CTV is only growing in popularity — time spent with CTV is projected to grow in the coming year, and as more viewers cut the cord, both consumers and advertisers turn their attention to CTV.
You might be reading this because you’re tasked with finding the right platform for this growing channel. Advertisers are betting big on CTV (and seeing measurable results), so it’s time to get on board if you’ve been sitting on the fence.
This article will break down popular CTV ad platforms and their primary features to make platform choice easier for you. We’ve split the CTV platforms into three groups: independent DSPs, walled garden networks, and specialized platforms.
First, let’s go over what CTV ad platforms are and why they help you.
A CTV ad platform enables businesses to serve video ads on streaming devices like smart TVs. An ad platform takes an advertiser's video ad, applies precise targeting logic based on household data, behavior, or location, and delivers the ad directly into the streaming content in real-time.
A CTV ad platform is the intermediary between advertisers who want to show ads and publishers/streamers who have ad space.
This isn’t that different from the fundamentals of programmatic advertising platforms — it’s just a newer channel for the same concept. Many of the same targeting and measurement capabilities you expect from other programmatic channels are available for CTV.
For CTV to be effective, you need to evaluate your desired platform for these core features: reach, targeting capabilities, and measurement. All three are key to reaching advertising KPIs like viewer completion rate (VCR), ROAS, and CPA.
Some CTV ad platforms will only have a few strong features, while others will have the full package.
It’s important to ask where your CTV ads will be and the quality of an ad platform’s inventory. An ad platform with exceptional reach will feature your CTV ads alongside other high-quality placements on streaming platforms effective for your brand’s goals.
Look for access to top-tier, brand-safe inventory (such as major networks, targeted niche networks, and established streamers) and high video completion rates, which should be over 90%. Ensures your ads run alongside high-quality content and are seen by engaged viewers, building brand trust.
You should be able to know and understand how your ad platform is targeting CTV viewers — this might be a no-brainer statement, but some platforms are a black box with little insight into the practice.
You should be able to target CTV audiences with the same capabilities as other web audiences. This includes:
Demographics: Age, gender, income, education, etc.
Behavioral data: Past purchase history, website visits, app usage, etc.
Interest-based targeting: Hobbies, interests, and passions.
Geographic targeting: Location-based targeting down to specific zip codes.
Psychographic targeting: Values, lifestyles, and attitudes.
Contextual targeting: Targeting based on the content a viewer watched.
Account-based targeting: Targeting based on contact lists.
Look for a CTV platform that lets you retarget users who’ve interacted with ads on other channels, making your campaigns and touchpoints more effective.
A good CTV ad platform will enable full-funnel measurement, linking ad exposure to web visits, app installs, and interactions with ads on other channels.
Many CTV platforms will integrate with a third party for measurement, so advertisers can gauge online or offline purchases, registrations, add-to-carts, app activity, credit card sales, QR code scans, and other activities related to CTV engagement.
It’s important to be able to track view-through and cross-channel engagement, not just metrics related to the CTV ad itself as engagement after watching a CTV ad is the strongest indicator of intent. It’s also important that your reporting can identify how many unique households your ad reaches, deduplicating your list of viewers.
So, which ad platform is best for you? We’ve highlighted some of the best ad platforms and their strengths so you can find a match for your campaigns and goals.
Independent DSPs have some clear benefits: transparency, independence from media ownership, and advanced features for media buyers to control their campaigns across the entire internet.
Independent DSPs don’t rely on one channel or strategy, enabling you to use a full-funnel platform and more easily measure cross-channel impact.
AdRoll is a full-funnel connected advertising platform that’s been around for nearly two decades. While CTV is a recent addition to our channel offerings, AdRoll has the consumer data and industry connections to power its CTV solution.
AdRoll has access to 100+ premium publishers, including Paramount, HBO MAX, ESPN, the Roku Channel, Kayo, and more. Our reach extends to over 200 million CTV viewers. Advertisers shouldn’t always set their sights on the most expensive and popular publishers, but rather a broader mix of publishers that will be most effective for them. With our range, AdRoll gives advertisers the opportunity to find the right publishers and audiences to succeed.
AdRoll also partners with Experian and Innovid to ensure targeting and measurement are as robust as you’d expect from any other channel.
With Experian, you can access third-party data to 2,000+ syndicated audiences for CTV and enable device graphs, which map all the devices and identifiers within a household, connecting one device to another. This shows which devices belong to a member of a data segment and target ads across multiple devices within the same household. This partnership was purpose-built with ABM in mind.
AdRoll also uses a few advanced techniques for audience targeting such as holdout groups, lift analysis, and predictive analytics. You can also use your own data, be it first-party data uploads or retargeting from other sources.
With Innovid, you can use a third-party to measure campaign performance against outcomes like reach, conversions, and frequency. One of the most difficult elements of CTV advertising is accurate measurement, but Innovid fills this gap, and AdRoll’s cross-channel measurement clearly delineates which channels contribute to campaign success and elevates CTV to a full-funnel advertising strategy that impacts performance metrics.
One of AdRoll’s core CTV strengths is retargeting. Users can retarget people who visited their website with a CTV ad, and users who see a CTV ad can be retargeted with web display ads. Since many platforms struggle to identify viewers of CTV ads, this technique is a valuable and differentiated strength of AdRoll’s.
CTV is a fast-growing and significant channel for The Trade Desk, which has been a popular DSP since 2009.
The Trade Desk is most known for its CTV reach, touting impressive partnerships with publishers like Roku, Disney, and Netflix. Their marketplace for CTV inventory is one of the largest in the industry. However, as we mentioned before, what’s most important is being able to identify the right publishers, targeting, and media mix for your brand — not every business needs to pay for the most expensive ad inventory to succeed.
For targeting, TTD uses a proprietary household graph ID and UID2 to create audience segments for CTV. It can be more difficult to decipher how this proprietary technology benefits advertisers as opposed to a partnership that touts its specific features, but TTD does note that UID2 is precise enough to enable ABM by connecting first-party data to CTV households.
Like other DSPs, it will be able to manage frequency caps across channels if you also use TTD for your other ad channels. The con here is that TTD has high minimums and a la carte fees that can make budgeting difficult — it’s difficult to navigate without specialized support.
For measurement, TTD uses unified measurement across its channels that allows users to measure OTT and CTV impact. However, it lacks the purpose-built and specialized measurement that other DSPs might offer, particularly when it comes to ABM.
StackAdapt typically markets itself as a self-serve advertising solution, and they added CTV to their channel offerings to expand what advertisers can do with the platform.
StackAdapt has inventory with publishers like Disney+ and NBCUniversal, keeping it toe to toe with other prominent DSPs. StackAdapt doesn’t explain on its site how it might ensure brand safety, but they do have over 400 publisher partners with prominent and niche inventory.
StackAdapt’s CTV targeting comes with many of the same targeting capabilities as web channels, such as lookalike audiences, third-party data segments, and CRM data. However, StackAdapt leans heavily on intent data for ABM rather than journey-based CRM targeting. Its retargeting capabilities can be handy for cross-channel advertising, but note that it’s not always retargeting tied to a CRM journey.
Unfortunately, when it comes to measurement, StackAdapt doesn’t natively tie CTV to pipeline metrics like influenced opportunities or revenue, though it can track ROAS and view-through conversions. The platform tracks standard CTV performance metrics such as VCR and Cost Per Completed View (CPCV), which are typically high due to non-skippable inventory. StackAdapt also facilitates brand lift studies with control groups to gauge CTV impact on brand recall and sentiment.
When you’re researching CTV ad platforms, Viant is another DSP that might come up. Viant has been around since 1999, though it currently exhibits a large CTV presence to advertise this growing channel.
Like TTD, the core of its technology is what they call the Viant Household ID (VHHID), a proprietary, deterministic identifier that maps all connected devices back to a single residence. VHHID can reach 115 million homes and access over 80% of the bid stream. Viant works with top publishers like NBC Universal and Tubi, so brands can choose premium publishers.
In terms of targeting, Viant’s strength is thousands of privacy-conscious audience segments based on demographics, purchase behavior, and location. Viant has a partnership with Wurl to create scene-level contextual intelligence, which allows advertisers to align their creative with a video's specific context in real-time.
Viant does boost closed-loop measurement, which helps you use CTV for performance rather than solely brand awareness. Viant claims foot traffic attribution (measuring store visits motivated by TV ads) and multi-touch attribution. Its measurement comes from VHHID and provides a clear, measurable path to calculating ROAS and incremental lift.
Walled garden networks are as the name suggests: advertising platforms that use proprietary data from their own ecosystem. The pro of walled gardens is access to proprietary data these platforms don’t always share with outside sources.
However, two big cons are the black-box nature of that data and the limited ability to integrate with other platforms and tools. Walled gardens don’t communicate easily with other platforms, making it difficult to get an omnichannel view of performance and activate campaigns across multiple channels.
If you’re opting for a walled garden network, it’s best to choose a big-name brand with a wealth of data, available ad channels, and targeting strategies.
Since Amazon owns some of its own streaming properties, it has an advantage in reach. Advertisers who go with Amazon’s proprietary DSP gain exclusive access to premium CTV inventory across Prime Video, Freevee, Fire TV, and Twitch; this is in addition to the other big-name streaming publishers they work with.
However, this reach comes with the drawback of being a walled garden: advertisers have less log-level transparency and limited control over specific placements compared to independent DSPs. (And the high minimum spend will price some mid-market and small businesses.)
Amazon will beat other platforms out on its own history, browsing behavior, and in-market shopping intent. The primary con here is the retail focus of the data; while excellent for CPG and e-commerce, brands whose goals are primarily B2B or non-shopping related may find the audience data less tailored than on specialty platforms.
Amazon can connect a CTV ad impression directly to a subsequent purchase on Amazon.com, which gives clean ROAS. Amazon’s measurement also comes with full-funnel metric reporting for every one in its ecosystem.
Google has a wealth of data, which makes it one of the top picks for CTV advertisers who’d prefer to go with a walled garden.
Google DV360’s biggest advantage in reach comes from ownership of YouTube inventory, which comprises the largest ad-supported video audience globally — CTV included.
DV360 also holds its own as a full programmatic DSP, allowing access to third-party exchanges and premium publishers. Still, DV360's reach won’t be as diverse as the average DSP’s open-web inventory.
DV360’s focus on first-party data is privacy-centric and enables precise household-level targeting, and measurement is familiar to most advertisers since it integrates across the entire Google Analytics, Campaign Manager 360, and Google’s other measurement products.
Specialized platforms prioritize CTV, with occasional fringe investment in other ad channels to support CTV. The benefit of a specialized platform is of course its laser focus on one channel; the con is the time, money, and/or friction of integrating a specialized platform into a full-funnel ad strategy.
MNTN is all about connected TV advertising. The platform offers display advertising to supplement CTV, but its focus is clear.
One of its selling points is access to premium inventory like Hulu and NBCU — which, as we’ve covered by now, many other platforms also offer to stay competitive.
How does its targeting and measurement stand out as a CTV-specific platform? MNTN offers targeting for website visitors and CRM cookie-matching. Their third-party targeting includes demographic, interest-based, and in-market signals. However, since it only runs two ad channels, it may not have as many targeting opportunities as independent DSPs, such as advanced retargeting.
MNTN’s measurement is a black box, with a proprietary framework called Verified Visits Attribution that ties CTV impressions to site visitors. This attribution model only gives CTV credit if no other paid channels influenced the visit, making ROAS and CPV clear cut—it can also misattribute credit to CTV when other channels were at play. Unfortunately, because MNTN focuses primarily on one channel, they can’t measure CTV impact on cross-channel user journeys or at the account level.
Vibe.co is a fairly new player, having its US launch in 2022. It's a self-serve platform specializing in streaming TV advertising.
Vibe has impressive reach for its low barrier to entry. The platform boasts access to over 500 streaming apps and TV channels, including major services like Hulu, Paramount+, and ESPN+. The depth of these publisher relationships may not be as extensive as deals from enterprise DSPs like TTD or Viant. The low barrier to entry comes with a con: there’s no managed service option, which appeals to bigger teams.
Vibe's targeting is called Household IP Targeting. It enables campaigns targeting audiences based on location (ZIP code), demographics, interests, and behavior — also enabling the targeting of website visitors. With this simplicity comes a con: some of the targeting options lack granularity compared to more complex DSPs.
Vibe can treat CTV as a direct response channel. Advertisers can monitor campaign performance with real-time data. Vibe supports pixel tracking and has MMPs to connect ad exposure to web visits, app installs, and purchases.
When you’re choosing a CTV platform, take into account your holistic advertising goals. CTV should be one piece of a full-funnel campaign, and it should integrate into your multi-channel plans.
Consider a full-funnel advertising platform that offers CTV, like we do here at AdRoll. An ad platform that consolidates your stack rather than adding to it will benefit you in the long term.
Last updated on October 28th, 2025.