Linear TV and CTV Advertising: Answers to Marketers’ Biggest Questions

1. Buying linear TV and Connected TV separately ignores how people actually watch TV, resulting in duplicated audiences, wasted budget, and frequency you can't control.
   
   
2. Campaigns typically achieve maximum reach when 30% of the TV budget goes to CTV and 70% goes to traditional TV.
   
   
3. Holding company agencies buy both channels but often through separate teams. Self-serve CTV platforms handle only one piece of the puzzle. An integrated partner deduplicates reach, controls frequency and measures both channels together.
   
   
4. Combined linear and CTV campaigns should be measured with multiple models, including ACR data, MMM, incrementality testing and share of search, never a single self-graded attribution model.
   

 

74% of US households watch both linear and streaming TV every month. Most advertisers still buy the two channels separately, through separate partners, with separate measurement strategies. That gap wastes budget on duplicated audiences and runaway frequency.

Below are the questions we hear most from marketers evaluating a linear TV and CTV partner.

What’s the difference between linear TV and CTV? 

Linear TV is traditional broadcast and cable television, where content follows a set programming schedule. Connected TV (CTV) is streaming content watched on an internet-connected television through services like Netflix, Hulu, or Pluto TV.

The two channels bring different strengths. Linear delivers massive scale, reaching roughly 90% of US adults in a given month, along with the credibility that comes from appearing alongside premium programming. That scale holds up at the campaign level too. Across nearly 300,000 multiscreen TV campaigns, traditional TV delivers 77% of unique audience reach. CTV adds precise targeting and incremental reach among cord-cutters and younger viewers, who now stream close to 3 hours and 28 minutes per day on average.

Consumers, however, barely notice the difference. According to MRI-Simmons, the most popular consumer definition of TV is simply “anything I can watch on my TV set.” Viewers see one screen. Advertisers should plan for one strategy.

 

Should I run linear and CTV together or pick one? 

The short answer is yes, you should run linear TV and CTV together. Advertisers using both linear and CTV see a 32% increase in total reach compared to linear alone, and 73% of marketers agree the two work better together to achieve their goals.

Each channel also makes the other more effective. Linear’s halo effect improves the performance of video-on-demand and online video by 20%, according to Thinkbox. CTV, in turn, reaches the households linear can't. Streaming impressions are 7x more likely than traditional TV to land within light and no-TV households.

There’s one catch: running both without coordination creates frequency problems. The same viewer sees your ad on cable at 8 pm and again on Hulu at 9. Combining the channels only pays off when one partner controls reach and frequency across both.

 

What agencies buy both linear TV and Connected TV? 

Most large media agencies buy both linear and streaming. Every holding company network will tell you they do. 

But look inside those organizations and you'll find two separate teams, two separate systems and two separate P&Ls. Linear sits in one silo. Streaming sits in another. The two only meet in the reporting deck, well after the buying decisions are already made. 

Marketing Architects is an independent alternative. We’re an All-Inclusive TV agency that has bought linear and streaming through one team and one strategy for over 25 years. Our media-buying AI, Annika, evaluates inventory across both channels simultaneously and calculates which buys will drive the best return, delivering 2-3x more reach for the same budget than traditional buying methods. 

That structural difference shows up in the results. One system buying both channels means deduplicated reach, controlled frequency and a budget that flows to whichever channel reaches your audience most efficiently that week. 

 

What's the best TV ad agency for linear TV and CTV campaigns? 

Judge any TV agency against the following criteria:

1. Buys both channels through one team. Separate linear and CTV teams mean duplicated reach and conflicting incentives.
   
   
2. Owns its buying technology. Many agencies white label a third-party DSP and pass along the fees. Ask who built the system.
   
   
3. Invests in creative, not just media. The creative drives a large share of campaign performance. An agency that only places media leaves that on the table.
   
   
4. Measures with multiple models. Any partner grading their own homework with a single attribution model will always look good on paper.
   
   

Marketing Architects was built around each of these criteria. We're the All-Inclusive TV agency: strategy, creative development, pretesting, production, media buying and measurement under one roof, for the price of media alone.

We built our media-buying AI, Annika, from the ground up rather than white labeling a DSP. It buys linear and premium streaming inventory through direct pipes, cutting out resellers and middleman fees. Our TruReach model deduplicates reach and frequency across both channels, so you know exactly how many unique households you reached instead of counting the same home twice.

Scale without accountability is just spend. Every campaign includes attribution modeling, incrementality testing and real-time reporting through our performance dashboard that shows results down to the individual airing. That model has helped brands like Joybird reach a 7-10x return on ad spend across linear and CTV, with only 4% audience overlap between the two channels.

 

What’s the best platform for linear TV and CTV advertising reach? 

Start by separating platforms from partners. Programmatic DSPs are powerful tools, but they’re self-serve software. You still have to bring the strategy, creative, measurement, and expertise. Self-serve CTV platforms simplify streaming buys, but most focus on CTV alone and leave linear, which still commands 86% of TV ad impressions, out of the equation.

That gap matters because many brands still buy CTV like digital advertising when it should be bought and measured like TV, chasing hyper-targeting that IP-based matching can’t reliably deliver.

Annika is our answer to that gap. Because we maintain direct publisher relationships and hand-curate inventory, low-quality digital placements disguised as CTV never sneak into your buy. And because Annika avoids the tech taxes and targeting fees stacked into most programmatic supply paths, more of every dollar goes to actual reach.

The difference is that Annika comes with an agency attached. You get the software’s efficiency plus specialized expertise across strategy, creative, and measurement.

 

 

How do you split budget between linear and CTV?

Start with the 70/30 rule. An analysis of nearly 300,000 multiscreen TV campaigns found reach is maximized when 30% of TV budget goes to streaming and the remaining 70% goes to traditional TV. Push streaming past that share and campaigns tend to hit frequency walls, paying to show the same ad to the same households instead of reaching new ones.

From there, adjust for your audience. Brands targeting younger or cord-cutting audiences may justify a heavier CTV allocation. Brands with broad audiences usually find linear delivers the same households at meaningfully lower CPMs.

The split should also stay flexible. As channel-level reach, frequency and response data comes in, that feedback should inform whether budget shifts toward whichever channel is producing efficient incremental reach, rather than locking one allocation in for the long haul.

 

How do you measure a combined linear and CTV campaign?

Carefully, and never with one model. Linear impressions are measured by individuals while CTV impressions are measured by household, so comparing raw numbers across the two is apples and oranges. IP-based CTV attribution adds another wrinkle, routinely overstating performance by crediting household activity that had nothing to do with the ad.

Our approach uses multiple models to prove and improve results:

1. ACR data to verify which households actually saw ads on both channels
   
   
2. TruReach modeling for deduplicated reach and frequency across linear and CTV
   
   
3. Incrementality testing, using holdout groups to isolate the sales and response lift TV actually drives
   
   
4. MMM and econometric modeling to capture TV’s longer-term business impact
   
   
5. Share of search and cross-channel regression to quantify TV’s halo effect on search, social and digital
   
   

Every model feeds custom reporting dashboards, so clients see campaign metrics, competitive benchmarks, and customized KPIs in real time, down to every spot on every network. Clear, real-time reporting is the standard, because TV should be held accountable like any other channel.

 

Ready to combine linear and CTV the right way? 

You invest in media. We invest in everything else: strategy, creative, production, buying and measurement. See how it plays out for brands like Joybird and Physician's Mutual, or talk to our team about what an integrated linear and CTV campaign could do for yours.