Mary Gabrielyan
September 12, 2025
21
minutes read
TV media buying now spans broadcast, cable, and streaming screens—where planning, pricing, and measurement finally converge. Streaming accounts for nearly half of U.S. TV viewing, yet live sports still rule the biggest audiences, which keeps television media buying central to brand scale.
TV ad buying has entered a practical new phase: one plan, many screens, shared accountability. For marketers, the job is no longer just slotting a media buy on linear schedules. It’s managing converged television—broadcast, cable, and CTV—so reach, targeting, frequency, and outcomes work in concert. Streaming’s weight is undeniable: in July 2025, it represented nearly half of total TV viewing time in the U.S., according to Nielsen’s The Gauge.
Budgets have followed. The IAB’s 2025 video spend outlook shows digital video (CTV, online video, social video) commanding close to 60% of U.S. TV/video ad spend, cementing the shift toward impression-based planning and cross-platform reporting. At the same time, live sports dominate U.S. television’s top telecasts—the NFL accounted for 72 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2024—so premium linear still anchors big-reach strategies.
You’ll also see a clearer path on measurement and currencies. Nielsen’s big data + panel approach has renewed accreditation, while alternative currencies like VideoAmp, iSpot, and Comscore continue to gain certification and usage across deals. We’ll show how to apply them without overcomplicating your post-buys.
This guide is written for marketers, media planners, and business leaders who want a practical, current view of TV media buying and television media buying—from definitions and buying types to pricing models, optimization, and safeguards.
💡 If you want a quick primer on TV fundamentals first, start here: TV advertising. Then come back for details that matter in 2025–2026.
TV media buying is the process of purchasing advertising inventory across linear TV (broadcast and cable) and streaming environments (CTV/OTT and vMVPDs) to reach a defined audience at an agreed price within a fixed time frame. A TV media buyer translates campaign goals into audience definitions, reach and frequency targets, and a mix of inventory sources, then negotiates rates and terms, activates the plan, and stewards delivery through to final reporting.
At its core, television media buying is about matching available supply (programs, dayparts, streams, and ad pods) with predictable demand (your audience, budget, and timing) while managing risk on price, delivery, and quality. Buyers use different deal structures—upfront, scatter, programmatic guaranteed, private marketplace, and open auction—to balance cost efficiency, flexibility, and control. Success is measured on delivery (impressions/GRPs), effectiveness (incremental reach, lift, response), and quality (brand suitability, fraud-free supply, accurate currency).
💬 Upfront commitments buy certainty; programmatic buys add control. The best plans use both.
Key concepts you’ll see referenced throughout:
Below is the practical flow most teams follow from brief to post-buy. In converged TV, some steps are concurrent, but the logic stays the same.
💬 What good looks like: clear objective → audience-first plan → diversified deal mix → defensible pricing → clean delivery → measurable outcomes.
These disciplines are tightly connected but not the same. Planning sets the strategy; buying executes it with commercial and operational rigor.
💬 Planning chooses the why and who; buying owns the how, where, and how much.
In practice, the best outcomes happen when planners and buyers work as a single converged TV team: planners frame the strategy and measurement, while buyers engineer the market mechanics—pricing, inventory access, and live optimization—to hit the plan’s goals with precision.
TV buying has shifted from channel-by-channel tactics to converged planning across linear, cable, and CTV, with budgets and measurement following suit.
As mentioned, streaming now commands nearly half of U.S. TV viewing time and continues to set monthly records. Meanwhile, digital video is set to account for 58–60% of total U.S. TV/video ad spend in 2025, reflecting a decisive move to impression-based deals and cross-screen reporting.
💡 For a broader view of where this is heading, see AI Digital’s outlook on media trends 2025.
The practical mix today looks like this:
Sports still anchor national scale—the NFL accounted for 72 of the top 100 telecasts in 2024, while Super Bowl LIX reached 127.7 million viewers across platforms, the biggest single-network telecast on record.
As buyers stitch screens together, deduplicated reach and frequency become the operating metrics, yet only 32% of marketers say they can measure media holistically across traditional and digital channels, underscoring why currency and methodology choices matter in 2026.
📌 What this means for planning: build a base of guaranteed reach (upfronts or programmatic guaranteed), then layer CTV and online video for audience precision and incremental reach. Use one currency for transactions and a cross-platform system for deduped reporting.
TV delivers several durable advantages that are hard to replicate elsewhere:
Even with those strengths, three issues demand rigor:
💡 If you want help designing a converged TV plan that addresses these four risks while pushing for incremental reach and outcome accountability, see how we can help at AI Digital | what we do.
Below are the main paths to TV inventory. Each balances certainty, flexibility, and control differently—use the mix that fits your goals and risk tolerance.
Annual advance commitments with TV networks and major streaming publishers. You reserve inventory for the broadcast year or a streaming slate, often tied to priority programs and dayparts.
Quarter-by-quarter buying of unsold or newly released inventory after the upfront.
Last-minute or surplus spots sold at discounted CPMs across linear, CTV, and FAST channels.
Automated, data-driven buying of CTV/OTT and, increasingly, addressable and linear supply via DSPs and private marketplaces.
💬 Plan for certainty, budget for flexibility, and use programmatic to fine-tune.
A solid TV media buying program moves in a straight line: define the audience and KPIs, model reach and frequency across screens, negotiate inventory and terms, traffic the creative correctly, then monitor delivery and outcomes with enough discipline to improve results mid-flight.
💡 If you’d like a quick refresher on formats and inventory basics, this primer on cable TV advertising is useful context.
Begin with a brief that’s specific about outcomes. Decide whether you must deliver unique reach at a minimum exposure level, qualified site/store actions, or sales lift. Translate that goal into an audience you can actually buy—move beyond age–sex to behaviors, geography, and any first-party segments suitable for addressable TV or CTV.
From there, build a view of where that audience is easiest to reach across linear and streaming. Model deduplicated reach and the frequency you’ll need to be effective; set sensible caps on CTV so you don’t fatigue the same households.
Finally, name your measurement stack early: pick a transaction currency for stewardship and a cross-screen system for deduped reach/frequency so reporting won’t fragment later.
💬 Define the audience in data, then buy the audience across screens—not the other way around.
Turn the plan into comparable proposals. Issue RFPs that specify audience, delivery, pricing unit, and any placement needs such as pod position or sponsorships. Compare responses on one yardstick—CPM/CPP, daypart mix, audience index, cancellation windows, and how makegoods will be handled if delivery falls short.
For streaming, set guardrails up front: which apps or channels are allowed, what disclosure you’ll receive, how frequency will be capped, and what reporting cadence you expect.
Many advertisers secure a guaranteed base (upfronts or programmatic guaranteed), hold a modest reserve for scatter, and use curated CTV deals for targeted amplification.
Match the message to the placement and the viewer’s context. Map assets to the plan: 15s/30s/60s for linear; VAST-compliant files for CTV; short variations for sequential messaging.
Clear every cut with standards and practices, confirm substantiation and disclaimers, and meet loudness/captioning requirements.
If you expect higher exposure bands, rotate creative to prevent wear-out.
Execution looks different by channel, but the goal is the same—precise delivery against the agreed currency.
For linear, finalize insertion orders with flight dates, dayparts, impression or GRP guarantees, and clear makegood terms; confirm copy deadlines and traffic instructions with each network or station group, and record any adjacency requests (first-in-pod, separation from competitors).
For CTV and addressable, set up campaigns in your DSP or publisher platform using deal IDs and curated marketplaces, apply global frequency caps and pacing rules, and enforce allowlists, fraud filtering, and brand-suitability profiles.
In both cases, make sure billing metrics align with the currency named in the contract and that vendor reports reconcile cleanly.
Stewardship is where television media buying earns its keep. Monitor delivery against plan, pacing by partner and daypart, on-target percentage, and the shape of your frequency distribution. Verify quality continuously—invalid-traffic rates, suitability issues, unexpected apps or channels—and keep an eye on creative rotation for early signs of fatigue. When something underdelivers, move quickly:
At wrap, reconcile currency delivery and claim makegoods where warranted. Report incremental reach, cost efficiency, and outcome KPIs alongside clear learnings and tests to roll into the next flight. This habit—measure, adjust, document—turns tv ad buying from a procurement exercise into a repeatable growth lever.
Pricing in TV media buying has largely converged on impressions, even when you transact linear placements. You’ll still see legacy CPP and GRP language in proposals, but most deals in 2025–2026 clear on CPM, which makes it easier to compare linear, cable, and CTV on one footing. Streaming supply keeps expanding (new AVOD tiers, FAST channels, and major publishers adding ad time), which has pushed CPMs down from their pandemic-era peaks; at the same time, premium live events and high-demand programming continue to command significant premiums.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is the default pricing unit across converged TV. A national buy might clear near the low-30s CPM on average across the market, with meaningful variation by content, audience, and timing.
For 2025–26, primetime upfronts settled at roughly $31B, with $17.8B in linear commitments and $13.2B in streaming. Average adult 30s CPMs eased again:
Softer rates reflect more streaming GRP supply (higher ad loads and FAST growth), while strong sports kept linear from sliding further. Practically, buyers get a bit more room on rate: keep a guaranteed base for scale, then use CTV to add precision and incremental reach.
CPP (cost per point) ties price to a rating point in a given demo and is still common in linear negotiations and post-buys, especially for local/spot. It converts cleanly to CPM once the demo universe is defined, but CPM remains the more practical cross-screen unit for planning and reconciliation.
You’ll also encounter fixed unit rates for unique events and integrations. The Super Bowl is the most prominent example, where 30-second units have recently been priced around $7–8 million and are reportedly moving to $8 million for 2026 inventory. These are negotiated as flat fees rather than CPMs and include custom placement considerations.
Other units still appear in streaming and direct-response contexts—CPCV (cost per completed view), vCPM (viewable CPM), and occasionally CPA/ROAS frameworks for outcome-based guarantees on select partners—but CPM is the common denominator for most converged TV buys.
💬 Transact on CPM for apples-to-apples planning. Use CPP and unit rates where they genuinely add precision.
Pricing moves with supply, demand, and the quality of the audience you’re buying. A few levers matter most.
Seasonality and demand spikes raise CPMs. Q4 retail and the sports calendar increase competition; big event windows (NFL playoffs, March Madness, Olympics) can lift rates in adjacent programming as well.
Context and format carry premiums. Live sports and first-run prime command higher prices; first-in-pod or A-pod positions cost more than late-break positions. CTV typically has fewer ad minutes per hour than linear, which concentrates demand into scarcer pods on premium services.
Audience definition changes the math. Broad A18–49 or A25–54 on national linear tends to be cheaper per thousand than addressable impressions against a high-value segment. Adding first-party or purchase-based targets on CTV will raise CPMs but can lower waste.
Deal structure matters. Upfronts often secure better base pricing (and placement) than last-minute buys; scatter can be opportunistic but volatile. In 2024-25 upfronts, buyers pushed linear CPMs down modestly while also negotiating more competitive streaming pricing, illustrating how timing and leverage shape outcomes.
Finally, macro conditions and competition influence rates. As major streamers add ad tiers, total premium streaming inventory rises, while measurement assurance (e.g., currency accreditation) can also affect perceived value and pricing confidence.
Start with what you must accomplish, then back into the mix and money:
A practical pattern for many U.S. advertisers is a converged allocation that leans on linear for scale and CTV for control. In 2025, some planning benchmarks show budgets still weighted toward linear, with roughly one-third on CTV; the exact split should reflect your category, creative assets, and the role TV plays in your broader plan.
When you build the working budget, include three guardrails:
Close with a sanity check. Compare your modeled all-in CPM (media + verification + data fees) to historic campaigns, confirm you can deliver the required reach without saturating frequency, and validate that the measurement stack—currency for delivery, plus a cross-screen system for deduplicated reach—can support the post-buy you’ll need to make decisions next quarter.
Don’t buy impressions until measurement is clear. One currency for delivery, another for reach, both secured in the IO for clean reconciliation. Let’s break it down step by step.
By 2025, currency choice is no longer a single-answer question. As mentioned, the Media Rating Council accredited Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel national TV measurement in January 2025, making it the first MRC-accredited hybrid panel–big data currency for national TV. Nielsen is also phasing out panel-only ratings by late 2025, further centering transactions on the hybrid product.
Alongside Nielsen, the U.S. Joint Industry Committee (JIC) reaffirmed VideoAmp, iSpot, and Comscore as certified currencies following its mid-term audit for the 2025–2026 season, expanding Comscore’s status to include personified demographics. In practice, that means buyers and sellers can transact on multiple accredited or certified options, often naming a primary currency for guarantees and a secondary dataset for validation and planning.
What to do with this multi-currency reality: establish your primary transaction currency in the IO, define the reconciliation rules up front, and align your post-buy with a cross-screen system that your internal stakeholders already trust.
Cross-screen reporting is moving from aspiration to table stakes. Nielsen ONE Ads delivers deduplicated reach and frequency across linear and digital (including YouTube CTV), giving planners a single view of unique audience and overlap. Still, most marketers aren’t there yet.
Two practical snags remain. First, co-viewing: determining how many people were actually in the room. Agencies cite co-viewing as a persistent blocker for accurate effectiveness measurement, and trade press continues to flag the modeling gaps. Second, supply-path sprawl in CTV can produce duplicate exposure across apps and devices unless you actively manage caps and identity.
A workable approach is simple: buy and measure in one primary system when you can; insist on app or channel disclosure for CTV; set a global frequency ceiling across partners; and use a deduped reach report as the optimization source of truth each week.
Delivery metrics still matter—impressions, on-target percentage, GRPs, effective reach at 3+—but buyers are weighting business outcomes more heavily. IAB’s video ad spend work shows outcomes like sales, store visits, and site actions now sit atop the KPI stack, with reach and frequency close behind. Use delivery for stewardship and outcomes for decision-making.
Quality and attention measures are maturing. The IAB/MRC Attention Measurement Guidelines (May 2025, open for public comment) outline common definitions and reporting principles so “attention” can be applied as a supplementary signal, not a replacement for delivery or outcomes. Treat attention as a diagnostic layer to improve placement and creative rotation, especially in streaming.
Methodologically, pair currency delivery with one consistent, cross-screen deduped view (e.g., Nielsen ONE Ads or a certified alternative), then add experiment design on top: incrementality tests to isolate lift; brand lift for upper-funnel readouts; and MMM for long-term ROI. Expect to reconcile co-viewing assumptions and device graphs along the way—clarify them in your SOW so your QBR doesn’t devolve into methodology debates.
Great TV media buying is about making each impression serve a clear objective, then orchestrating linear and CTV so reach, precision, and outcomes add up. The strategies below are pragmatic and repeatable.
Start by deciding what TV must achieve for the business and write it down as a short ladder:
That ladder drives everything: audience definitions, the mix of linear and CTV, the currency you transact on, and the KPIs you’ll report.
Two guardrails keep plans honest: define an effective reach target you’re unwilling to compromise, and name the measurement stack before any RFPs go out (transaction currency plus the cross-screen system you’ll use to judge deduplicated reach and frequency).
💬 Strategy is choosing which impressions not to buy, so your budget funds the ones that move the needle.
Modern television media buying lets you go well beyond age–sex. Use first-party data when you can (CRM, site, or app audiences activated through privacy-safe onboarding) and supplement with robust third-party segments for intent or category purchase.
In practice, the most dependable pattern pairs broad, low-waste linear reach with addressable or CTV segments that warrant higher CPMs because they remove obvious waste.
Version your creative to match those segments: new customers see a narrative spot; high-propensity households see an offer or local incentive. Set minimum audience sizes so you don’t burn frequency on tiny pools, and test one or two high-value segments per flight rather than slicing into dozens you can’t measure cleanly.
A small, focused list can help here:
The job is to maximize unique reach at an effective exposure level while avoiding wasteful repetition.
Model deduplicated reach across linear and CTV before launch, then monitor the live frequency distribution each week.
Small moves often have outsized impact: moving a fraction of prime weight into sports shoulder programming, or trading one crowded CTV app for a curated bundle with fresher audience, can restore reach without inflating cost.
Treat TV as the engine that creates demand and your digital stack as the capture system. Plan TV and digital together so frequency complements rather than collides, and so creative tells a coherent story across screens.
Simple integrations work best: a short URL or QR cue on the TV spot, coordinated search and retail media bursts during TV flight weeks, and privacy-safe retargeting of exposed households with mid-funnel messages.
When TV drives a response, suppress further CTV impressions to those households and spend the next dollar on incremental reach instead.
💡 For a deeper dive on the CTV piece of the puzzle, see our guide to connected TV advertising.
Above all, keep decision rights clear. Name who can shift weight between linear and CTV mid-flight, how quickly, and based on which metrics. When the team knows the rules, you can adapt in days, not weeks—and that’s often the difference between a good tv ad buying plan and a great one.
The strongest TV media buying programs blend seasoned partners with a modern toolset. Think in three layers: who negotiates and stewards the media, who measures and verifies delivery and outcomes, and what automation you use to keep the plan efficient while it’s live.
Agencies remain the primary operating system for television media buying. They translate business objectives into audience definitions, negotiate pricing and terms at scale, and manage day-to-day stewardship—from trafficking and copy rotation to makegoods and reconciliation.
For national brands, holding-company trading power can secure access to premium inventory and better pod positions; for growth marketers, specialist shops and self-serve platforms offer faster cycles and tighter feedback loops.
💡 If you prefer a partner that can integrate planning, buying, analytics, and optimization under one roof, explore how we work with advertisers at AI Digital.
A useful way to evaluate partners is simple: ask how they will guarantee clean app or channel disclosure in CTV; how they manage cross-screen frequency; which currency they will transact on and why; and how quickly they can reallocate spend when performance diverges from plan.
A converged plan needs two kinds of measurement:
Many advertisers pair a currency provider with one or more analytics partners for brand lift, incrementality, and attribution.
Identity resolution and data onboarding vendors (for example, those that connect first-party audiences to TV households in a privacy-safe way) round out the stack and make targeted and addressable TV practical at scale.
When you assess vendors, focus less on feature lists and more on fit: does the methodology match your KPI ladder; can you get log-level transparency for CTV; and will the outputs be trusted by finance when you present ROI.
Automation is no longer a sidecar. It plans, protects, and optimizes the buy while it runs.
On the planning side, machine-learning models forecast reach and overlap across screens and surface the mixes most likely to hit effective frequency without waste.
In execution, automated systems watch pacing, frequency distribution, and quality signals, then shift weight toward placements that add incremental reach or stronger outcomes.
In CTV, supply-path optimization and curated marketplaces reduce duplication and improve transparency. Creative rotation can also be automated so heavy-frequency households see fresh variants rather than the same cut repeatedly.
If you’re consolidating this into a single workflow, start with curated inventory and global frequency caps, then layer automation where it moves the needle most: budget rebalancing, anomaly detection, and outcome-guided bidding.
💡 For a snapshot of how we apply these ideas in practice, see Smart Supply and Elevate: AI media intelligence.
Compliance starts with the law, then extends to platform rules and your own risk tolerance. On television, you’re responsible for truthful, non-misleading claims and for meeting category-specific rules (for example, fair balance in pharma).
The FTC makes this baseline explicit: ad claims must be truthful, not deceptive or unfair, and substantiated when appropriate. The FCC enforces additional broadcast standards, including the CALM Act’s requirement that commercials maintain the same average loudness as surrounding programming. Build these obligations into creative review and network clearance so issues are resolved before traffic.
Brand safety is more nuanced. Linear environments remain curated, but connected TV introduces risks familiar from digital: spoofed apps, opaque supply paths, and varying content suitability. Treat verification and supply hygiene as part of the media buy, not an optional add-on:
A second layer is transparency in programmatic supply. Independent studies of the open web have shown material waste when supply paths aren’t curated, and similar dynamics can appear in CTV without disciplined controls. Shorten the chain wherever possible (direct deals and curated PMPs), require app or channel-level disclosure, and document IVT thresholds and make-good remedies in your IOs.
Privacy compliance belongs here too. If you activate first-party audiences or measure outcomes, confirm you have appropriate consent and data processing terms, and prefer privacy-preserving pipes (clean rooms, aggregated reporting) over raw data movement.
💡 For a broader view on preparing your data strategy, see our perspectives on safety in programmatic advertising and operating in a cookie-less world.
Here’s a short list of non-negotiables you can paste into briefs and RFPs:
Handled this way, compliance and brand safety become protective rails rather than friction, preserving the advantages of TV while keeping your campaign—and your brand—out of avoidable trouble.
TV ad buying works when you treat it as one converged system. Plan for scale on linear, add precision on CTV, and hold yourself to a single source of truth for delivery and a cross-screen view for deduplicated reach and frequency. Lock currency and verification in the IO, steward quality and suitability like line items—not afterthoughts—and keep enough flexibility to move budget toward what’s working.
Here are five practical moves to put that into action:
If you’d like help applying these principles to your next plan—or want an outside read on pricing, currency, and optimization—reach out to the team at AI Digital. We’ll pressure-test your assumptions, model reach and frequency across screens, and engineer the buying mechanics to hit your goals with clarity and speed. Get in touch.
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Examples of companies using AI
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Audience segmentation and insights
Identify and categorize audience groups based on behaviors, preferences, and characteristics
Automated ad campaigns
Automate ad creation, placement, and optimization across various platforms
Brand sentiment tracking
Monitor and analyze public opinion about a brand across multiple channels in real time
Campaign strategy optimization
Analyze data to predict optimal campaign approaches, channels, and timing
Content strategy
Generate content ideas, predict performance, and optimize distribution strategies
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Create tailored messaging and experiences for consumers at scale
Online media buying is the practice of purchasing digital ad inventory—display, online video, CTV/OTT, social, search—using impression-based pricing (usually CPM) and platform tools to target, deliver, and measure ads across the web.
Programmatic uses software to automate buying. You set audience, budget, bids, frequency caps, and brand-safety rules; a DSP then bids in real time (or via programmatic guaranteed) to win impressions across approved inventory, optimizing toward your KPIs.
Use AI to forecast reach and overlap, detect pacing or quality anomalies, rebalance budgets toward placements that add incremental reach, and rotate creative based on performance. Keep a human in the loop to set guardrails and validate outcomes.
It’s a specialist partner (often an agency) that converts your plan into deals and delivery: negotiating price and terms, trafficking creative, monitoring performance, managing makegoods, and reconciling results against the chosen currency and KPIs.
Planning defines the strategy—objectives, audiences, channel mix, KPIs, and measurement. Buying executes that strategy—selects partners, negotiates rates and placements, activates campaigns, controls quality and frequency, and reports results.
