Addressable TV Is What Streaming Promised to Be
For years, marketers looked to streaming and CTV as the next evolution of TV, promising broader reach and better targeting. But without deterministic data to connect real households, that promise turned into the illusion of scale.
On paper, ad-supported streaming platforms look like they deliver scale. When you peel back the layers, a different story emerges. Comscore data shows that many of those “millions of households” overlap across streaming services, creating massive duplication. And, according to iSpot, just 16.5% of all streaming and CTV impressions are ad-supported to begin with, leaving advertisers competing for a small slice of verified, targetable inventory.
The result? Marketers chasing efficiency and growth often find themselves and their budgets paying to reach the same viewers. Again and again. Or worse, missing them entirely.
The Audiences That Matter Most
The real opportunity isn’t in chasing inflated viewership claims. It’s in focusing on the viewers who actually drive business outcomes: your true audience and those elusive light TV viewers that most others miss.
Across the U.S., 31 million households can’t be reached effectively by streaming or traditional TV alone. These are valuable consumers, often high-spending, lightly exposed, and still highly engaged with premium content environments. These are the audiences who aren’t just watching TV, they are converting. Reaching them requires verified, deterministic data that can bridge platforms and households with precision.
And that’s where addressable TV performs.
The Perfect Match Between Data and Impact
Unlike probabilistic targeting or third-party workarounds, addressable TV uses privacy-compliant, household-level data to reach viewers, not modeled assumptions. And when advertisers rebalance a portion of their media plans to include it, the impact is measurable.
A recent DISH Media study with insights from Janus Strategy & Insights, modeled what happens when advertisers shift 10% of their budget to addressable TV from traditional streaming/CTV or linear centric budgets. The findings show that:
- With a 500k budget, in-target viewers saw a 27% lift while light TV viewers saw a 136% lift
- With a 5M budget, in-target viewers saw a 18% lift while light TV viewers saw a 38% lift
- Significant incremental revenue, with campaigns delivering $74M for 500k budgets and $102M for $5M budgets for example.
Those gains come without increasing spend, simply by redirecting existing dollars toward verified audiences. Proving that deterministic data doesn’t just improve efficiency; it grows the total reachable market.
From Counting Impressions to Creating Impact
The future of TV isn’t about adding more screens. It’s about adding more certainty. In a marketplace overflowing with channels, devices, and platforms, the brands that win will be those that don’t just reach numbers, they reach the right people, their intended audience.
Addressable TV gives marketers that clarity, pairing deterministic data with premium content to turn fragmented impressions into meaningful results.
Because in a marketplace obsessed with counting audiences, the real power lies in knowing who you’re reaching and proving it makes a difference.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from DISH Media. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]