The State of CTV: Measurement’s Identity Crisis

Advertising Week NY 2025 was supposed to be a moment of clarity for connected TV measurement. Instead, it felt like déjà vu. Panel after panel admitted what everyone already knows: CTV measurement is broken.

But the real crisis isn’t just that it’s broken — it’s that nobody agrees on how to fix it. Some argue for a unified identity layer. Others push for cross-platform standards. Still others call for independent verification. The result? More heat than light.

As one panelist quipped, “We’ve reinvented the wheel five times — none of them round.” It was meant as a joke, but it nailed the truth: advertisers, agencies, and publishers are all trying to solve the same puzzle with different pieces.

Why Measurement Broke

The CTV rocket took off before the runway was paved. Streaming adoption surged faster than the measurement infrastructure could keep up. Nielsen’s legacy panels weren’t designed for multi-device households. Cookies were never built for TVs. And the rise of walled gardens only deepened fragmentation.

The consequences are staggering:

Agencies struggle to reconcile reporting between Roku, Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix.
Brands risk double-paying for the same households across different platforms.
Publishers protect proprietary metrics, slowing any standardization.

According to IAB’s 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report, 78% of agency buyers cite inconsistent measurement as their #1 challenge in CTV. That’s not just an annoyance — it’s an existential issue for accountability.

The Cost of Chaos

The lack of clarity isn’t just inconvenient. It’s expensive. CPMs rise because inefficiencies hide waste. ROI is blurred, making CFOs skeptical. And consumers become collateral damage: poor measurement means poor frequency control, which is why audiences complain about seeing the same ad 10 times in a row.

Contrarian POV: The problem isn’t that CTV measurement is “broken.” It’s that the industry insists on retrofitting 20th-century measurement models onto 21st-century behavior.

Loyal’s POV

At Loyal, we believe measurement must be rebuilt on three foundations: transparency, contextual enrichment, and household intelligence.

Rather than chasing fading identity graphs, measurement should anchor itself in context and behavior. When you know the moment and the mindset, you can evaluate effectiveness with clarity that raw IDs can’t deliver.

Unlike competitors like Seedtag or GumGum, who lean heavily on creative overlays or stitched IDs, Loyal’s contextual + behavioral exchange enriches every impression with audience, environment, and household-level intelligence. That’s how agencies move from chaos to confidence.

Market Impact Note

For Loyal, this isn’t theoretical. Every advertiser asking for PMPs wants proof their spend is effective. By powering campaigns with transparency and context-first signals, Loyal restores trust and expands revenue opportunities across agencies that are desperate for clarity.

Key Takeaways

CTV ad spend is projected to surpass $40B in the U.S. by 2027 (eMarketer, 2025).
78% of agencies say inconsistent measurement is their #1 concern (IAB, 2025).
Measurement anchored in context and household intelligence offers a scalable, privacy-safe path forward.
Loyal’s contextual + behavioral exchange delivers that clarity today.

Future-Gazing POV: The agencies that master CTV measurement now will be the ones clients trust to steward their full video budgets in 2026 and beyond.

Discover more: Test our PMPs and see how context + behavior restore confidence in CTV → https://www.loyal.app/contact

Referenced Sources

IAB, “2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Full Report” — https://www.iab.com/insights/video-ad-spend-report-2025/
eMarketer, “US TV and Connected TV Ad Spending Forecasts H1 2025” — https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-tv-connected-tv-ad-spending-forecasts-h1-2025
eMarketer, “Connected TV Ad Spending Will Surpass Linear TV in 2027” — https://www.emarketer.com/chart/352254/connected-tv-ctv-ad-spending-will-surpass-linear-tv-2027