marketplaces. By incorporating advanced contextual signals, the campaign delivered a tenfold increase in brand favorability and tripled brand consideration compared with benchmarks, she said.
Seeking scale among more media channels
Fragmentation remains one of the biggest obstacles to scaling programmatic CTV, Jones added, making collaboration and common standards critical. Index Exchange, she said, has focused on bringing publishers, media owners and technology partners together to drive consistency and transparency.
Among the initiatives gaining momentum are the Live Event Ad Protocol (LEAP), aimed at standardizing live streaming ads, and AdCP, a protocol designed to enable AI-driven advertising workflows.
“Standards drive measurable outcomes,” Jones said. “They give buyers consistency, comparability and signals they can trust, and when you combine that with transparency and efficiency, you get better results and more investment.”
Jones also expects the shift toward sell-side decisioning to accelerate into 2026. By accessing richer signals earlier in the bid lifecycle, the sell side can help brands identify high-performing audiences at scale and at more efficient prices, she said.
“That combination of scale, performance and efficiency is what drives spend,” Jones said, adding that sell-side decisioning is becoming more mainstream and is likely to be one of the programmatic industry’s fastest-growing areas in the year ahead.
Overall, Jones said the continued convergence of CTV growth, data-driven optimization and collaborative standards is creating a more mature streaming marketplace, one increasingly aligned with advertisers’ demands for measurable performance and transparency.
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