George Castrissiades of Teads Exposes CTV’s Shell Game: Premium Prices and Mystery Shows
Connected television was supposed to make advertising smarter. Instead, the industry has managed to recreate some of traditional TV’s greatest hits: mysterious pricing, questionable measurement and the occasional suspicion that somebody’s selling you a Cadillac but delivering a used Kia.
For George Castrissiades, head of connected television in North America at global advertising technology company Teads, the solution starts with knowing what advertisers are actually buying.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media, Castrissiades explained how media consolidation, show-level targeting and the increasingly unavoidable CTV home screen are changing the economics of advertising.
Congratulations on your merger! Now pay the bills
Media consolidation has created some enormous entertainment empires. It’s also created mountains of debt, which somebody has to pay off. Three guesses who gets the invoice.
Castrissiades said that among the top 20 to 30 ad-supported streaming channels, Plex is a rare exception to ownership by a major media or hardware company.
As these conglomerates scramble to monetize their programming, advertisers buying inventory through a familiar streaming app may discover their campaigns are distributed across a much broader collection of outlets.
The problem isn’t necessarily that those outlets are terrible. It’s that advertisers may have paid for the penthouse suite and wound up somewhere overlooking the parking garage.
Premium inventory, bargain-bin surprises
Show-level targeting is becoming increasingly important because the same programming can appear on multiple streaming services at wildly different prices.
An advertiser might pay a premium to appear on a prestigious platform, only to discover that the identical show is available elsewhere for considerably less.
Castrissiades said advertisers need greater visibility into the actual programming carrying their messages, both to avoid overpaying and to improve brand safety and relevance.
Transparency becomes even more important when advertisers try to measure results.
Large streaming platforms still operate as walled gardens, sometimes supplying their own performance information to third-party measurement companies. That leaves buyers trying to compare results using yardsticks that seem to change depending on who’s holding them.
“I think that a lot of advertisers are picking what feels right instead of knowing what is right,” Castrissiades said.
It’s a marvelous business model if you’re selling uncertainty by the thousand impressions.
Your ad-free subscription has a little surprise
Meanwhile, CTV home screens are becoming prime advertising real estate, particularly because they can reach viewers who pay extra to avoid commercials.
Those consumers may have successfully banished interruptions from their favorite programming. Unfortunately for them, they still have to navigate the television’s home screen.
“The home screen is unavoidable,” Castrissiades said. “It’s high impact. It’s the billboard of the living room.”
Unlike traditional video commercials, home-screen advertising catches viewers while they’re actively choosing what to watch, remote control in hand.
That creates opportunities to build brand awareness without repeatedly interrupting programming. It also gives luxury automakers, travel companies and other premium advertisers a way to reach affluent consumers who have paid their way out of conventional commercial breaks.
Congratulations on escaping the ads. Please enjoy this ad before proceeding.
Order of the ads matters, too
Castrissiades also argued that advertisers should stop treating CTV as an isolated channel and start considering its influence on subsequent consumer behavior.
“I’m a huge believer in omni-channel lift,” he said.
Research conducted by Teads found that combining web advertising with CTV generated an 11-point lift in purchase intent in one study. But when viewers encountered CTV advertising first, the lift reached 23 points.
That’s more than double the improvement simply by changing the sequence of exposure.
The findings suggest advertisers could get substantially more value from coordinated campaigns that begin with high-attention television placements and continue across digital channels.
Of course, proving that television caused a purchase is more complicated than watching someone click a banner ad.
“Correlation does not equal causation, and I appreciate that,” Castrissiades said.
Rather than awarding all the credit to the final click, he suggested examining whether CTV-exposed consumers make larger purchases, return more frequently or move through the sales process faster.
“Are they making bigger purchases? Are they return customers?” he asked.
For marketers, that’s potentially a much more meaningful measure of advertising effectiveness than simply identifying the last ad somebody clicked.
And for an industry that has spent an extraordinary amount of money figuring out where ads appeared, discovering whether they actually helped sell something would be a refreshing plot twist.
You’re watching “The Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media at Advertising Week 2026,” presented by Cuebiq, Databricks, Newton Research, Roku and Teads. For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
Connected television was supposed to make advertising smarter. Instead, the industry has managed to recreate some of traditional TV’s greatest hits: mysterious pricing, questionable measurement and the occasional suspicion that somebody’s selling you a Cadillac but delivering a used Kia.
For George Castrissiades, head of connected television in North America at global advertising technology company Teads, the solution starts with knowing what advertisers are actually buying.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media, Castrissiades explained how media consolidation, show-level targeting and the increasingly unavoidable CTV home screen are changing the economics of advertising.
Congratulations on your merger! Now pay the bills
Media consolidation has created some enormous entertainment empires. It’s also created mountains of debt, which somebody has to pay off. Three guesses who gets the invoice.
Castrissiades said that among the top 20 to 30 ad-supported streaming channels, Plex is a rare exception to ownership by a major media or hardware company.
As these conglomerates scramble to monetize their programming, advertisers buying inventory through a familiar streaming app may discover their campaigns are distributed across a much broader collection of outlets.
The problem isn’t necessarily that those outlets are terrible. It’s that advertisers may have paid for the penthouse suite and wound up somewhere overlooking the parking garage.
Premium inventory, bargain-bin surprises
Show-level targeting is becoming increasingly important because the same programming can appear on multiple streaming services at wildly different prices.
An advertiser might pay a premium to appear on a prestigious platform, only to discover that the identical show is available elsewhere for considerably less.
Castrissiades said advertisers need greater visibility into the actual programming carrying their messages, both to avoid overpaying and to improve brand safety and relevance.
Transparency becomes even more important when advertisers try to measure results.
Large streaming platforms still operate as walled gardens, sometimes supplying their own performance information to third-party measurement companies. That leaves buyers trying to compare results using yardsticks that seem to change depending on who’s holding them.
“I think that a lot of advertisers are picking what feels right instead of knowing what is right,” Castrissiades said.
It’s a marvelous business model if you’re selling uncertainty by the thousand impressions.
Your ad-free subscription has a little surprise
Meanwhile, CTV home screens are becoming prime advertising real estate, particularly because they can reach viewers who pay extra to avoid commercials.
Those consumers may have successfully banished interruptions from their favorite programming. Unfortunately for them, they still have to navigate the television’s home screen.
“The home screen is unavoidable,” Castrissiades said. “It’s high impact. It’s the billboard of the living room.”
Unlike traditional video commercials, home-screen advertising catches viewers while they’re actively choosing what to watch, remote control in hand.
That creates opportunities to build brand awareness without repeatedly interrupting programming. It also gives luxury automakers, travel companies and other premium advertisers a way to reach affluent consumers who have paid their way out of conventional commercial breaks.
Congratulations on escaping the ads. Please enjoy this ad before proceeding.
Order of the ads matters, too
Castrissiades also argued that advertisers should stop treating CTV as an isolated channel and start considering its influence on subsequent consumer behavior.
“I’m a huge believer in omni-channel lift,” he said.
Research conducted by Teads found that combining web advertising with CTV generated an 11-point lift in purchase intent in one study. But when viewers encountered CTV advertising first, the lift reached 23 points.
That’s more than double the improvement simply by changing the sequence of exposure.
The findings suggest advertisers could get substantially more value from coordinated campaigns that begin with high-attention television placements and continue across digital channels.
Of course, proving that television caused a purchase is more complicated than watching someone click a banner ad.
“Correlation does not equal causation, and I appreciate that,” Castrissiades said.
Rather than awarding all the credit to the final click, he suggested examining whether CTV-exposed consumers make larger purchases, return more frequently or move through the sales process faster.
“Are they making bigger purchases? Are they return customers?” he asked.
For marketers, that’s potentially a much more meaningful measure of advertising effectiveness than simply identifying the last ad somebody clicked.
And for an industry that has spent an extraordinary amount of money figuring out where ads appeared, discovering whether they actually helped sell something would be a refreshing plot twist.
You’re watching “The Beet.TV Leadership Summit with Omnicom Media at Advertising Week 2026,” presented by Cuebiq, Databricks, Newton Research, Roku and Teads. For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
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