How Digital Planners Can Win in The New TV Economy
By James Kirwan, Programmatic & ATL Lead
The TV advertising landscape is changing more rapidly than most brands anticipated. As Connected TV (CTV) grows and premium video becomes more accessible, the traditional lines between linear TV and digital advertising are dissolving. For many brands, this shift has created confusion: TV still looks familiar, but it no longer behaves the way it used to.
Traditional TV buyers continue planning around reach and Gross Rating Point (GRPs), while digital teams treat CTV as a performance channel. In both instances, brands risk missing the bigger opportunity. To succeed in this new environment, TV buying must evolve into a hybrid discipline that blends storytelling, data, optimisation and a more holistic understanding of audience behaviour. This evolution in TV advertising goes beyond new technologies to how audiences define “TV” itself.
Why Traditional TV Buying Skills Aren’t Enough in a CTV World
For decades, linear TV buying was built around a specific set of strengths. Traditional buyers knew how to reach large audiences efficiently, create cultural impact and use context to elevate creative. While these skills still matter and continue to drive significant impact in today’s multi-platform, audience-led environment, scale alone is no longer enough.
Traditional TV teams often struggle with interpreting granular audience data, applying real-time optimisation, managing frequency across fragmented platforms and connecting TV exposure to measurable outcomes. Digital specialists, meanwhile, excel in these areas, bringing audience-first strategies, data-driven measurement and a performance-oriented mindset. However, they can sometimes undervalue the creative, contextual and brand-building power that premium TV environments deliver. Traditional TV buyers contribute a deep understanding of scale and cultural impact, strong storytelling instincts and expertise in premium environments, while digital planners ensure campaigns are precise, optimised and measurable.
CTV advertising demands both mindsets. Success in the TV advertising landscape comes from combining the creativity, scale and contextual awareness of traditional TV with the targeting, data and optimisation strengths of digital planning. By leveraging the best of both worlds, brands can achieve campaigns that are not only efficient and measurable but also culturally resonant and impactful.
The Rapid Evolution of CTV and Premium Video
The modern TV ecosystem is unrecognisable from the world of traditional broadcast. As a study by Deloitte points out, ‘TV is no longer a single screen or even a platform. It’s an activity. The definition of TV is being redefined by social media, creator content, and the ubiquitous smartphone. A need to gain greater revenues from advertising may be driving more convergence and coherence across a highly fragmented media landscape.’
Arguably, CTV platforms, streaming services and on-demand environments have fundamentally changed how audiences consume premium video content for good, resulting in new opportunities for advertisers but also new complexities when it comes to creating campaigns for TV. Agencies and brands are now having to navigate this surge in streaming platforms and ad-supported models, along with new targeting capabilities across premium video, flexible programmatic buying options, richer measurement and modelled attribution and diversified creative formats optimised for big-screen digital.
In short, premium video now combines the best of linear TV’s brand-building power with the precision and accountability of digital advertising. For brands, this creates the chance to run full-funnel TV campaigns within a single ecosystem when planned correctly.
Meet the Hybrid TV Planner: The Future of TV Advertising Strategy
To unlock the full value of CTV advertising and premium video, agencies are building a new type of planner, one who bridges creative understanding and data fluency. This hybrid specialist can evaluate how creative will land on a large screen and how to optimise campaigns based on audience signals and performance metrics.
Brands and agencies are investing in:
- Retraining traditional buyers on data, optimisation and digital measurement
- Upskilling digital teams on context, creative and premium video environments
- Integrating linear and programmatic functions
- Building unified planning frameworks across all forms of premium video
- Clearer modelled measurement to evaluate incremental reach and outcomes
These hybrid planners treat TV as a connected ecosystem rather than two competing channels. They understand that future TV success will come from balancing creative craft with analytical rigour.
What This Hybridity Means for Brands
As CTV continues to grow, brands can no longer rely on siloed planning or outdated buying models. The evolution of premium video offers a strategic advantage to those who embrace a hybrid planning approach.
Brands benefit in multiple ways when they take a unified approach to TV and CTV advertising. They achieve more efficient reach through coordinated frequency management, ensuring that their messaging reaches the right audiences without unnecessary overlap.
Performance insights become stronger and more actionable through modelled measurement, allowing marketers to understand the true impact of their campaigns. Creative impact is also enhanced when ads run in premium contextually relevant environments, helping brands resonate more deeply with viewers. Additionally, this approach drives improved incrementality across both linear TV and CTV, ensuring campaigns deliver real incremental results rather than just shifting existing behaviour.
Finally, marketers can allocate budgets with greater confidence, supported by clearer data-driven insights that optimise spend and maximise return. This hybrid approach turns TV into a measurable, optimisable, full-funnel channel, without losing the storytelling power that has always set TV apart.
Linear and digital, moreover, are no longer separate categories but part of one integrated premium video ecosystem. Brands that continue to plan TV the old way will lose efficiency, visibility and growth, while those who embrace hybrid TV buying will unlock both creative impact and measurable performance.
We’re positioned at this intersection of craft and data, helping brands navigate CTV, premium video and modern TV planning with clarity, transparency and strategic control. To learn more about how we can help your brand adapt to the new TV economy, speak to our Paid Media Team.
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