NEW YORK—A new study from Gracenote highlights how ongoing problems with data and measurement are limiting the shift of ad budgets from linear TV to CTV advertising.
The new "TV Audiences Have Shifted. Ad Dollars Have Not: The Need for Content Intelligence in the CTV Era," report finds that 86% of U.S. media planners would move more linear budgets to CTV if show-level targeting and reporting were available.
The reallocation would not stop at traditional TV. Sixty-five percent say they would also consider shifting spend from programmatic video and 63% from display, suggesting richer content intelligence could help CTV win a greater share of digital ad spend across the broader media mix.
"Buyers aren't asking for more complexity — they're asking for the same transparency they've relied on for decades in linear TV," said Ryan Moore, chief business officer at Gracenote. "Bringing show-level visibility to CTV gives the channel a clearer path to bigger budgets, not just from linear but across the digital video ecosystem. When buyers have the insight to validate placement quality and prove impact, CTV becomes more accountable and competitive."
The report spotlights a major blind spot in connected TV that Gracenote defines as the CTV Data Gap.
While advertisers have embraced CTV's audience targeting, the market still lacks a standardized view of the programming attributes behind each ad impression. Without that content layer, buyers lose confidence at every stage — from planning to post-campaign reporting. This uncertainty makes decision-makers hesitant to fund CTV at scale, the researchers reported.
They also argue that the Gracenote Content Graph helps close this gap by giving advertisers a source-validated view of CTV inventory, including descriptors such as genre, rating and language, along with program-level metadata and unique content identifiers.
Additional findings from the report include:
- 89% of media planners anticipate shifting more budget from linear TV to CTV over the next 12 to 24 months, underscoring CTV's continued momentum.
- 100% of programmatic traders say show-level transparency is very or extremely important for ensuring brand safety and inventory quality in CTV.
- 95% of programmatic traders agree that the absence of show-level signals prevents them from advocating for more CTV budget during planning.
- 80% of traders would shift budget from audience-targeted to contextually targeted CTV with actionable content signals.
- 47% of media planners cite limited show- or content-level data as a primary barrier to moving more spend into CTV.
Advertisers, agencies and media partners can download the full report here.
