Linear TV and CTV Advertising: Answers to Marketers’ Biggest Questions

1. Buying linear TV and Connected TV separately ignores how people actually watch TV, resulting in duplicated audiences, wasted budget, and frequency you can't control.
   
   
2. Campaigns typically achieve maximum reach when 30% of the TV budget goes to CTV and 70% goes to traditional TV.
   
   
3. Holding company agencies buy both channels but often through separate teams. Self-serve CTV platforms handle only one piece of the puzzle. An integrated partner deduplicates reach, controls frequency and measures both channels together.
   
   
4. Combined linear and CTV campaigns should be measured with multiple models, including ACR data, MMM, incrementality testing and share of search, never a single self-graded attribution model.
   

 

74% of US households watch both linear and streaming TV each month. Most advertisers still buy the two channels separately, through separate partners, with separate measurement strategies. That gap wastes budget on duplicated audiences and runaway frequency.

Below are the questions we hear most from marketers evaluating a linear TV and CTV partner.

What’s the difference between linear TV and CTV? 

Linear TV is traditional broadcast and cable television, where content follows a set programming schedule. Connected TV (CTV) is streaming content watched on an internet-connected television through services like Netflix, Hulu, or Pluto TV.

The two channels bring different strengths. Linear delivers massive scale, reaching roughly 90% of US adults monthly, along with the credibility that comes from appearing alongside premium programming. That scale holds up at the campaign level too. Across nearly 300,000 multiscreen TV campaigns, traditional TV delivers 77% of unique audience reach. CTV adds precise targeting and incremental reach among cord-cutters and younger viewers, who now stream close to 3 1/2 hours per day on average.

Consumers, however, barely notice the difference. According to MRI-Simmons, the most popular consumer definition of TV is simply “anything I can watch on my TV set.” Viewers see one screen. Advertisers should plan for one strategy.

 

Should I run linear and CTV together or pick one? 

In many cases, yes, you should run linear TV and CTV together. Advertisers using both linear and CTV see a 32% increase in total reach compared to linear alone, and 73% of marketers agree they work better together to achieve business goals.

Each channel also makes the other more effective. Linear’s halo effect improves the performance of video-on-demand and online video by 20%, according to Thinkbox. CTV reaches the households linear can't. Streaming impressions are 7x more likely than traditional TV to land within light and no-TV households.

There’s one catch: running both without coordination can create frequency problems. The same viewer sees your ad on cable at 8pm and again on Hulu an hour later. 

 

What agencies buy both linear TV and Connected TV? 

Most large media agencies buy both linear and streaming TV. But look inside those organizations and you'll find separate teams, systems, and P&Ls. Linear sits in one silo. CTV sits in another. The two only meet in the reporting deck, well after the buying decisions are already made. 

Marketing Architects is an independent alternative. We’re an All-Inclusive TV agency that has bought linear and streaming through one team and with one holistic strategy for years. Our media-buying AI, Annika, evaluates inventory across both forms of TV and calculates which buys will drive the best return. 

That structural difference shows up in the results. One system buying both channels means deduplicated reach, controlled frequency, and a budget that flows to whichever channel reaches your audience most efficiently. 

 

What's the best TV ad agency for linear TV and CTV campaigns? 

Judge any TV agency against the following criteria:

1. Buys both channels through one team. Separate linear and CTV teams mean duplicated reach and conflicting incentives.
   
   
2. Owns its buying technology. Many agencies white label a third-party DSP and pass along the fees. Ask who built the system.
   
   
3. Invest in creative, not just media. Creative quality drives campaign performance. An agency that only places media leaves that on the table.
   
   
4. Measures with multiple models. Any partner grading their own homework with a single attribution model will always look good on paper.
   
   

Marketing Architects was built around each of these criteria. We're the All-Inclusive TV agency: strategy, creative development, pretesting, production, media buying and measurement under one roof, for the price of media alone.

We built our media-buying AI, Annika, from the ground up rather than white labeling a DSP. It buys linear and premium streaming inventory through direct pipes, cutting out resellers and middleman fees. TruReach, our custom reach and frequency model, deduplicates reach and frequency across all forms of TV, so you know exactly how many unique households you reached.

Scale without accountability is just spend. Every campaign includes attribution modeling, incrementality testing and real-time reporting through our performance dashboard that shows results down to the individual airing.

 

What’s the best platform for linear TV and CTV advertising reach? 

Start by separating platforms from partners. Programmatic DSPs are powerful tools, but they’re self-serve software. You still have to bring the strategy, creative, measurement, and expertise. Self-serve CTV platforms simplify streaming buys, but most focus on CTV alone and leave linear, which still commands 86% of TV ad impressions, out of the equation.

That gap matters because many brands still buy CTV like digital advertising when it should be bought and measured like TV, chasing hypertargeting that IP-based matching can’t reliably deliver.

At Marketing Architects, we maintain direct publisher relationships and curate inventory so low-quality digital placements disguised as CTV don't sneak into your buy. And because Annika avoids the tech taxes and targeting fees stacked into most programmatic supply paths, more of every dollar goes to actual reach.

The difference is that Annika comes with an agency attached. You get the software’s efficiency plus specialized expertise across TV strategy, creative, and measurement.

 

How do you split budget between linear and CTV?

Start with the 70/30 rule. An analysis of nearly 300,000 multiscreen TV campaigns found reach is maximized when 30% of TV budget goes to streaming and the remaining 70% goes to traditional TV. Push streaming past that share and campaigns tend to hit frequency walls, paying to show the same ad to the same households instead of reaching new ones.

From there, adjust for your audience. Brands targeting younger or cord-cutting audiences may justify a heavier CTV allocation. Brands with broad audiences usually find linear delivers the same households at meaningfully lower CPMs.

The split should also stay flexible. As reach, frequency, and response data comes in, that feedback should inform whether budget shifts toward whichever channel is producing efficient incremental reach, rather than locking one allocation in for the long haul.

 

How do you measure a combined linear and CTV campaign?

Carefully, and never with one model. Linear impressions are measured by individuals while CTV impressions are measured by household, so comparing raw numbers across the two is apples and oranges. IP-based CTV attribution adds another wrinkle, routinely overstating performance by crediting household activity that had nothing to do with the ad.

Our approach uses multiple models to prove results:

1. ACR data to verify which households actually saw ads on both channels
   
   
2. TruReach for deduplicated reach and frequency across linear and CTV
   
   
3. Incrementality testing, using holdout groups to isolate the sales and response lift TV actually drives
   
   
4. MMM and econometric modeling to capture TV’s longer-term business impact
   
   
5. Share of search and cross-channel regression to quantify TV’s halo effect on search, social and digital
   
   

Every model feeds custom reporting dashboards, so clients see campaign metrics, competitive benchmarks, and customized KPIs in real time, down to every spot on every network. Clear, real-time reporting is the standard, because TV should be accountable like any other marketing channel.

 

Ready to combine linear and CTV the right way? 

See how All-Inclusive TV works for other brands or talk to our team about what an integrated linear and CTV campaign could do for you.