10+ OTT Advertising Strategies That Drive Real Results

OTT has moved from experiment to essential. Audiences spend an ever larger share of TV time in streaming environments, giving advertisers the scale of television with the precision of digital. Nielsen’s latest Gauge shows streaming near the 50% mark of total TV usage in the U.S., underscoring why CTV is now a core line in most media plans.

Commerce is also coming to the living room. Partnerships like Roku × Walmart enable true shoppable TV—letting viewers purchase directly from the ad—tying big-screen storytelling to bottom-funnel outcomes. 

Finally, measurement is evolving beyond basic viewability. The IAB and MRC have introduced draft attention guidelines to standardize how the industry captures quality of exposure, and recent benchmarks show CTV earning higher attention than online video and display—helpful when you need to defend investment and optimize creative.

Up next, we’ll define OTT marketing and break down 13 strategies—ranging from privacy-first data activation and AI-driven analytics to shoppable formats, sequential storytelling, and ad-pod discipline—each backed by fresh U.S. data and practical examples.

What is OTT marketing?

OTT, or over-the-top, refers to streaming video delivered through internet-connected devices rather than traditional cable or broadcast systems. Viewers access services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and ad-supported platforms through smart TVs, streaming boxes, or mobile apps. For advertisers, this shift means the television screen is no longer a walled-off medium but a digital channel where campaigns can be planned, targeted, and measured with the same precision as online ads.

💡 For a deeper primer, see our guide on OTT advertising. 

An OTT marketing strategy uses these streaming environments to deliver ads that combine the immersive impact of TV with the accountability of digital. Formats range from 15- and 30-second CTV spots to interactive or shoppable ads that link directly to commerce. Importantly, OTT ads can be bought programmatically, layered with audience data, and integrated into omnichannel campaigns.

13 most effective OTT advertising strategies

With U.S. OTT ad spend projected to surpass $33B by 2025, reach alone isn’t enough. Advertisers demand targeting, optimization, and measurable results. The strategies that follow outline how to achieve strong performance while building brand equity.

Leverage privacy-first targeting & first-party data

The deprecation of third-party cookies and tighter privacy rules have accelerated a pivot to first-party data strategies. Advertisers that build and activate their own audience data enjoy a clear advantage: greater control, compliance, and higher-performing campaigns. 

Surveys show that 88% of marketers considered collecting first-party data a top priority for campaign planning in 2024.

For OTT specifically, first-party data enables targeting at the household or subscriber level, ensuring ads reach real customers instead of broad demos. Retailers, streamers, and subscription businesses are pairing CRM records with streaming logins to activate campaigns across CTV. This not only keeps targeting compliant but also builds consumer trust—one in three U.S. consumers say they think more highly of brands that safeguard their data.

💡 For deeper insights into privacy-first targeting, see our article In a cookieless world: new challenges and opportunities.

📌 Actionable insight: The decline of third-party identifiers makes first-party data the currency of effective OTT campaigns. Agencies should help clients build stronger CRM strategies, leverage subscription and login data, and connect those insights with streaming audiences through privacy-compliant matching. Campaigns anchored in this data not only perform better but also build brand trust. Think of privacy-first as the backbone of smarter, longer-lasting customer relationships.

Apply AI and predictive analytics

OTT inventory generates vast amounts of viewing and behavioral data. AI and predictive analytics make it possible to act on that information in real time. Algorithms can optimize bids, placements, and creative variants automatically, continually improving campaign performance.

The payoff is clear: AI-driven contextual targeting can double engagement rates by aligning ads with relevant content, and predictive models can identify households most likely to convert before a campaign even begins.

Marketers are also using generative AI to scale creative:

In one IAB study, 86% of advertisers said they are testing or planning to test generative AI tools for video ads, feeding directly into dynamic creative strategies.

💡 Learn more in The rise of AI in TV advertising and explore how AI Digital’s Elevate platform applies predictive analytics for smarter OTT campaign planning & optimization.

📌 Actionable insight: AI excels at uncovering patterns no human trader could see at scale. Agencies can use predictive models to forecast which households are most likely to convert, dynamically reallocate budgets, and even auto-test creative variations to improve efficiency mid-flight. The point is clear: predictive analytics turns precision into measurable lift. Adding AI to planning means smarter spend, sharper targeting, and faster ROI.

Optimize with programmatic buying in CTV

By 2024, three out of four CTV ad transactions were programmatic, and projections show that share rising to 84% by 2025.

Advertisers cite easier optimization, better return on ad spend, and the ability to scale across platforms as top reasons for going programmatic. Rather than buying broad demographics at fixed rates, programmatic lets brands target households, adjust pacing, and move spend dynamically toward what’s working.

Efficiency gains are real: the ANA found that transparency improvements in programmatic supply chains mean 43.9% of every $1,000 spent through DSPs now reaches the consumer, up nearly 8 percentage points year over year.

📌 Actionable insight: Programmatic CTV is now the dominant buying method, giving agencies the flexibility to shift spend toward high-performing audiences in real time. The key is to focus on private marketplace deals and transparent supply paths, as outlined in our guide on supply-side optimization with AI. With Smart Supply, agencies can take this a step further—using AI-powered, DSP-agnostic selection to remove waste, avoid platform bias, and make every ad dollar work harder.

Measure with viewability and attention metrics

OTT ads are inherently viewable—full-screen, non-skippable in many cases—but viewability is only the start. The industry is shifting toward attention metrics, which gauge whether viewers are actually engaged.

Benchmarks show CTV ads achieve viewability rates over 90% and hold attention 8× longer than mobile ads. Completion rates for 15-second spots average 94.5%, far higher than other digital video.

The average CTV ad attention reached about 51.5% in Q1 2024, far exceeding linear TV or standard web video.

This quality of exposure explains why 47% of buyers said they plan to increase focus on attention metrics in 2024, and why the IAB and MRC are now standardizing measurement frameworks.

📌 Actionable insight: Viewability remains table stakes, but attention metrics reveal whether impressions are truly valuable. Agencies can build stronger OTT business cases by reporting not only completion rates but also attention benchmarks that prove campaigns are driving engagement. Use these insights to refine creative and optimize placements toward high-attention environments. For clients, this shifts the conversation from “did people see it?” to “did it matter?”—a far more persuasive proof of value.

Unlock audience insights via CDPs and data clean rooms

To extract full value from OTT data, many advertisers are investing in customer data platforms (CDPs) and data clean rooms. 

CDPs consolidate CRM, app, and offline data into unified profiles for activation in streaming campaigns. Clean rooms, meanwhile, solve the walled-garden problem in CTV. They allow advertisers and publishers to match and analyze audience data in a secure environment without exposing raw information. 

Adoption is surging:

In a 2024 Treasure Data survey, 53% of advertisers called CDPs critical for consistent omnichannel experiences, and 93% said they’re essential for unifying fragmented customer data.

Paramount, Disney, and others launched clean room solutions in 2023, while the IAB Tech Lab published its first clean room standards.

📌 Actionable insight: Fragmented streaming data can make it hard to connect the dots, which is why CDPs and clean rooms are becoming essential. Agencies should guide clients in unifying customer data within CDPs, then leverage clean rooms to measure reach and conversions across walled gardens without violating privacy rules. The result is sharper targeting, more accurate frequency management, and defensible attribution. Investing in these tools today means better insights tomorrow and more control over how streaming budgets are justified.

💡 Where should I focus first in an OTT strategy? In a typical OTT digital marketing strategy, your top priority should be building a privacy-safe data foundation by leveraging first-party data and contextual signals. This ensures you can reach the right viewers with relevant creative and measure ROI across platforms with accuracy.

Scale with dynamic creative optimization (DCO)

OTT’s audience diversity makes dynamic creative optimization (DCO) a powerful lever. DCO technology assembles creative variations on the fly, tailoring messaging to the viewer’s location, time of day, or audience segment. For instance, a quick-serve chain can push breakfast in the morning and dinner combos at night. A retailer might show parkas in Minnesota and swimsuits in Florida—all using the same creative asset.

Case studies continue to underline DCO’s performance edge. In a large-scale test within native advertising, DCO lifted conversion rates by 53.5% compared to generic asset rotation. 

Innovid proves DCO’s impact: +37 seconds of engagement vs. standard video, +8% CTR lift for mobile video, and +51% for mobile display.

Fortunately, technology helps adoption. As mentioned, 86% of advertisers are using or plan to use generative AI tools to help create video ad variants. These tools produce the text overlays, voiceovers, and visual elements needed for thousands of variations.

📌 Actionable insight: DCO allows advertisers to move beyond “one-size-fits-all” TV spots and deliver variations at scale. Agencies should design modular creative assets—headlines, visuals, offers—that can be recombined dynamically to fit the audience context. Pairing DCO with predictive analytics ensures every impression feels timely and relevant, increasing completion and conversion rates. The key takeaway: scale doesn’t mean sacrificing personalization anymore; it means multiplying relevance efficiently.

Deliver content personalization

Audiences increasingly expect streaming ads to feel relevant. In fact, 57% of U.S. viewers prefer CTV ads to traditional TV spots when the ads match their interests or the content they’re watching. Personalization in OTT can mean tailoring creative to audience segments, aligning with specific genres, or even adjusting messaging by geography.

Contextual alignment is particularly powerful. 

Research shows consumers pay 4× more attention to CTV ads that are contextually matched to the content compared to unrelated ads. 

This explains why 66% of video ad buyers rate audience personalization capabilities as a top factor when selecting platforms.

Well-executed personalization also drives measurable ROI. 

McKinsey found that personalization strategies can deliver 8× the ROI on marketing spend and lift sales by at least 10%.

For OTT marketers, that means a smarter creative mix: tailoring not only the message but also the timing and placement to match the viewer’s mindset.

📌Actionable insight: Personalization in OTT can be subtle yet powerful, aligning ad tone and subject matter with viewer interests makes the message stick. Agencies can combine audience data with contextual placement to tailor both creative and media plans. Test creative variants for specific segments, and don’t overlook geo-based or time-of-day personalization for relevance.

Engage users with interactive ads and shoppable TV

Streaming platforms have turned TV into a two-way medium. Interactive and shoppable ads let viewers scan QR codes, click overlays, play branded games, or even buy products directly from the big screen.

The engagement lift is undeniable:

Campaigns that include QR codes have reported scan rates as high as 70%, particularly when tied to retail offers.

Walmart’s pilot with Roku showed that shoppable CTV ads can drive three times more sales than standard video ads.

Interactivity also extends attention. Innovid reported that interactive CTV creative generated an additional 192 seconds of engagement time beyond the initial ad slot, showing that viewers will lean in if the format invites them to participate.

With nearly one-third of U.S. viewers having completed a purchase through their connected TV, interactive formats are becoming a cornerstone of OTT performance marketing.

📌 Actionable insight: With interactive features, streaming TV shifts from awareness to action. Agencies should experiment with QR-enabled ads, clickable overlays, and shoppable formats that make the leap from viewing to buying frictionless. Encourage clients to treat these ads as test beds for direct sales impact while reinforcing brand engagement. When an ad can generate minutes of extra attention and measurable commerce, it stops being a cost center and starts being a sales driver.

Improve results with A/B testing and experimentation

Unlike traditional TV, OTT campaigns can be tested, optimized, and iterated in real time. Advertisers increasingly adopt an “always be testing” mindset, running experiments across creative, targeting, and frequency.

Examples include:

• Creative A/B tests to compare response to different calls-to-action.
• Geographic holdouts to measure incremental lift in sales or site visits.
• Frequency testing to identify the optimal number of exposures before returns diminish.

A/B testing systems using multi-armed bandit methodologies—which adapt based on real-time performance—have delivered results such as a 46% increase in click-through rate and a 27% gain in clicks during the testing phase, compared to fixed, non-adaptive experiments.

This shows that smarter testing designs not only find winners faster—but also drive substantial gains while tests are running.

For OTT, where creative and targeting variables can be adjusted on-the-fly, applying adaptive experimentation ensures campaigns are constantly steering toward what's working.

📌 Actionable insight: OTT gives advertisers the same flexibility to test and learn that digital buyers enjoy in other channels. Agencies should build experimentation into campaign plans—comparing creative, pacing, and targeting approaches—to uncover which tactics really move the needle.

Extend reach through cross-device targeting

Viewers don’t just sit in front of the television, they move between screens throughout the day. Cross-device targeting extends the reach of OTT campaigns by connecting exposures across TVs, smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

Identity graphs and household matching allow brands to retarget the same viewers after a TV ad exposure. For example, PepsiCo’s “cord-cutter” campaign reached more than 12 million unique viewers by combining CTV impressions with follow-ups on mobile and desktop, meeting 100% of its reach goal.

Cross-device orchestration also boosts efficiency:

One analysis showed that allocating just 7% of a campaign’s budget to CTV drove a 30% lift in ROI across the full media mix, as CTV exposure primed users for action on other devices.

📌 Actionable insight: Agencies can maximize impact by using identity graphs to retarget OTT-exposed households on mobile, desktop, and social. This cross-device continuity extends reach, reinforces messaging, and guides prospects down the funnel. For clients, it means turning one high-impact TV exposure into a series of touchpoints that drive action where it happens, often on the smaller screen.

Build connections with sequential storytelling

OTT isn’t just about reach, it’s about shaping a story that unfolds across multiple exposures. With sequential storytelling, advertisers can serve different creatives to the same viewer in a defined order. Instead of hammering one spot repeatedly, the brand builds momentum: an opening ad sets the scene, a follow-up delivers detail, and a final message drives action.

The payoff is substantial:

A YouTube and Ipsos study found that sequenced campaigns produced a 74% higher lift in ad recall and a 105% higher lift in purchase intent compared with repetitive ad delivery. 

Longer sequences—three or more ads—performed best, echoing the arc of beginning, middle, and end.

OTT platforms and DSPs now offer sequencing tools, making it easier to implement narrative structures across streaming services and devices.

📌 Actionable insight: Sequencing ads gives brands room to tell richer stories than a single 30-second spot can manage. Agencies should map creative arcs—introduce, deepen, and close—then deliver them in order to the same households. By doing so, clients amplify recall and intent far beyond what repetitive spots achieve. In OTT, where frequency can be controlled and stories can be tracked, sequential storytelling is both measurable and memorable.

Refine contextual targeting in streaming content

As cookies and device IDs lose ground, contextual targeting is regaining prominence in OTT digital advertising strategy. Rather than relying on individual identifiers, contextual targeting aligns ads with the content being watched—genre, theme, or even scene-level attributes. Context also provides brand safety, ensuring campaigns run in environments that reflect positively on the advertiser.

Nielsen’s consistent findings show combining contextual data (what’s being watched) with behavioral (audience) data yields the most impactful results—far outperforming either method alone. This always-on hybrid approach allows advertisers to more accurately reach viewers whose mindset and behavior align with the context in which an ad appears.

In streaming, the right context is more than placement; it’s an opportunity to connect with viewers at the exact moment they’re most receptive.

📌 Actionable insight: Contextual placement ensures ads feel natural in the content environment, even when user data is limited. Agencies should analyze show-level or genre-level signals and align campaigns with moments that complement the brand message. This is especially powerful in categories where interest and timing overlap (e.g., sportswear during live games). The result is higher attention and a privacy-proof strategy that keeps campaigns relevant no matter how identifiers evolve.

Enhance experience with frequency capping & ad pod management

Relevance doesn’t just come from targeting and creative; it also depends on how often and in what context ads appear. Overexposure is one of the top complaints among streaming audiences, and it can quickly erode brand favorability.

Frequency capping addresses this by limiting the number of impressions a household sees within a set period. 

Research suggests the sweet spot for many campaigns is around six exposures per week—beyond that, effectiveness diminishes and irritation rises.

Yet without caps, fragmented OTT ecosystems can easily overwhelm viewers with repetitive ads.

Ad pod management is just as critical. Streaming platforms often run lighter ad loads than linear TV, sometimes four to six minutes per hour versus sixteen. Lighter pods improve recall, but only if managed carefully: duplicate ads in the same break are a common frustration. In one survey, 23% of advertisers said shorter pods provided better brand exposure, underscoring the value of uncluttered breaks.

📌 Actionable insight: Ad fatigue kills brand goodwill faster than almost anything else. Agencies must insist on cross-platform frequency caps and avoid repetitive placements within pods. Helping clients negotiate lighter pods or premium pod positions can dramatically improve recall and perception. When campaigns respect the viewing experience, the audience rewards the brand with attention and trust—exactly what OTT is meant to deliver.

Conclusion

From privacy-first data activation and predictive analytics to interactive formats and sequential storytelling, the strategies outlined here prove that streaming campaigns can deliver measurable performance while keeping the viewing experience positive.

Success comes from integration. The most effective advertisers use OTT alongside other digital channels, apply consistent measurement frameworks, and connect streaming exposures back to business outcomes. With the right approach, OTT becomes more than reach, it becomes a performance engine that fuels brand growth.

At AI Digital, this is exactly what we help agencies and advertisers achieve. Our Open Garden framework removes the limits of walled gardens by offering DSP-agnostic buying, access to premium supply that’s carefully selected for performance, and full visibility into how budgets are invested. Our managed services team combines AI-powered tools with human expertise to plan, execute, and optimize campaigns across CTV, OTT, display, social, and more. And with our proprietary platform, Elevate, advertisers gain real-time predictive analytics, automated optimization, and holistic cross-platform insights.

If you’re ready to make OTT a performance channel that works harder for your business, get in touch with us at AI Digital. We’ll help you build a tailored OTT TV advertising strategy that delivers clarity, transparency, and measurable results.