Smart advertisers are combining Connected TV (CTV) and Over-The-Top (OTT) video with Linear TV as a strategic requirement to reach their audiences. Using this hybrid approach allows for precision targeting, mass reach, and measurable outcomes that can’t be accomplished without each other.
Nielsen reports that over 40% of TV viewership now happens on streaming platforms. CTV comprises a considerable portion of that streaming time, making OTT and CTV platforms essential to advertising strategies.
Yet linear TV continues to deliver unmatched scale, particularly for older demographics and live or appointment-based programming like live sports, awards shows, and local news. Linear still provides a strong foundation for awareness. With consistent co-viewing habits and wide national coverage, it provides the cultural backdrop where brands can show up at scale.
Farah Nabi, a 20-year veteran of broadcast media buying, shared her thoughts on TV advertising: “There is something about seeing an ad on TV first, it tends to legitimize the brand and give it more prestige; makes it look more established.”
“Although there may be some level of waste
with a broad linear TV buy, it will still create brand awareness and remain
more cost-effective than other individual TV ad options.”
Linear alone can’t guarantee that you're reaching the incremental audiences who are watching asynchronously or outside of primetime. That’s where OTT and CTV step in, allowing marketers to target those underexposed or digitally native viewers who may be missing from the linear campaign altogether.
A combined media plan incorporating CTV/OTT and linear can optimize reach while managing frequency with precision, solving for one of the industry’s oldest media planning challenges.
What makes this hybrid model so powerful is its ability to balance scale with precision. With programmatic DSPs and CTV platforms like Roku and Hulu, brands can tailor ads to specific segments, cap ad frequency at the household level, and retarget viewers. CTV enables brands to customize messaging for audience segments like household manager millennials, retired boomers, and Gen Z streamers. That isn’t possible with a strictly linear TV ad plan.
Meanwhile, addressable TV, advertising that allows targeted ads to reach specific households, provides the connective tissue between the two. Using data from Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs like YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Sling) and set-top boxes, addressable allows brands to deliver customized messaging within the linear stream. This effectively marries linear scale with digital targeting. Today, over half of national advertisers view addressable as a must-buy, and it’s quickly becoming a standard layer in media plans designed to eliminate waste and improve message sequencing.
This isn't just about more screens or more impressions; it’s about better orchestration. Using tools within Nielsen or The Trade Desk’s cross-platform measurement, brands can track deduplicated reach, manage frequency across devices, and directly link exposure to outcomes like consideration and sales. Frequency caps can be enforced, creative performance can be optimized mid-flight, and audiences can be followed across the viewing journey.
CTV/OTT, plus linear TV, isn’t a patchwork solution; it’s the most strategic way forward for reaching everyone who matters, the right number of times, with the ability to measure it all. That’s good media planning and brand-building.
