A Perspective on Performance TV: What 2025 Clarified—and What Comes Next

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For most of my career in ad tech, the hardest problems have not been about scale. They have been about trust.

Advertisers do not lack channels. They lack confidence; confidence that a dollar spent is incremental, confidence that performance holds as spend increases, and confidence that the platforms they use reflect how modern marketing teams actually operate.

In that context, 2025 felt like an inflection point, not just for Universal Ads, but for performance TV as a category. It was a year when long-held assumptions met real-world execution, and the gap between promise and proof became much clearer. This is a reflection on what became clear, how we responded at Universal Ads, and what I believe defines the next phase of TV advertising.

What 2025 Clarified

Performance TV is no longer a conceptual debate; it is an execution challenge. The question is not whether TV can drive outcomes. It is whether platforms can remove enough friction for advertisers to test, learn, and scale with confidence.

Three realities showed up consistently:

• Premium video works best as a complement, not a replacement.
  CTV performs strongest when it extends what advertisers already know from search and social, reaching new customers, reinforcing demand, and accelerating conversion rather than competing for last-click credit. Universal Ads was built around this insight, making premium TV buying feel intuitive and performance-oriented rather than siloed or fragmented.
  

• Measurement determines whether testing turns into scale.
  Advertisers will experiment without perfect measurement, but they will not commit meaningful budget without clarity. Incrementality, value-based optimization, and real performance signals are what move TV from an awareness channel to a growth lever. This focus is central to how Universal Ads approaches performance reporting and optimization.
  

• Ease earns the first dollar, performance earns loyalty.
  Lowering friction gets advertisers in the door. Sustained efficiency and outcomes keep them investing. Platforms that mirror the workflows and expectations of performance marketers dramatically shorten the learning curve.

These insights were not theoretical. They came from watching advertisers, many new to TV, move from cautious testing to confident repeat spend.

How We Focused at Universal Ads

At Universal Ads, 2025 was about earning the right to scale.

That meant resisting the urge to chase surface-level differentiation and instead focusing on fundamentals; building infrastructure that performance marketers could trust and operate day to day.

• We built a self-serve buying experience designed around outcomes rather than inventory mechanics, borrowing the best of digital workflows while respecting what makes premium TV distinct.

• We invested in measurement, so advertisers could understand what TV was actually contributing and adjust in real time, not weeks after a campaign ended.

• We reduced creative and workflow friction through integrations and in-platform tools, helping advertisers move from idea to live campaign faster without sacrificing quality.

• And we expanded access to premium, brand-safe inventory by growing our publisher ecosystem, because performance only matters if supply is consistent, high quality, and trusted.

The outcome was not just adoption. It was repeat usage, improving efficiency, and advertisers treating TV as something they could actively manage, not just allocate budget to once a quarter.

Why This Moment Matters for the Industry

Anyone who has watched channels mature over time will recognize this phase. TV is moving from upfront commitments to on-demand access, from proxy metrics to proof, and from manual optimization to systems that learn. The platforms that win will not simply offer more inventory. They will be the ones that abstract complexity without obscuring performance, integrate cleanly into existing growth stacks, and respect how modern teams test, measure, and make decisions.

Universal Ads was designed with these principles from the start, bridging premium content with performance expectations in a single platform.

A Look at 2026

Looking ahead, the next phase of performance TV is coming into focus:

• Performance will become a standard, not a feature.
  Incrementality, outcome-based optimization, and real feedback loops will move from differentiators to expectations.
  

• Automation will matter most when it is accountable.
  AI will prove its value where it reduces operational burden and improves outcomes, particularly in bidding, pacing, creative optimization, and measurement.
  

• TV will embed into the core growth stack.
  Deeper integrations across analytics, commerce, CRM, and creative tools will determine how central TV becomes to everyday marketing workflows.
  

• Premium moments will become more accessible.
  Iconic inventory and culturally relevant content will increasingly be unlocked for a broader set of advertisers, without the historical barriers that once limited access.

If 2025 was about proving that TV can behave like a performance channel, then 2026 will be about consistency; in outcomes, in measurement, in the confidence advertisers have when they decide to scale.

The opportunity ahead is not about redefining TV again. It is about making performance clear, repeatable, and dependable enough that TV earns its place alongside every other core growth channel.

That is the work in front of us, and it is the work worth doing.