Transparency: The Key to Unlocking Connected TV’s Potential
1/14/2026
Connected TV (CTV) is experiencing explosive growth as advertisers and audiences rapidly shift from linear to streaming. In 2024, 54% of marketers increased their CTV budgets, and 66% of non-CTV advertisers are expected to enter the space within the next year, according to DoubleVerify and MarTechEdge. By 2028, eMarketer forecasts that U.S. CTV ad spending will reach $46 billion — outpacing traditional TV for the first time.
CTV promises precision ad targeting, programmatic buying models, and measurable performance. Despite its momentum, however, the channel continues to struggle with transparency across inventory, data, and measurement — eroding trust and efficiency among marketers.
Here, we’ll take a look at CTV’s transparency challenge and how marketers can benefit when transparency is achieved.
The transparency challenge
A primary barrier to transparency in CTV is the lack of industry-wide standardization in how data signals are shared from publishers through the bidstream. Without consistent standards, it’s challenging for advertisers to determine exactly where their ads appear, whether by channel, multi-channel app, or content genre. This ambiguity increases the risk of misrepresented inventory and misplaced ads, undermining efficiency and trust in campaign performance.
In addition, publishers and walled gardens often compound this issue by providing incomplete or limited data within the bidstream, such as omitting show-level insights. This fragmentation doesn’t just cloud visibility — it also hinders frequency management and campaign optimization.
CTV’s “wild west” dynamics make it challenging for advertisers to draw a straight line between investment and impact. Without consistent, transparent data, brands struggle to verify whether their ads appeared in relevant, high-quality environments. Further, inconsistent measurement frameworks across publishers distort attribution and limit opportunities for meaningful optimization.
Prioritizing advertiser value
Transparency isn’t just a nice-to-have feature — rather, it’s essential if CTV is to mature into a trusted, performance-driven channel. Standardization, along with advertiser demand for content-level reporting and third-party verification, will all be key components to achieving this goal.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is working to develop industry-wide standards for CTV. In the meantime, marketers can put themselves in a position to help their clients by partnering with a partner that prioritizes advertiser value.
An experienced provider, for instance, can assist by:
- Being more selective when it comes to inventory requests — activating only against verified inventory while avoiding unverified sellers and prioritizing networks and genres that align with your target audience. Doing so can minimize fraud, elevate quality, and strengthen performance
- Leveraging AI and machine learning to provide superior visibility into where, when, and what ads run — allowing for contextual targeting and better results
- Delivering channel and genre performance mapping, so you can optimize your content strategy, best allocate your resources, and maximize ROI
- Providing you with not just solutions to current challenges, but also providing you with insights to help guide future media planning
Unlock CTV’s potential
If CTV is to reach its full potential, transparency must become the standard rather than the exception. Without detailed insight into placement — down to the specific channel and show level — organizations cannot effectively manage frequency, inform future targeting decisions, help clients better understand their audience, or guarantee brand safety.
Transparency leads to confidence, allowing clients to trace every dollar from the bid request to the living room screen. A trusted, experienced partner can help ensure that the visibility buyers expect becomes the baseline.
Mary Brooks is a Product Manager for Connected TV at Iridio by RRD. To learn more about CTV and how RRD is committed to bringing transparency to CTV advertising, visit iridio.rrd.com/media/connected-tv.