Keeping the complexities of marketing channels in mind, Digiday+ Research has analyzed strategies and challenges across leading marketing channels — like retail media, influencer marketing and social media — to identify key trends and best practices in our CMO Strategies series.
In this installment, Digiday+ Research focuses on an analysis of the ad-supported streaming landscape and its role in marketers’ playbooks.
As CTV matures, the streaming ad industry is entering a period of change. Media giants like The Walt Disney Company and Paramount are pursuing mergers that have the potential to reduce market fragmentation and strengthen scale. At the same time, advertisers are reevaluating how they measure success across streaming platforms as performance expectations rise and audience viewing habits shift. Industry-wide, brands and platforms are experimenting with how to best implement AI in CTV.
Digiday+ Research’s fifth annual report analyzes the state of ad-supported streaming and the challenges those companies pose to marketers.
To map out marketers’ current digital playbook, Digiday+ Research distributed three surveys asking 125 respondents a range of questions, including past and upcoming investments, marketing channel tactics and business challenges.
Digiday+ Research also conducted interviews with the marketing and streaming executives from the following companies:
- Milani Cosmetics
- NBCUniversal (Peacock)
- Rembrand
- Roku
- Ruggable
- Tinuiti
- YouTube
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Mergers could shift the CTV landscape
YouTube came out on top for the fourth year in a row as the ad-supported streaming service that received the largest portion of both survey respondents’ ad placements and ad budgets. Seventy-five percent of brand and agency respondents said they currently place ads on YouTube as of Q1 2026. Amazon’s Prime Video (with ads) followed in second place at 47% of respondents, while Hulu and Paramount+ tied in third…