Connected TV and Streaming are easily accessible and embraced by the masses. If you still think they’re the domain of early adopters or the tech savvy, what rock have you been living under? Streaming usage in the US has increased by 71% since 2021, according to Nielsen, and earlier this year finally surpassed the combined share of Broadcast + Cable in May 2025.
Streaming on CTV is TV, and as such it needs to be a key pillar of your advertising strategy. It should bolster your other media buying and vice-versa. The most effective advertisers drive success by tapping in to premium CTV inventory and tying it to other advertising efforts to build a cohesive all-channel campaign.
The scale of Streaming on CTV is massive, but is dominated by a few larger streaming platforms. Brands can reach 25% of all TV, or well over half of streaming’s ~45% share of TV, across just the three largest streaming platforms. The largest by a significant margin, YouTube with a 12.5% share, is only available to advertisers through Google’s platforms.
Large advertisers can buy ads on most of these platforms individually by building relationships and working directly with the publisher. Yet it’s a misconception to think of this as a fragmented media buying market. Best-in-class advertising programs consolidate buying, expedite relationship building, and streamline the RFP process by leveraging Google’s Display & Video 360 (DV360)’s Premium Inventory Marketplace.
Reduce the Administrative Burden
Consolidating buying in DV360 removes the administrative burden of managing relationships and billing separately with each publisher partner. Buyers and planners can search for high-impact inventory in DV360’s marketplace and filter by criteria that align with their campaign strategy.
Submitting an RFP or tapping into a Deal or Curated Package through DV360’s Marketplace gives instant credibility and a direct line of communication with major publishers.
After a deal is negotiated and accepted, tagless trafficking in DV360 eliminates the tedious and error-prone process of manually downloading and sending tags.
As an example, a leading CPG advertiser was in the process of changing agencies and wanted to consolidate all their direct buys, as well as multiple DSPs being used across their family of brands. Choosing DV360 as their DSP for all digital media buying allowed them to view near-realtime performance data and make on-the-fly adjustments across all brands and buying channels in one place. Their agency reported 30% less time spent on pulling and combining data for monthly performance reporting, allowing more time to focus on analysis and strategy.
Improve Performance & Measurement
Advertisers can improve performance and reach more relevant audiences without limiting scale by layering Google’s free In-Market or Affinity audiences. DV360 also provides the ability to build and upload your own first-party audiences for free, or use third-party audiences from various data providers at an additional CPM rate.
Keeping buying consolidated within DV360 connects fragmented buys across different publishers, feeding meaningful performance data back into DV360 to make better bidding decisions and optimize performance for future buys.
According to Google, cross-device measurement at the household level shows a 90% increase in conversions attributable to CTV campaigns. Unifying CTV campaigns can result in up to 165% increase in ROAS compared to fragmented publisher buys.
This is measured by GMP’s Floodlight tag, which provides unified measurement, deduplication, and a more connected picture of attribution across what would otherwise be fragmented buys.
This connected and holistic approach to buying and measuring paid media gives marketing leaders the meaningful data needed to drive real business outcomes and directly tie those results to their efforts.
What was once nascent is now table stakes. CTV is TV. DV360 provides the technical infrastructure needed to run a world-class TV advertising program.
To fully leverage the full features and capabilities of these powerful tools, work with a Google GMP Sales Partner for platform licenses and support for DV360 and other GMP products.
Still in the process of evaluating GMP Partners? Read 5 questions to ask when evaluating GMP partners.
