CTV’s Awareness-Only Era Is Over: Brands Now Chasing Performance on the Big Screen
The living room’s biggest screen is no longer just a billboard. Marketers once treated connected TV as a blunt awareness tool – the digital successor to the 30-second broadcast spot – but that thinking is increasingly outdated as advertisers demand the same accountability from CTV that they expect from search and social.
U.S. CTV ad spending is forecast to grow 14% to $37.26 billion in 2026, according to Emarketer research, yet nearly 38% of marketers still cite difficulty proving incremental return on ad spend as a top barrier.
“CTV is no longer just super high funnel awareness driver. It also can truly drive people through their experience,” said Dani Cushion, CMO of Teads, in this video interview with Beet.TV at Cannes Lions 2026.
The second-screen reality demands orchestration
Research suggests 50% to 60% of viewers are simultaneously on a phone or tablet, a figure that climbs higher during live sports. That fragmented attention makes CTV a starting point rather than a destination.
Cushion argued that brands should treat CTV as the anchor of a cross-device strategy rather than a standalone buy. “CTV is the first screen that you’re going to see, but figuring out how to get that to connect in an omnichannel way with web, with mobile, and using them together is really important,” she said.
The approach relies on sequential messaging and retargeting across screens. “I as a consumer am going to be watching a show, engaging with an ad, but perhaps getting a similar ad either retargeted sequentially or just being surrounded later by the brand,” Cushion said. “It really is thoughtful about the experience that I’m having with the brand.”
Data remains the sticking point
Omnichannel sounds elegant in a pitch deck but some think it tends to fall apart in execution. The culprit, according to Cushion, is data fragmentation – specifically the difficulty of tying a household on a smart TV to an individual on a mobile device to a browser session on a laptop.
“Unless you can actually have data to be able to tie the thread between knowing who is one person here, one household here, and how are you actually making sure that you’re targeting the same people with the right kind of messages – the data is a lot of what stands in the way of that,” she said.
Teads positions its omnichannel graph, built on direct CTV integrations and relationships with more than 10,000 open-web publishers, as the connective tissue. “You don’t have to worry about patching it together. You have it all in one place and you can make sure that you have this sort of symphonic connection of reaching your consumers effectively,” Cushion said.
From attention to attribution
CTV’s attention advantage is well documented – Teads claims its HomeScreen video ads achieve a 48% attention rate and outperform skippable pre-roll by 16% – but attention alone does not satisfy CFOs. The company recently launched CTV Ensemble, a suite that includes what it calls CTV Performance, designed to connect big-screen impressions to lower-funnel outcomes.
The product emerged from a beta spanning roughly 40 campaigns across 14 countries. “We’re actually able to help brands show that it’s not just high funnel, but that you can drive performance campaigns from CTV and drive actual measurable outcomes,” Cushion said.
One example she cited was Citroën, which used CTV Performance to drive test-drive bookings. A Teads case study reports the campaign generated a 94% video completion rate, more than 13,000 site visits, and 5,000 online conversions tied to vehicle configuration and dealership searches. “We were able to measure the impact from CTV to those online conversions that drove that,” Cushion said.
The living room’s biggest screen is no longer just a billboard. Marketers once treated connected TV as a blunt awareness tool – the digital successor to the 30-second broadcast spot – but that thinking is increasingly outdated as advertisers demand the same accountability from CTV that they expect from search and social.
U.S. CTV ad spending is forecast to grow 14% to $37.26 billion in 2026, according to Emarketer research, yet nearly 38% of marketers still cite difficulty proving incremental return on ad spend as a top barrier.
“CTV is no longer just super high funnel awareness driver. It also can truly drive people through their experience,” said Dani Cushion, CMO of Teads, in this video interview with Beet.TV at Cannes Lions 2026.
The second-screen reality demands orchestration
Research suggests 50% to 60% of viewers are simultaneously on a phone or tablet, a figure that climbs higher during live sports. That fragmented attention makes CTV a starting point rather than a destination.
Cushion argued that brands should treat CTV as the anchor of a cross-device strategy rather than a standalone buy. “CTV is the first screen that you’re going to see, but figuring out how to get that to connect in an omnichannel way with web, with mobile, and using them together is really important,” she said.
The approach relies on sequential messaging and retargeting across screens. “I as a consumer am going to be watching a show, engaging with an ad, but perhaps getting a similar ad either retargeted sequentially or just being surrounded later by the brand,” Cushion said. “It really is thoughtful about the experience that I’m having with the brand.”
Data remains the sticking point
Omnichannel sounds elegant in a pitch deck but some think it tends to fall apart in execution. The culprit, according to Cushion, is data fragmentation – specifically the difficulty of tying a household on a smart TV to an individual on a mobile device to a browser session on a laptop.
“Unless you can actually have data to be able to tie the thread between knowing who is one person here, one household here, and how are you actually making sure that you’re targeting the same people with the right kind of messages – the data is a lot of what stands in the way of that,” she said.
Teads positions its omnichannel graph, built on direct CTV integrations and relationships with more than 10,000 open-web publishers, as the connective tissue. “You don’t have to worry about patching it together. You have it all in one place and you can make sure that you have this sort of symphonic connection of reaching your consumers effectively,” Cushion said.
From attention to attribution
CTV’s attention advantage is well documented – Teads claims its HomeScreen video ads achieve a 48% attention rate and outperform skippable pre-roll by 16% – but attention alone does not satisfy CFOs. The company recently launched CTV Ensemble, a suite that includes what it calls CTV Performance, designed to connect big-screen impressions to lower-funnel outcomes.
The product emerged from a beta spanning roughly 40 campaigns across 14 countries. “We’re actually able to help brands show that it’s not just high funnel, but that you can drive performance campaigns from CTV and drive actual measurable outcomes,” Cushion said.
One example she cited was Citroën, which used CTV Performance to drive test-drive bookings. A Teads case study reports the campaign generated a 94% video completion rate, more than 13,000 site visits, and 5,000 online conversions tied to vehicle configuration and dealership searches. “We were able to measure the impact from CTV to those online conversions that drove that,” Cushion said.
Series Videos
