As advertisers push for more measurable outcomes, marketers are rethinking how they balance brand building, performance, and audience attention across linear and CTV.

CTV has evolved from a reach extension into a more targeted performance channel, but marketers say the industry is still struggling to measure how consumers engage with video across platforms and devices.

Kelly Kavanagh and Jennifer Glass speaking at EMARKETER's Ad Buyer Strategies Summit

“The big screen, be it linear TV or CTV, is massively important again in driving that emotional connection. But then the consumer is immediately turning to their phone,” said Jennifer Glass, senior director of communications strategy and integrated media at The Hershey Company, during a panel at EMARKETER’s Ad Buyer Summit moderated by our analyst Ross Benes.

Handling performance marketing pressure

As streaming platforms and retail media networks offer more precise targeting and attribution, marketers are under growing pressure to prove ROI. But that shift has also exposed tensions between performance marketing and long-term brand building.

“Performance marketing was such a sexy thing going on in the last couple years, and we fell a little prey to it at Haleon,” said Kelly Kavanagh, senior director of integrated marketing and media at Haleon. “What we saw with some of our brand health was being compromised a bit by really focusing on ROI.”

Marketers are increasingly recognizing that paid media alone cannot drive outcomes, especially as consumers disperse across platforms and devices.

“The most successful campaigns truly surround something,” said Glass, pointing to Hershey’s Super Bowl and March Madness campaigns. “Linear TV and CTV play a huge role in driving reach, but the social amplification, the experiential, everything else is really what drives the actual performance.”

Advertisers need to connect brand marketing and outcome strategies instead of treating them as separate objectives, said Jonathan Yantz, managing partner at M+C Saatchi Performance. Relying too heavily on traditional conversion metrics can create an incomplete picture of channel performance.

“How do you tie brand and demand?” said Yantz. “It’s not going to be an immediate last-click mentality. If you simply look at your click-throughs or what CPMs you have, that’s going to be a challenge.”

Marketers want attention, not just impressions

Marketers are shifting away from raw impression metrics to focus more on attention and engagement quality. That shift is forcing marketers to think more holistically about how TV, social media, search, and AI-driven discovery work together.

Streaming platforms are also experimenting with ad formats like pause ads designed to better match how viewers actually engage with content, said Aulden Kaye Yi, head of advertising partnerships at Philo.

• Consumers across generations prefer pause ads to a frozen screen, especially Gen Z (67%) and millennials (67%), according to an April 2025 MAGNA Media Trials and DIRECTV Advertising report.

“If you think about QR codes. In regular video ads they’re kind of awkward, because by the time you get your phone out, the ad is finished,” said Yi. “Pause is this more natural moment when you’re not interrupting the content.”

Marketers are also becoming more interested in contextual targeting tied to specific moments within programming. AI is helping Philo scale that analysis by identifying compatible moments and themes within content, said Yi.

“That is stuff that AI is really sort of powering and amplifying,” she said.

Measurement remains messy

Even as advertisers gain access to more data, panelists said no single measurement framework fully captures marketing effectiveness.

“There’s no silver bullet,” Glass said. “You've got to chip away at it, and you've got to try a bunch of different stuff and see what works.”

Despite advancements in measurement tools, strong campaigns still show clear business impact quickly, said Kavanagh, noting Haleon saw an immediate sales lift at Walmart within a week of increasing live sports advertising.

“The reality is, if something’s really working, you're going to see it in the sales right away,” she said.

Watch the full session

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