Streaming has officially surpassed traditional TV viewing in the United States. But while consumer behavior has evolved rapidly, advertising creativity on CTV has largely remained the same.
A recent report from TripleLift finds that 49% of CTV advertising still relies on traditional placements, with most campaigns built around 15 and 30-second video spots originally designed for linear TV.
The report, “The Architecture of Attention: Why Nonstandard CTV Is the New Standard for Impact,” argues that despite the growth of streaming, the ad formats running inside those environments remain tied to legacy creative models.
“CTV is one of the fastest-growing channels in media, but creatively it’s still operating like the three-network era,” said Dave Helmreich, CEO of TripleLift. “The industry promised the best of TV and digital. Instead, we recreated traditional commercials in a new pipe.”
In May 2025, streaming accounted for a larger share of U.S. television viewing than cable and broadcast combined for the first time. At the same time, ad-supported streaming grew to represent 74.2% of total TV usage, establishing it as the primary way audiences consume television.
Advertising spend is now following that shift. CTV is projected to surpass linear television globally by 2030.
But while distribution, consumption, and monetization models have all changed, the ad formats running inside streaming environments largely have not. Most campaigns still rely on traditional 15 and 30-second spots, delivered in the same structure as linear television.
That gap between how people watch and how ads are delivered is starting to show up in performance.
The Market Moved. The Ad Product Didn’t
When advertisers use the formats that streaming environments actually support, performance improves materially.
Brand recall increases by 33% when high-impact formats run alongside standard spots. Brand consideration reaches levels that are 11× higher than industry benchmarks. Purchase intent increases by 76% when campaigns combine multiple CTV-native formats.
Consumers are not rejecting these formats. 67% say they are more memorable than standard ads. 77% say pause ads are informative rather than disruptive.
Ad formats built for streaming environments deliver stronger results, and audiences respond to them.
The limiting factor is not effectiveness. It is a deployment.
Why Agencies Keep Defaulting to 30-Second Spots
The constraint is production and execution.
Most agencies are structured around standardized outputs. Fifteen and 30-second spots can be produced once and distributed broadly across inventory without modification. They move through approval, trafficking, and measurement systems with minimal friction.
High-impact CTV formats do not operate that way.
Each streaming service has introduced its own formats tied to its interface and viewing experience. Pause ads, overlays, and native units are built differently across platforms, with different specifications, triggers, and measurement frameworks.
A single campaign running across multiple streaming services often requires multiple versions of creative, separate technical integrations, and inconsistent reporting outputs.
That increases cost, slows deployment, and complicates measurement.
So advertisers default to formats that can run everywhere, even if those formats underperform.
The Real Shift Is From Media Optimization to Creative Optimization
Most CTV investment over the past decade has gone into delivery infrastructure. Targeting improved. Measurement improved. Programmatic access expanded.
Creative has remained largely unchanged.
What is emerging now is a layer focused on how creative is executed within streaming environments. Instead of treating creative as a fixed asset that is distributed across inventory, this approach treats format selection and adaptation as part of campaign performance.
That includes aligning creative formats to different user interfaces, incorporating audience signals into format decisions, and attempting to standardize measurement across a wider range of ad experiences.
Several companies are positioning themselves around this layer, including TripleLift, which describes its approach as a “Creative SSP.” The broader idea is to reduce the operational burden of deploying nonstandard formats across fragmented environments.
If that layer matures, it changes how campaigns are built. Creative becomes more modular. Format selection becomes a variable in performance optimization. Execution is less dependent on a single asset being reused across all environments.
Standardization Is Becoming a Requirement for Scale
Digital advertising has followed this pattern before. Early innovation produced fragmented formats tied to specific environments. Scale followed once standards were introduced.
CTV is now in that stage.
The difference is that streaming services benefit from maintaining differentiated ad products. Custom formats allow them to control pricing and positioning within their environments.
But fragmentation is already limiting how budgets are deployed.
As more spend moves into CTV, advertisers and agencies are pushing for formats that can be executed across services without rebuilding campaigns. Measurement consistency is becoming a requirement for proving performance.
Standardization will not eliminate differentiation, but it will define how creativity is deployed at scale.
The Streaming Wars Take
Streaming shifted audience behavior, and advertising budgets are shifting with it.
The remaining constraint is how creative is executed.
CTV currently delivers advanced targeting and measurement, but relies heavily on legacy ad formats. High-impact formats produce stronger results, but they are not widely used because they are difficult to deploy across fragmented environments.
That creates three immediate outcomes.
Premium inventory is not fully monetized. Formats that generate stronger performance are not consistently activated, limiting pricing upside.
Agency workflows prioritize portability over performance. Campaigns are built to run everywhere rather than to maximize impact within each environment.
A new control point is forming around creative execution. The company that standardizes how creative is adapted across streaming environments will influence how campaigns are built, how performance is measured, and where budgets are allocated.
Streaming rebuilt distribution. Advertising infrastructure is still catching up.
The Streaming Wars is intentionally ad-free
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