If you’re still treating Connected TV (CTV) as an experimental add-on to your ad budget, you might be leaving serious money on the table. A new 2025 CTV Insights Report from Measured, the AI-powered marketing effectiveness platform, suggests that CTV not only holds its own against digital heavyweights Meta and Google—it often beats them. The catch? Brands aren’t spending nearly enough on it.

CTV Punches Above Its Weight

Analyzing 274 incrementality experiments across 60 enterprise brands, Measured found that CTV accounted for just 3.5% of total media budgets on average. Yet it delivered a median incremental return on ad spend (ROAS) of $2.88, compared to $2.30 for Meta (32% of budgets) and $2.39 for Google (40.5%).

That means the scrappy underdog of ad channels is generating more incremental value per dollar spent—despite being starved of budget compared to its digital rivals.

Don’t Trust the Platform Numbers

Part of the problem: measurement. According to Measured, CTV platforms under-report their impact by nearly 20% on average. The discrepancies were wild—some campaigns over-reported incremental conversions by a factor of five, while others under-reported by up to ten. Translation: depending on where you look, you’re either giving CTV too much credit or nowhere near enough.

“CTV isn’t underperforming, the data is,” said Trevor Testwuide, Measured’s co-founder and CEO. “When brands measure CTV using rigorously designed experiments, they uncover performance that’s been masked by flawed attribution and platform metrics.”

The Bigger Picture: A Shift Beyond Last-Click

The findings land at a pivotal moment for digital advertising. With the industry slowly prying itself away from last-click attribution—and with Google sunsetting third-party cookies—advertisers are hunting for better ways to prove value. Incrementality testing, long championed in academic circles, is quickly becoming a boardroom imperative.

Measured argues that brands leaning into continuous incrementality testing are not just validating CTV’s true worth but also gaining an edge in budget allocation. In other words, the brands treating CTV like a core channel rather than an experiment may be tomorrow’s market winners.

Context: Rival Channels Under Pressure

It’s no secret Meta and Google dominate digital ad spend, but cracks are showing. Meta has battled targeting headwinds since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency rollout, while Google’s search ads face saturation and higher CPCs. Against this backdrop, CTV’s mix of premium content, audience targeting, and measurable lift looks increasingly attractive—especially for enterprise marketers tired of squeezing incremental gains out of the duopoly.

What’s Next for CTV?

The report underscores a broader truth: the promise of CTV isn’t just about flashy streaming integrations—it’s about accountability. Brands that build testing and measurement into their strategy could unlock hidden performance at scale. But until budgets shift, CTV will remain the overachiever sitting at the kids’ table.

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