CTV Is Booming, but Creative Still Plays Catch-Up
In the rush to meet today’s multiscreen audiences, marketers are investing heavily in Connected TV (CTV)—but their creative strategies are still stuck in the past. That’s the key takeaway from a new report by Smartly, an AI-powered adtech platform, and eMarketer, which surveyed over 200 marketers on the state of digital video advertising in 2025.
The findings: nearly 70% of marketers plan to increase their CTV spend this year. Yet only a quarter are tailoring creative content separately for CTV and social—despite the fact that 78% of U.S. adults are expected to use multiple screens simultaneously by the end of 2025.
Let that sink in: while media strategies are evolving fast to keep pace with how people watch, the creative that fills those ad slots is often recycled or mismatched.
“The lines between social media and CTV are blurring,” says Jasmine Enberg, VP and principal analyst at eMarketer. “Marketers must break down the silos between media and creative.”
Why It Matters
For years, advertisers treated CTV and social as separate kingdoms—different audiences, different formats, different goals. But that model no longer holds up.
More viewers are watching social-style, creator-driven video on their living room TVs. At the same time, brands want to unify messaging across platforms and optimize for ROI. That convergence is forcing a rethink: how do you build ad creative that works equally well on a 6-inch smartphone and a 65-inch TV screen?
The report outlines a few key shifts already underway:
- Video budgets are swelling: 45% of marketers now allocate at least 30% of their digital ad spend to video.
- Cross-channel is the norm: Most campaigns now span both social and CTV.
- Creative remains a bottleneck: Just 25% of marketers create distinct assets for each channel, even though each demands a unique tone, pacing, and format.
Social Agility Meets CTV Impact
Smartly argues that the nimbleness of social media creative—short, engaging, and endlessly testable—can be a huge advantage when reimagined for the more immersive CTV environment.
“Social assets are built to be nimble, short, engaging, and tested through real-time feedback,” said Smartly’s Chief Innovation Officer Oli Marlow-Thomas. “When repurposed thoughtfully for CTV, that agility meets the power of a more immersive format.”
That’s where Smartly’s platform steps in: it enables brands to scale campaigns across channels by adapting social-born creative for CTV, bridging the speed and engagement of social with the reach and household precision of television.
With $6 billion in ad spend under management, Smartly is making a strong case that unified creative and media strategies—backed by automation and AI—are the future of video advertising.
This convergence of CTV and social isn’t just a technical evolution—it’s a cultural one. As consumer behaviors blur across screens and platforms, brands that continue treating CTV like traditional broadcast may find themselves outpaced.
Marketers who build agile, channel-aware creative—without sacrificing narrative cohesion—stand to win both attention and loyalty in an increasingly fragmented media environment.
