Connected TV has transformed how advertisers reach audiences. With the ability to target by audience segment, household, and viewing context, it offers a level of precision traditional TV never had. Despite these capabilities, many brands are still running the same creative across all platforms instead of tailoring ads for CTV’s unique environment.
Marketers are investing heavily in CTV, with around 70 percent planning to increase their budgets in 2025. However, only about a quarter of advertisers are developing creative specifically for the medium compared to what they produce for social platforms. While media targeting capabilities have advanced quickly, creative execution often remains a step behind.
Some advertisers are beginning to experiment with more interactive and engaging ad formats. Interactive CTV ads have been delivering engagement rates more than four times higher than mobile and over ten times higher than desktop. Pause ads with QR codes, such as those launched by Fubo, have driven 33 percent more brand engagement. Tools like Samsung’s Creative Canvas allow advertisers to build interactive, QR-enabled ads and measure their performance in real time, bringing social-style interactivity to TV screens.
Alongside these developments, Dynamic Creative Optimization technology is helping advertisers tailor their messaging without having to produce countless individual versions. By assembling creative elements in real time based on factors like audience, location, weather, or time of day, this approach enables personalization at scale. Platforms such as Origin are combining identity data with creative intelligence to improve performance and make personalized advertising more practical.
Generative AI is also accelerating the shift toward dynamic creative strategies. The IAB reports that 86 percent of advertisers are already using or plan to use AI for video ad production, and projections suggest that by 2026 about 40 percent of all video ads will be AI-driven. This allows brands to produce multiple creative variations quickly, adapting them to different audiences and contexts with far less manual effort.
CTV provides unmatched precision in ad delivery, but many advertisers are still taking a uniform approach to creative. That is starting to change as interactive formats gain traction, DCO becomes more widely used, and AI tools lower the barrier to personalization. Brands that embrace these capabilities will be better positioned to maximize the return on their growing CTV investments in the year ahead.