This article was based on the interview with AdRoll’s Alison Clark on connecting CTV to an omnichannel approach by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
For decades, the television was the undisputed king of brand advertising. The formula was simple, if expensive: buy a spot, produce a memorable 30-second story, and hope that sheer reach and repetition would embed your brand into the cultural consciousness. The metrics were broad—GRP, reach, frequency—and the connection to actual sales was often a matter of faith, correlation, and some very sophisticated modeling. Then came digital, and with it, Connected TV (CTV). For a long time, however, we marketers treated this new channel with the old broadcast mindset. We bought it for awareness, measured it with impressions, and kept it in a neat silo, far away from the performance marketing engine humming along on search and social.
This approach is no longer tenable, nor is it necessary. The technology, data infrastructure, and strategic frameworks have evolved to the point where we can, and must, treat the biggest screen in the home as a true performance channel. This isn’t about abandoning the brand-building power of sight, sound, and motion. It’s about augmenting it with the accountability, targeting, and optimization capabilities we expect from every other digital channel. It’s about moving beyond the set-it-and-forget-it media buy and embracing an agile, data-driven approach to television. I recently spoke with Alison Clark, GTM Strategy Lead at AdRoll, about this very transition. Her insights provide a clear roadmap for leaders looking to unlock the full potential of CTV, transforming it from a line item in the brand budget to a critical driver of business outcomes.
The Performance Toolbox for TV Has Arrived
The fundamental question for any marketing leader evaluating a channel is, “Can I measure its impact on my business?” For years, the answer for TV was a qualified “sort of.” The shift to CTV promised more, but the initial tools were still rudimentary. According to Clark, that has fundamentally changed. The lag between ad exposure and performance data has collapsed, providing the feedback loops necessary for a true performance discipline.
“A lot has changed, right? If we think about measurement and targeting and optimization, all of those things have evolved. So from a measurement standpoint, we can now see what a consumer did after they saw a CTV ad. Did they do a branded search? Did they go to the website? Did they convert? … On top of that, right, we can use audience targeting and be very specific. On the ABM side of our business, we can get all the way down to account and contact level targeting.”
Clark’s point underscores a critical evolution. The conversation is no longer just about who could have seen the ad, but about what the people who did see the ad did next. This moves CTV out of the realm of abstract awareness and into the world of measurable influence. When you can connect an ad served during a streaming binge to a subsequent branded search or a website visit, you change the entire ROI calculation. Furthermore, the granularity of targeting now available is a world away from traditional demographic buys. The ability to target specific accounts for an ABM campaign or build audiences based on purchase history means less waste and a greater probability of reaching an in-market consumer. This isn’t just television with an IP address; it’s a sophisticated, data-driven channel that has earned its place in the performance marketing toolkit.
CTV as an Amplifier, Not a Replacement
When a new performance channel emerges, the first question from the C-suite is often, “What channel does this replace?” It’s a fair question in a world of finite budgets. However, thinking of CTV as a one-for-one swap for another channel misses its primary strategic value. Its role isn’t to cannibalize your search or social budget, but to make those budgets work harder. It’s the ultimate omnichannel amplifier.
“You know, it’s never replacement. It’s more of how does CTV make the rest of my dollars and rest of my media work even harder? … Here at AdRoll, we see that all the time. You add CTV into the plan, and the rest of your media performs better and more efficient, and that’s what clients are looking for. It’s helping lift the rest of your media and make them work harder.”
This framing is crucial for any leader building a business case for increased CTV investment. The goal isn’t just to measure the direct conversions from CTV—a challenging task in a non-clickable environment—but to measure its halo effect across the entire marketing mix. When a CTV campaign is running, do you see a lift in branded search volume? Does the click-through rate on your social ads improve? Are you seeing more direct traffic to your website? By creating awareness and consideration in a high-impact, lean-back environment, CTV provides the “air cover” that makes your direct response “ground game” more effective. This requires a measurement framework that moves beyond last-click attribution and embraces a more holistic view of channel influence, but the payoff is a more efficient media ecosystem where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Activating Your First-Party Data in the Living Room
The industry-wide pivot toward first-party data, spurred by the (repeatedly delayed) demise of the third-party cookie, has forced brands to get their data houses in order. This was a necessary, if sometimes painful, exercise. The good news is that this newly organized, accessible first-party data is the rocket fuel for performance CTV. The same segments you’ve built for email or paid social can now be deployed on the television screen.
“Brands are sitting on a wealth of data, right? They have who their loyalties are, who visited their websites, who abandoned carts. That is a wealth of data and insights that they have that they can activate against… You build out audience segments ‘cause you wanna talk to your loyalists different than you wanna talk to a new customer, different than someone who has abandoned their cart.”
This is where strategy becomes tangible. Imagine serving a specific message to a list of customers who abandoned a shopping cart in the last seven days. Or reaching known loyalists with an early announcement of a new product line. Or, in the B2B world, ensuring your target account list sees your message about an upcoming webinar. This transforms CTV from a blunt instrument for top-of-funnel awareness into a precise tool for mid- and even lower-funnel engagement. It allows you to tailor your message based on where a customer is in their journey, creating a more cohesive and relevant experience. It’s the practical application of the omnichannel promise: using what you know about your customer to deliver a better message, regardless of the screen they’re watching.
From ‘Set and Forget’ to ‘Sense and Respond’
Perhaps the most significant departure from the traditional TV buying model is the newfound ability to optimize campaigns in-flight. The long, static media buys of the past are being replaced by a more dynamic, agile approach that mirrors how we manage other digital channels. The feedback loops are now tight enough to allow for meaningful course correction, not just a post-mortem report six months later.
“The good news is we no longer have to wait to optimize… If you see that your website visits and conversions are down, maybe that’s a signal that you need to a creative refresh… if you’re seeing that you’re not getting new traffic to your site, maybe that you need to expand your audience. So now the ability to see results and see what’s happening in real time, you can make those changes.”
Clark wisely cautions against constant, knee-jerk optimizations; you need to let data accumulate to identify real trends. But the principle is transformative. Marketing leaders and their teams can now monitor performance signals—site traffic, conversion rates, creative fatigue—and make strategic adjustments. Is a particular creative concept underperforming? Swap it out. Is an audience segment delivering exceptional results? Shift more budget toward it. This “sense and respond” capability is the hallmark of modern marketing. Applying it to CTV requires a shift in process and mindset for both internal teams and agency partners, moving away from a traditional media planning cycle and toward a continuous optimization loop.
The era of treating CTV as a digital extension of linear television is definitively over. The technology has matured, and it’s time our strategies did as well. We have moved from the blunt instrument of household reach to the surgical precision of account-level targeting. We have evolved from measuring vague impressions to analyzing tangible influence on search behavior and site conversions. The rigid, long-term media buy has given way to a flexible, optimizable campaign that can be adjusted based on real-time performance signals. This demands a more integrated and data-fluent approach from us as leaders, but it unlocks an incredible opportunity to make the most powerful screen in our customers’ lives an accountable and effective part of our growth engine.
Looking ahead, this integration will only deepen. As Clark notes, the future lies in a truly unified view of the customer journey, where we can see precisely how all channels, including CTV, work together. AI will play an increasingly important role, automating tactical optimizations and freeing up our teams to focus on the strategic imperatives of creative excellence, brand storytelling, and customer experience. The holy grail of a single pane of glass for activation, measurement, and optimization across the entire media mix is no longer a distant dream. The path is becoming clearer, and for those willing to embrace the new performance capabilities of CTV, the advantage will be significant. The living room is officially open for business.
