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Streaming is the media world’s latest tremor

August 19, 2026

MEDIA PULSE –  AUGUST 2026

As Connected TV (CTV) matures, the traditional boundaries of television advertising are rapidly dissolving. Three defining shifts are reshaping how brands buy, measure and scale living room reach. Google is lowering the barrier to entry by bringing direct CTV inventory into standard Google Ads. Major media deals like Fox’s planned acquisition of Roku are blurring the lines between linear live events and streaming data. And an oversupply of ad inventory is forcing the industry away from selling sheer scale and toward AI-driven, outcome-based proof. Together, these trends mark a fundamental shift from channel-first buying to unified, performance-driven media strategies.

Trend 1: Google is bringing direct CTV buying to the self-serve platform

CTV inventory outside of YouTube has historically been locked behind enterprise demand side platforms (DSPs) like DV360, high minimum spend commitments or private marketplace deals. By expanding non-YouTube CTV inventory directly into the standard Google Ads platform, Google is making the at-home big-screen placements available to performance buyers managing standard video and Demand Gen campaigns.

This isn’t just about basic inventory expansion. Instead, it represents a strategic push by Google to create a hub to capture both top-of-funnel demand through CTV and low-funnel demand from traditional SEM and PMax campaigns. By bundling YouTube TV and Google TV network inventory (which taps into streaming apps like Peacock, Tubi and Pluto TV), advertisers can now manage living room reach in the same place they drive search intent.

But moving CTV into standard Google Ads comes with the usual automation trade-offs like strict creative rules and less granular control over inventory allocation.

💓 The Pulse

  • Avoid over-segmenting your audience early. Audience targeting on Google TV can shrink inventory quickly. Over-constraining your parameters will push your spend back into standard YouTube mobile feeds rather than streaming TV screens.
  • Test multiple 15-second creative variations. Because CTV inventory in the standard Google Ads platform requires non-skippable 15-second ads, running two or three creative iterations gives the algorithm more flexibility to win bids across Google TV partners.
  • Maintain manual control over device bids. Use device-level bidding adjustments to explicitly favor TV screens if your primary goal is living room reach rather than mobile video views.

Our take

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to video buying, and standard Google Ads won’t replace enterprise DSPs for every brand. For advertisers looking for granular publisher-level exclusions, programmatic guaranteed deals or strict frequency control, DSPs like DV360 remain essential. But for performance teams looking to efficiently build top-of-funnel awareness and drive downstream search activity without taking massive commitments, direct CTV access in Google Ads is a major step forward.

Trend 2: The lines between linear and streaming are blurring

Fox’s planned acquisition of Roku is another sign that the future of TV will not be about choosing between linear and streaming. It will be about finding audiences wherever they are watching. The deal brings together FOX’s live sports, news and entertainment content with Roku’s streaming platform, The Roku Channel, and first-party audience data across more than 100 million streaming households.

Linear TV has always owned the big moments: live sports, breaking news and appointment viewing. Streaming owns the targeting, measurement and flexibility. The next phase of TV is about combining those strengths. Premium content with digital targeting.

FAST (free ad supported streaming television) services like Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel have grown because they give consumers a free, ad-supported alternative to paid subscriptions. But the opportunity gets more interesting when those platforms start carrying more premium, live programming that historically lived behind a cable subscription.

The acquisition is not expected to close until 2027, so the full impact on the TV landscape is still ahead. We’ll continue watching how Fox and Roku bring these capabilities together and revisit this topic once the deal moves from announcement to reality.

💓 The Pulse

  • FAST is becoming more valuable, but won’t replace linear overnight. Free ad-supported streaming provides scale, but live sports and major events still drive audiences to traditional TV. The future media plan will likely need both.
  • The difference between linear and CTV continues to shrink. As streaming platforms gain access to more premium content and better audience data, the question is shifting from “Where should we buy TV?” to “Where can we most efficiently reach the people who matter to our brand?”
  • First-party audience data will be the differentiator. Roku’s value goes beyond its inventory. Its advantage is knowing how households are watching and then using those insights to help advertisers reach the right audiences. As TV continues to shift to streaming, that data ownership will become increasingly important.

Our take

The biggest shift happening in TV is not that streaming is replacing linear. It is that the two are starting to look more alike. Consumers do not think about whether they are watching “CTV” or “linear.” They just turn on the TV and watch what they want.

For advertisers, this means media strategies will need to move away from channel-first thinking. The strongest plans will be built around audience, reach and incremental value — whether that audience is watching a live NFL game, a FAST channel or a streaming series.

The future of TV is not cable vs. streaming. It is a more connected ecosystem where both work together.

Trend 3: Streaming’s ad inventory is oversupplied. AI is now deciding what it’s actually worth.

Traditional broadcast advertising ran on scarcity. Prime time was a fixed, limited resource, so premium placements carried built-in value simply by existing. Streaming broke that model on purpose. As ad-supported tiers and FAST channels multiplied across the ecosystem, advertisers gained access to a volume of impressions no one could have planned for a decade ago.

Prosper Insights & Analytics’ 2026 Media Behaviors & Influence study puts a number on that shift: 20.7% of U.S. adults now do 100% of their TV viewing through streaming, with another 7.9% streaming 90% of the time. Combined, that’s nearly a third of the country watching almost entirely off the platforms advertisers once treated as a supplement to linear, not a replacement for it.

That kind of growth usually reads as good news for advertisers, but it cuts both ways. According to eMarketer, Connected TV is on track to pass linear TV in prime-time upfront ad spending for the first time this year, a milestone that also means more inventory chasing the same advertiser budgets, and weaker pricing leverage on the seller side.

Tony Fagan, CEO of VideoAmp, put it plainly: Pricing pressure becomes inevitable once inventory expands without a reliable way to separate what actually performs from what just adds volume. That’s the real problem streaming needs to solve. Not more reach, but proof.

That proof is now technically possible in a way it wasn’t a few years ago. Every stream, pause and skip creates a signal, and AI systems can use that behavioral data, layered with identity and outcome data, to continuously optimize a campaign instead of relying on a static plan built weeks in advance. For the first time, buyers and sellers can work off the same underlying data instead of reconciling two separate sets of numbers after the fact, which is what turns outcome-based guarantees from an industry talking point into something operationally real.

💓 The Pulse

  • Reach alone is losing pricing power in streaming. With inventory nearly limitless, publishers that can’t prove business outcomes will get commoditized alongside everyone else.
  • AI-driven measurement is replacing static media plans. Campaigns can now optimize in real time against shared data instead of just reporting results after the fact.
  • Outcome-based buying is becoming the norm, not the ambition. Expect more RFPs and renewals tied to purchases, sign-ups or app installs instead of impressions delivered.

Our take

Streaming spent a decade selling scale; now it has to sell proof. That’s a much harder pitch when everyone has access to the same abundant inventory. The publishers that win the next few years won’t be the ones with the biggest catalog or the highest reach numbers. They’ll be the ones that can show, in real time, that their inventory actually moved the business. Everyone else will be left competing on price.