Connected TV Statistics 2026: Ad Spend, Viewing Share and CPMs

Streaming took 49.6% of all US TV viewing in August 2026, the highest share Nielsen’s The Gauge has published, with YouTube alone at a record 15.8%. Advertisers are following: the IAB puts 2026 US connected TV (CTV) ad spend at $29.3 billion, up 11%, while EMARKETER’s broader forecast puts it above $37 billion, up 14%. Both are right. They count different things, and this page shows you exactly where the gap comes from.

Every figure below links to the source it came from. Forecasts are labeled as forecasts, and company-reported numbers are labeled as company-reported.

The 5 connected TV numbers people ask for most

US CTV ad spend by year, 2021 to 2026

The cleanest year-by-year series comes from the IAB 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy report, built by Guideline from agency billing data that covers all six major US holding companies and most large independent agencies, plus a survey of 360 buyers fielded February 20 to March 13, 2026. CTV has grown every year, but social video passed it in 2025.

Three things stand out. CTV roughly doubled in five years, from $15.2 billion to $29.3 billion. Growth is slowing toward low double digits. And the money is coming out of linear: of buyers raising CTV budgets in 2026, 54% are funding it from linear TV, 40% from print and radio and 38% from social media, per the same IAB report. The share of small advertisers investing in CTV rose from 60% in 2024 to 85% in 2026, which the IAB credits to self-serve platforms.

For context on the wider market, the separate IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report (April 16, 2026) put all US digital video revenue at $78 billion in 2025, up 25.4%, inside a $294.6 billion internet ad market. It does not break out CTV, and its video bucket also includes short-form video, so do not set it against the $73.6 billion above as if they were the same measure. Our US digital ad spend statistics cover the rest of that report.

Connected TV ad spend forecast: IAB vs EMARKETER

EMARKETER’s forecasts are behind a paywall, so here is what is publicly stated by EMARKETER or quoted from its data:

Why IAB and EMARKETER differ by about $8 billion

1. YouTube. The IAB’s definitions appendix files YouTube under social video. Its CTV bucket is “TV-like” streaming: FAST services such as Pluto TV and Tubi, ad-supported subscriptions such as Hulu and Paramount+, and vMVPDs such as YouTube TV and Sling. EMARKETER’s forecast includes YouTube’s CTV ad sales, which MNTN quotes from EMARKETER data at $9.21 billion.
2. Method. The IAB numbers are Guideline estimates built from agency billings and forward bookings. EMARKETER builds its own forecast model, and its methodology and full tables sit behind its paywall.
3. Vintage. Each firm revises its forecasts several times a year, so a figure quoted in a blog may already be out of date.

A rough check: $29.3 billion (IAB CTV) plus about $9.2 billion of YouTube on TV comes to about $38.5 billion, close to EMARKETER’s figure. That is our arithmetic across two different forecast editions, not a number either firm publishes. Still, it shows the gap is mostly about definitions, not a disagreement on how fast the market is growing.

Which CTV number should you quote?

Use this table to match the question you are answering to the right figure.

Streaming share of US TV time (Nielsen The Gauge)

Nielsen’s The Gauge measures how Americans aged 2 and older split TV-set viewing time. It is measured viewing, not a survey or a forecast, and it includes YouTube watched on a TV set.

Read the August record carefully. Total TV usage fell 4.4% from July and streaming usage itself fell 3.2%, so the share rose because broadcast fell faster (down 14% as the World Cup surge ended). On Christmas Day 2025, streaming hit 54% of daily TV usage, the largest single-day share Nielsen has recorded.

One warning for anyone tracking this monthly: Nielsen says a one-time methodology adjustment starts with the September 2026 interval, and September and October will be released together later this year. Do not compare those months directly with the figures above without noting the change.

Top platforms for reaching streaming audiences

These are shares of all US TV time, not just streaming time. YouTube, Netflix, Disney, Paramount and Peacock figures are from Nielsen’s August 2026 release; Prime Video, The Roku Channel and Tubi are from the Gauge chart as transcribed by PPC Land.

Netflix ads: the numbers to know

• More than 250 million global monthly active viewers on the ad plan, announced at its May 13, 2026 upfront, up from 190 million in November 2025. Netflix counts members who watched at least one minute of ads content in a month, multiplied by its estimate of viewers per household, per TheWrap. That is a reach metric, not a subscriber count.
• Over 80% of ads members watch every week, and the ad plan took over 60% of Q1 2026 signups in its 12 ad markets. Netflix had more than 4,000 advertisers at the end of 2025, up 70%. Its inventory can be bought programmatically through Amazon DSP, Google DV360, The Trade Desk and Yahoo, according to Digiday.
• Ad revenue passed $1.5 billion in 2025. On October 20, 2026, Netflix cut its 2026 ad revenue outlook to about $2.7 billion from about $3 billion, citing a slower rollout of some ad products, per PPC Land’s report on the Q3 letter and The Desk. That still means about 80% growth.
• Upfront commitments for 2026/27 “nearly doubled,” with no dollar figure given (TheWrap). The ad plan expands to 15 more countries in 2027.

Amazon Prime Video ads

• Average monthly ad-supported reach of more than 315 million worldwide, across 16 markets including the US, based on Amazon data from September 2024 to August 2025 (Amazon Ads).
• At its May 2026 upfront Amazon claimed over 300 million US ad-supported consumers across sports, streaming, podcasts, creators and shopping, not Prime Video alone, and authenticated reach of 90% of US households. Ad-supported Prime Video customers watch 17% more hours per month than a year earlier.

Roku

Roku’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter (August 6, 2026) reported platform revenue of $1.22 billion, up 25%, 37.9 billion streaming hours, up 7%, and more than 100 million streaming households worldwide. Third-party DSPs accounted for nearly three quarters of in-stream video ad spend on the platform. Fox agreed to acquire Roku on June 15, 2026, so Roku no longer gives guidance.

Connected TV demographics and viewership

Nielsen’s 2026 Upfront Planning Guide (March 12, 2026) is the best public source on who watches ad-supported streaming:

• Adults 18 to 49 spend 63.8% of their TV time with ad-supported TV. Streaming is 66.7% of that ad-supported time, and linear is 33.4%.
• Within streaming, 81.1% of 18 to 49 viewing is on ad-supported tiers of services like YouTube, Hulu, Prime Video, Peacock and Paramount+. The other 19% goes to FAST services.
• FAST (The Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto TV) skews to adults 35 to 64. Other AVOD services (YouTube, Disney+, Peacock, Netflix) skew to ages 18 to 34 and 2 to 17.
• Sports were nearly 30% of all ad-supported TV viewing among adults 25 to 54 in Q4 2025.

On device penetration, the most recent public household study we could verify is Leichtman Research Group’s Connected TVs 2023: 88% of US TV households had at least one connected TV device and 74% had a connected smart TV (survey of 1,770 households, reported by TV Tech). Treat that as a floor, not a 2026 reading.

CTV CPM ranges from named sources

The direction is clear: CTV prices are falling as supply grows. Media Dynamics says total primetime CPMs fell 6.2% in the 2026/27 upfront even as dollars rose 9.1%. The DataBeat figure comes from programmatic supply across its partner network and sits far below premium upfront pricing, so use it as a floor reference, not a quote for Netflix or Prime Video.

What $10,000 buys: a CPM walkthrough

The math is simple: impressions = budget ÷ CPM × 1,000, and households reached ≈ impressions ÷ average frequency. The frequency of 4 below is an assumption for the example. Use your own frequency cap.

The targeting premium is the line that surprises most buyers. Narrowing Netflix to a demo or a set of ZIP codes takes about 40% off your reach for the same money. That is worth paying only if the narrower audience converts at least 40% better. For a local professional-service firm, the geo premium is often the price of not paying for viewers outside your service area, but test broad and narrow before committing a quarter’s budget.

What is changing with identity and measurement in 2026

Most of this section comes from the IAB 2026 report’s buyer survey (360 buyers who each spent at least $1 million on advertising in 2025).

• Targeting overtook content quality as the top criterion for TV and video spend: 49% of buyers in 2026, up from 39% in 2025. The IAB ties this to eroding identity signals, IP-address degradation and AI-driven bot traffic that make it harder to confirm real human reach.
• Buyers do not fully trust where CTV ads run. Only 57% have high confidence in inventory transparency for publisher-direct deals and programmatic guaranteed buys, 45% for private marketplaces, 41% for commerce or retail media networks and 33% for the open exchange.
• Fraud tops the list of open-exchange worries (56%), followed by unverified publisher or content source (48%) and unconfirmed program or genre placement (44%). Yet only 31% would pay extra for fraud detection, versus 41% for brand safety verification and 39% for advanced measurement or attribution. PPC Land’s summary has the full breakdown, and our digital ad fraud statistics cover CTV fraud schemes.
• Lower-funnel attribution is CTV’s weak spot. Buyers who rate CTV behind other channels for sales blame no direct click-through (39%), needing a second device to act (38%), limited shoppable formats (35%), high cost per acquisition (34%) and fragmented reach (33%). Small and mid-size spenders cite high CPA at 44%, against 28% for large spenders.
• Who believes CTV drives sales depends on budget size. Among buyers spending under $10 million a year, 77% say social video beats CTV at the end of the purchase journey and only 17% pick CTV. Among those spending over $50 million, it is close to even: 41% CTV, 43% social.
• Platforms are answering with their own outcome data. Amazon says its interactive Prime Video ads produced 5x higher purchase rates and 4x more add-to-carts than standard streaming TV campaigns, from an internal study of 14,518 campaigns in 2025. Netflix says 44% of members who saw a Netflix ad had not seen it on broadcast or other streamers. Both are company-reported and not independently audited.
• Measurement itself is moving. Nielsen is making a one-time Gauge methodology adjustment starting with September 2026 data. Netflix now uses Snowflake and AWS clean rooms, with InfoSum to be added by the end of 2026.

If you plan to judge CTV on last-click conversions, you will undervalue it. Plan a holdout test or a matched-market test before you spend, and read our marketing attribution statistics for how other channels are measured. For buying mechanics, our media buying guide covers programmatic guaranteed, PMPs and the open exchange, and the programmatic advertising statistics page tracks open-market pricing.

How to evaluate and compare CTV platforms for your media plan

Score each platform on these five checks before you sign an insertion order. Each one maps to a finding above.

I would not put a CTV test into a plan until two of those five checks pass. If you want a second opinion on where CTV fits in your channel mix, you can book a consultation.

Frequently asked questions

What are the key connected TV statistics for 2026?

Streaming reached 49.6% of US TV time in August 2026, with YouTube at a record 15.8% (Nielsen). The IAB forecasts US CTV ad spend at $29.3 billion, up 11%, and digital video at 61% of all TV and video ad spend. Streaming also passed linear in 2026/27 primetime upfront dollars, $17.2 billion to $16.6 billion (Media Dynamics).

What is the connected TV ad spend forecast for 2026 and beyond?

The IAB puts 2026 US CTV ad spend at $29.3 billion, up 11%, excluding YouTube. EMARKETER forecasts more than $37 billion, up 14%, because it counts YouTube on TV screens. An earlier EMARKETER forecast, quoted by MNTN, projects $46.89 billion in 2028, when CTV would pass traditional TV ad spend for the first time.

How big is the connected TV advertising market?

In the US, CTV ad spend grew from $15.2 billion in 2021 to an estimated $29.3 billion in 2026 on the IAB definition, roughly doubling in five years. Social video ($31.9 billion) passed CTV in 2025. Total US digital video, including CTV, social and online video, is estimated at $81.9 billion for 2026.

What are connected TV demographics?

Nielsen's 2026 Upfront Planning Guide shows adults 18 to 49 spend 63.8% of TV time with ad-supported TV, and streaming is 66.7% of that time. FAST services such as The Roku Channel, Tubi and Pluto TV skew to adults 35 to 64, while AVOD services such as YouTube, Disney+ and Netflix skew to viewers under 35.

How much does connected TV advertising cost per thousand impressions?

Media Dynamics put the average streaming CPM at $25.90 for adults in the 2026/27 upfront, against $41.65 for broadcast primetime and $17.70 for cable. Digiday reported Netflix at about $30 before targeting, with up to 40% more for demo, geo or genre layers. Open programmatic CTV averaged $4.68 in DataBeat's April 2026 data.

What is changing with CTV identity and measurement in 2026?

Targeting became buyers' top criterion for TV and video spend (49%, up from 39%) as identity signals and IP data erode, per the IAB. Only 33% of buyers have high confidence in open-exchange CTV transparency. Nielsen is applying a one-time Gauge methodology adjustment from September 2026, and Netflix is adding clean rooms for measurement.

Which platforms reach the most streaming viewers?

By share of all US TV time in August 2026, YouTube led at 15.8%, followed by Netflix at 7.7%, Disney at 4.8%, Prime Video at 4.2% and The Roku Channel at 2.9% (Nielsen). Netflix reports more than 250 million global monthly ad-plan viewers and Amazon more than 315 million for Prime Video ads, each on its own definition.