Your Audience Moved to Streaming. Has Your Media Plan?
- Date:
- Aug 9, 2026
- Length:
- 4 min read
TV budgets are still built for an audience that's largely stopped watching linear television.
Sometime in 2025, streaming crossed a line that used to be unthinkable: it now accounts for a larger share of US TV viewing time than broadcast and cable combined. By mid-2026, streaming was holding onto roughly 44-48% of total TV viewing, while the two channels it replaced still absorb a disproportionate share of the TV budget sitting in most marketing plans.
Connected TV, or CTV, is the advertising layer built for that shift, ad-supported streaming on smart TVs, sticks and consoles, sold and targeted more like digital than like traditional broadcast. And the money is finally following the audience: US CTV ad spend is projected to reach roughly $38 billion in 2026, growing close to 14% year over year, making it the fastest-growing major advertising channel in the country.
Why It's Growing Faster Than Almost Everything Else.
The appeal isn't just reach, it's precision on a screen that used to offer none. CTV now trades largely programmatically, which means the addressable targeting and measurement digital marketers expect from social and search is available on the biggest screen in the house. Viewability rates on CTV regularly exceed 97%, and completion rates for CTV ads sit above 95%, numbers that make most other video formats look leaky by comparison.
The Part Most Media Plans Still Get Wrong.
Despite the shift in viewing behaviour, CTV still receives a share of total ad spend well below its share of viewing time, one widely cited figure puts CTV at roughly 44% of TV viewing but under 8% of total ad dollars. That gap is the opportunity: budgets built around where audiences used to be, rather than where they actually are now, are structurally under-reaching their own customers.
It's Not Just The Big Brands Anymore.
CTV used to require a linear-TV-sized budget to justify the production and the buy. That's changed. Programmatic buying lets advertisers set spend at almost any level, geographic targeting means a local business isn't paying to reach three provinces away, and AI-assisted creative tools have brought production costs down enough that the share of small-business advertisers using CTV has climbed sharply in just the past two years.
The WeFuse Angle.
We treat CTV as a performance channel with a brand-sized screen, not a scaled-down TV buy or a scaled-up video ad. Built and targeted the way the rest of a digital media plan is, with the same rigour applied to measurement and creative. Because the audience already moved to streaming. The only question is whether the budget follows.
Get in touch with the WeFuse team and let's build a media plan for the screen your audience is actually watching.