Connected TV - Happydemics' Blog

How to measure CTV ad performance & impact

Marion Chauviere — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:40:00 +0000

Measuring TV advertising effectiveness has evolved. Thanks to Connected TV (CTV), brands now have access to advanced targeting and precise performance tracking. In this article, we’ll explain what CTV measurement is, how it works, and why it’s critical for advertisers looking to understand real brand impact across modern TV platforms.

What is Connected Television?

Connected TV (CTV) is a television with direct access to the internet. Also known as a “smart TV,” it allows you to watch films or series via streaming platforms, or check out the latest updates from your friends on social media.

CTV has become a constant and permanent feature in homes around the world. According to the CSA, 81% of homes with a TV now have a television with an internet connection and 56% of French consumers watch VOD (video on demand) content each week on their CTV. Meanwhile, in the US, about 88% of households now watch CTV.

Why CTV measurement matters for advertisers

The boom of connected television in homes has created new opportunities for advertisers.

The main advantage for advertisers is the ability to target consumers with incredible precision through advertising campaigns.

Traditional television offers fairly limited targeting variables: standard audience for a channel or program and broadcasting time, for example. Conversely, CTV offers impressive finesse when it comes to targeting—up their with other digital formats.

Despite the tightening of personal data protection and the progressive disappearance of cookies, you can still reach individuals with greater precision, using social-demographic criteria or even some online behavior criteria.

Broadcasting advertising campaigns and their messaging can be increasingly customized to improve consumers’ experiences with your brand.

Naturally, advertising budgets tend to be much higher than for traditional televised spots, and brands are taking on the challenge of optimizing the return on investment for their campaigns. This means going beyond short term metrics such as impressions and measuring long term impact on brand impact metrics such as brand image and consideration.

How to measure advertising effectiveness on Connected TV

Advertisers can measure connected TV ad effectiveness by launching a Brand lift. A Brand lift that involves surveying people about an ad. Typically, this involves collecting responses from an “exposed group” (people who were exposed to the ad) and a “control group” (people who weren’t exposed to the ad).

By comparing the responses of the two groups, advertisers can measure the ad’s effect on key performance indicators such as attribution (the audience share that recalls brand or product’s name), interest (personal interest in the brand of product), and consideration (considering a brand or product as an option).

When you take a brand lift measurement, you’ll first need to select the main key ad performance indicators. For example:

Adveritising recall: Whether people remember the ad.
Consideration: Whether people consider the brand or product as option when it comes to making a purchase.
Purchase intention: Whether people intend to buy the product or service.

This selection should be made to align with the specific challenges you’re tackling, such as:

Broadcast performance
Message relevance
Impact on commercial memorability

Once you’ve set up your dashboard, you’ll be able to analyze the performance of your campaigns in real time and compare them with campaigns in the same format for similar industries.

How CTV measurement works without cookies

To measure Brand lift in a world without third-party cookies, we’ve developed a “cookie-less” pixel with our DSP partners—purpose-built for environments like connected TV, where cookie-based tracking simply doesn’t apply.

Instead of cookies, the pixel uses a combination of the device’s IP address and user agent — including details from the operating system and browser—to determine ad exposure. In CTV scenarios, only the device’s IP address is used, which remains effective due to the stable nature of household IPs.

This cookie-less measurement approach enables fully GDPR-compliant tracking. It does not store personal data, and the identifiers it uses—such as IP address and user agent—are pseudonymized. Because no cookies are involved and no individual can be directly identified, the method ensures privacy without sacrificing the accuracy of exposure measurement.

Using benchmarks to evaluate CTV campaign success

To truly gague the success of a CTV campaign, whether you’re analyzing brand lift or calculating ad recall lift , it’s important to understand where it sit in the context of industry norms. By comparing against similar campaigns, you’ll be able to understand how well it performs in terms of overall impact as well as a range of specific KPIs.

We’ll enable you to take you measurements even further by providing benchmarks based on all of the campaigns we’ve measured for more than 2,000 advertisers.

These benchmarks will allow you to position your performances in relation to other, similar commercials across a business sector or a specific media, such as CTV.

CTV ad benchmarks provide context about your Connected TV campaign performance, helping you to identify your relative strengths as well as areas for improvement.

How Happydemics measures the performance of commercials broadcast on Connected TV

Happydemics has become a key player when it comes to measuring advertising performance.

Our clients are easily launching Brand lifts for all their campaigns to measure the impact of a commercial broadcast on connect TV in terms of real exposure.

We give you the ability to identically survey two groups of individuals with similar profiles. One will have had real exposure to your commercial via CTV, and the other won’t have been exposed.

This method means you can be sure that you’ll gain understanding of the real impact of your commercial for your brand by comparing results from two populations.

A real world example of Smart TV advertising measurement

For its initial brand lift measurement for a commercial on connected TV, Happydemics has worked with Rommatic, a trading desk based in the U.K. specializing in programmatic advertising and part of the Freethinking Group.

Thanks to this partnership, Rommatic can use specific results from a trusted third party on the performance of its campaigns in order to provide better advice to its clients and hence deliver better support as a result.

Measurements are key elements for us. We're delighted to have the opportunity of partnering with Happydemics for this pilot phase, measuring the effectiveness of commercials on CTV. This media is growing at rapid rates in the U.K. market. Happydemics' insights and recommendations give us brilliant opportunities for collaboration with our clients' creative teams, allowing us to understand and optimize CTV broadcasting.

Amanda Robertson

Programmatic Manager at Rommatic

Connected TV is quickly becoming a key advertising channel—one where precise measurement is not just possible, but essential.

With Brand lift measurements and real exposure tracking, advertisers can understand how their CTV campaigns influence KPIs such as brand perception and purchase intent.

Want to learn more about how to measure your advertising effectiveness on Connected TV?

The post How to measure CTV ad performance & impact first appeared on Happydemics' Blog.

Turning viewership into value: How CTV ads are engaging audiences

Colin Robinson — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 09:43:20 +0000

“To make a business out of the growing non-linear TV, habits of our viewers is one of the most important factors that will determine whether we have a shrinking or growing TV industry in the future,” he told industry professionals at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

Sixteen years later, it’s clear the industry rose to the challenge that Zeiler laid out. Just think: When did you last watch Netflix or Amazon Prime? It was likely within the past week; you’re probably part of the rapidly growing global Connected TV (CTV) audience.

CTV includes any internet-connected device, such as TVs, phones, or tablets, that stream content on demand. Its reach is expanding fast, a shift that places CTV at the center of major digital marketing trends. For example, about 88% of US households now watch CTV.

Billions in play: Big brands are investing

In 2025, with such vast audiences, it’s evident that CTV’s rise presents massive opportunities for advertisers, who are investing heavily: their total spending is projected to reach $33 billion this year.

Big spenders in the CTV ad market include Verizon, Ford, and Febreze, while major recipients include Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Roku, and Hulu.

Why CTV ads are working

As well as the vast and growing audiences advertisers can reach via CTV, Happydemics‘ benchmark data—drawn from 6,500 Brand lift studies across all media—reveals several key reasons why major players are investing heavily in this format.

Precise targeting and emotional impact

CTV marries the precise targeting of digital advertising with the emotional connections of TV ads.

Low audience fatigue

Consumers perceive it as a novel and engaging advertising format.

Integration with other ad formats

It can be part of a broader digital strategy—integrating seamlessly with campaigns across mobile, desktop, and social media to create a unified brand presence.

Enhanced brand perception

CTV is a highly regarded ad format that elevates brand visibility. Its premium, immersive ad experience builds a strong connection with targeted audiences, strengthening brand recognition and desirability.

Our Brand lifts show that these advantages result in a notable improvement in brand performance: CTV ads score 2 points above average for both attribution rate and ad perception when compared to all other media types.

CTV advertising is particularly effective in driving both higher consideration—encouraging audiences to see a brand or product as a relevant option—and increased specific intent, such as taking action to learn more, purchase, or recommend.

While linear TV and CTV each play a distinct role in the marketing mix, our data shows that CTV drives, on average, a 2-point higher lift in consideration and a 7-point higher lift in specific intent compared to linear TV. This highlights CTV’s ability to engage audiences in a way that complements traditional TV strategies, offering advertisers an additional lever to drive meaningful outcomes.

Turning viewership into value

How can advertisers turn those advantages and the vast CTV viewership worldwide into valuable engagement and get ROI on their ad spend? Understanding its unique strengths and making it part of a multichannel strategy is key.

In a media plan, CTV advertising is very effective for upper funnel KPIs and leads to improved brand recognition and brand image. Its true power emerges when combined with out-of-home (OOH), digital out-of-home (DOOH), and social media advertising, which are all typically effective for lower funnel KPIs and used to encourage purchases.

Moreover, CTV’s potential goes beyond traditional ad formats. Interactive features—such as shoppable ads and QR codes—transform passive viewing into active engagement. Our Brand lift studies show that adding a QR code alone can elevate attribution, consideration, and even purchase intent, proving that the right creative elements can turn CTV ads into a direct driver of business outcomes. By embracing these innovations, advertisers can unlock new levels of impact, bridging the gap between brand storytelling and measurable action.

Looking ahead at a unique opportunity

Zeiler’s 2009 statement underscored the need for the TV industry to evolve with changing viewer habits. Today, CTV has not only met that challenge—it has redefined the way brands connect with audiences.

As its global reach continues to expand, advertisers have an unprecedented opportunity to go beyond mere visibility and create deeper, more meaningful engagement. By integrating CTV into a dynamic, multi-channel strategy, brands can transform passive viewership into active participation, loyalty, and long-term growth. The future of TV isn’t just about being seen—it’s about interacting, influencing, and inspiring.

The post Turning viewership into value: How CTV ads are engaging audiences first appeared on Happydemics' Blog.