First up is the one and only Tony Marlow, CMO of LG Ad Solutions, who reflected on how streaming has become the center of TV planning for most brands and the many ways that is impacting the industry.
The biggest change I’m seeing this fall is the way connected TV is shifting from being treated as an extension of linear to increasingly being thought of as the starting point for TV plans. It’s not yet universal, but the shift is clearly unfolding. More advertisers are beginning their conversations with streaming and connected TV at the center, and then asking how linear fits into the mix, rather than the other way around. That simple reordering of priorities may sound subtle, but it fundamentally changes the dynamics of the industry.
When streaming becomes the first lens through which TV budgets are viewed, it influences everything downstream. It changes how budgets are allocated, how reach and frequency are managed, and how measurement is prioritized. It also accelerates the demand for innovation on the connected side, from new ad formats to smarter targeting and more fluid buying models. We’re in the middle of a transition where the definition of “television” itself is evolving, and the way advertisers plan reflects that shift. This fall, you can feel that momentum building and it’s creating new opportunities to deliver meaningful connections on the biggest screen in the home.
Raghu Kodige, CEO of Anoki, explained how the CTV safety net is being rewritten.
Your Video Upfronts are wrapped—now comes the real challenge: turning those investments into brand-building moments that actually connect. But here’s the question no one asks loud enough: What’s your insurance policy that those moments land in the right context—aligned with the right scenes, sentiments, and brand-suitable inventory?
This fall, the industry is drawing a line. The old guard of genre targeting and crude keyword blocks is fading fast. In its place, multimodal AI is stepping up—reading not just the words, but the visual, emotional, and narrative signals of every scene. That means advertisers can finally move beyond blunt exclusion lists and start making context-driven decisions at scale.
The takeaway? Brand safety is no longer about avoiding the bad. It’s about finding the right moments to show up. With applied AI embedded in media workflows, meaningful, nuanced, and scalable suitability is no longer aspirational—it’s here.
Gary Mittman, CEO of KERV, looked at how success in CTV is now all about making the best use of contextual metadata and using it to drive outcomes.
We're already seeing that outcomes-driven contextual alignment won’t be optional in CTV - it will be the price of entry. The winners will be those who master contextual metadata at the deepest level. Moving into 2026, every impression will be judged not on its placement, but on its precision to context and outcomes. Scene-level intelligence, down to objects, moments, and emotions, will become the foundation of all CTV ad delivery. In this world, metadata isn’t a byproduct of video. It’s the signal engine that powers personalization, shoppability, and measurable results.
Aaron Goldman, CMO of Mediaocean, underscored how we are now seeing real differentiation among AI tools, with some falling behind and some pulling away.
AI has gone from walk to crawl to run to fall. This is surely the fastest we’ve seen any technology move through the adoption cycle. In just a few short years we’ve gone from experimenting to ingraining and now, in some cases, failing. To be clear, this is a great outcome. The fact that we’re seeing some AI tools and processes fall down means that we’re learning and figuring out what it takes to scale. Put simply, the key to success is having AI tied to foundational platforms with underlying data and infrastructure that can immediately activate AI insights to improve live campaigns. The applications that are failing are those being built in silos as point solutions and unable to drive impact outside the labs.
Michael Scott, VP and Head of Ad Sales, Revenue and Operations at Samsung Ads, noted that TV is continuing to change from a passive medium to one where interaction around everything from shopping to content is the norm.
The biggest shift we’re seeing is the leap from lean-back connected TV to interactive TV, where viewer engagement is no longer a passive metric, but an active lever for performance. Interactivity is becoming central to how brands connect with consumers, and at Samsung Ads, we’re leaning in with innovation that bridges content and commerce.
Take our GameBreaks, our interactive ad format that transforms traditional breaks into branded, playable moments – allowing advertisers to deliver personalized, interactive moments within ad pods that not only capture attention, but invite action. We’re not stopping there - with our other formats like ShoppingBreaks, we’re eliminating the friction between product discovery and purchase. Instead of driving viewers to second screens, we’re meeting them where they already are, turning the biggest screen in the home into a real-time conversion engine fueled by content, creators, and commerce.
We see this as a critical evolution of our “Conversion TV” thesis. As viewers embrace streaming for everything from sports to shopping, the line between content consumption and purchase intent is blurring. We’re building for that future, one where viewers don’t just watch TV, they interact with it, shop through it, and influence it in real-time.
Michael Fogarty, Head of Agency Partnerships at Tatari, emphasized that sports rights issues mean fall ’25 is still all about creating hybrid plans.
Fall ’25 is the first streaming-led, linear-reinforced TV season. Streaming viewership still carries the lead into September, but as NFL and the new NBA rights kick in, broadcast/cable snap back around live sports. The result: Plans must be hybrid and dynamic, swinging week-to-week between CTV tentpoles and selective linear to hit reach and outcomes efficiently.
Daniel Spinosa, President of Premion, looked at how, thanks to streaming, local SMBs are finally getting in on the premium sports game.
The biggest shift this fall is the surge in demand for live sports on CTV from SMBs. For years, in-game inventory was reserved for national brands with big budgets and complex buying teams—leaving local and regional advertisers on the sidelines.
At Premion, we’ve changed that. By partnering directly with publishers, we built a proprietary solution that makes premium live sports inventory programmatically accessible, transparent, and scalable for local buyers. Whether it’s the NFL, NBA, college football, or major tentpole events, regional advertisers can now target fans in real time with the same sophistication the big platforms offer—only without the complexity.
This levels the playing field so local businesses can show up in the cultural moments that matter most. That’s the true game-changer: live sports, simplified and accessible for every local advertiser.
Matthew Henick, SVP of Ventura TV OS at The Trade Desk, cautioned that a tendency to deemphasize the TVOS will impact everyone from OEMs to retailers to publishers.
The big tech companies will push their TVOS projects further down the list of internal priorities as more resources continue to move to AI and higher-margin initiatives elsewhere in the company. This will affect the investment and support OEMs, Retailers and Publishers receive and potentially set the table for them to abandon them completely or, worse, change their partnership models to be even more extractive.
Our TVREV take? AI is going to dominate the conversation in two distinct ways:
On the one hand we will hear all about how it is going to replace jobs and concept, write, place, measure and refine ad campaigns all on its own within the next 18 months.
On the other, consumer GPTs are going to continue to mess up bigly, sending people to restaurants that never existed or replacing key details in an email.
That dichotomy—the Barnumesque overpromise and the multiple instances of failure—are sure to slow adoption.
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