MIAMI — The pressure on marketers to show results has never been more intense – but chasing short-term performance at the expense of brand building is a trap, according to one ad-tech executive who lives both sides of that tension every day.
Ryan Nelsen, chief marketing officer at StackAdapt, argues that the traditional separation of brand and performance marketing is collapsing, and that connected TV is one of the key channels forcing that reckoning. At StackAdapt, he said, campaigns split roughly 50/50 between what would traditionally be classified as brand versus performance – but increasingly, that distinction is blurring.
“I see those worlds colliding,” said Nelsen, CMO at StackAdapt, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Deposits and withdrawals
The best brands, he argued, behave like responsible account holders – consistently adding value before asking for anything in return.
“The best brands are consistently making deposits into your experience, into the value of your life,” Nelsen said. “Those that are consistently taking or withdrawing from that – I think consumers notice that.”
As streaming platforms give advertisers more precise targeting tools, the temptation to push hard toward direct response is real. But Nelsen suggested that brands using CTV primarily to drive straight to a product risk hollowing out the emotional equity that makes advertising work in the first place.
The 30% conversion lift hiding in plain sight
One of the more concrete data points Nelsen offered concerns the sequencing of CTV and display advertising. StackAdapt, which runs both formats on its platform, has observed a consistent pattern across thousands of campaigns: following a CTV buy with a display campaign lifts conversions by around 30%.
“When you see something in real life on TV, you see that validation, and then you have a really, really easy way to follow up on that through a display campaign,” Nelsen said. “Timing really, really matters.”
That finding aligns with broader industry momentum around full-funnel CTV strategies. U.S. CTV ad spending is projected to reach $29.29 billion in 2026, up from $21.16 billion in 2024, according to eMarketer, as advertisers increasingly treat the channel as more than a reach vehicle. The sequencing Nelsen described suggests the value of CTV may be as much about priming subsequent touchpoints as it is about the impression itself.
AI as orchestration layer, not oracle
On artificial intelligence, Nelsen was enthusiastic but precise about where he sees genuine near-term value — and where he thinks marketers risk making a mistake.
“The impact that AI is having right now is on AI orchestration,” he said. “We can use AI to replace systems and process, and we certainly should be. What we shouldn’t be using AI for is to replace our point of view as marketers.”
The distinction matters. Much of the current AI conversation in advertising centers on creative generation and audience targeting, but Nelsen pointed to a more foundational problem: disconnected data.
His argument is that AI’s most immediate and practical contribution is stitching together fragmented systems into something approaching end-to-end media orchestration – not replacing human judgment, but giving it better infrastructure to operate on.
“I feel like the internet’s been created over again with AI,” he said. “We’re in the first inning of this.”
