Global connected TV ad spend is forecast to hit about $46.3 billion in 2026, with the US alone near $38 billion. CTV brings programmatic targeting and measurement to the biggest screen in the house, and Australian advertisers should treat it as performance, not just brand.
Television used to be the channel you could not measure. Connected TV took that excuse away.
Global connected TV ad spend is forecast to reach about $46.3 billion in 2026. The US alone sits near $38 billion, growing roughly 14.5% on the year. The television in the lounge room has quietly become a programmatic ad unit, bought and measured like digital.
This is the part that changes the maths for a lot of businesses. The old wall between brand television and performance digital is coming down. CTV lets you target by audience, cap frequency and tie an impression to an outcome, on the biggest screen in the house. The reach of TV with the accountability of digital is a genuinely different proposition.
The growth is not just an American story. The UK is climbing to about $3.25 billion, Canada to roughly $1.29 billion and China to about $3.47 billion. Australia rides the same wave through BVOD and streaming inventory. The screen is the same as it always was. The way you buy it is not.
Why it matters
For Australian advertisers, CTV reframes a channel most treated as a brand luxury. If you can buy the lounge room on audience, control how often a household sees you and connect it to a result, then television starts competing for performance budget, not just brand budget.
The trap is buying CTV like old television. Spraying reach with no frequency control and no measurement plan turns a precise channel back into the blunt one it replaced. The platform gives you the instruments. Whether you use them is on you.
Forecast global connected TV ad spend in 2026
What to do about it
The lounge room is now programmatic. The businesses that win on it are the ones who buy it like the measurable channel it has become, not the one it used to be.