For almost a century, television advertising followed a simple formula. Broadcasters scheduled programmes for mass audiences, viewers tuned in at fixed times, and advertisers paid premium rates to place commercials around popular shows. The model was predictable, powerful and highly profitable.
Then streaming changed everything. The launch of YouTube in 2005, followed by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and connected TV platforms, fragmented viewing habits across devices and services. In the process, it transformed the economics of television advertising.
Over the past decade, the industry has rebuilt TV advertising for a streaming-first world. As FreeWheel, a global platform that powers advertising across the streaming ecosystem, identified, the challenge hasn’t just been reach, but creating infrastructure that allows premium video to be planned, bought, delivered and measured with the speed and accountability advertisers expect elsewhere.
In the 25 years since streaming emerged, efficiently connecting fragmented TV audiences has become an increasingly significant challenge. This is reflected in data from the global adtech company’s ‘2025 Video Marketplace Report’, which found that streaming accounted for 47.5% of total multiscreen TV viewership in December 2025. TV companies have also struggled to reach new advertisers and justify inventory value across viewing environments.
The problem is advertising complexity. Advertisers want multi-channel campaigns launched quickly, with greater specificity and clear KPIs – as they do on social media platforms. But the traditional TV ad ecosystem is complex. Ad space is often sold separately across linear TV, streaming and on-demand services, creating complex processes across multiple sales teams and buying systems.
The rise of programmatic advertising
“TV has become harder to buy,” says Thomas Bremond, managing director, international of Comcast Advertising where FreeWheel serves as the media and technology arm. “Our role as a technology company is to help TV companies put together the best value proposition for brands to continue spending money in their ecosystem alongside linear, and provide the tech to facilitate it. So, when advertisers have money to spend very fast, they have the option to buy with them, rather than a video or a social media platform.”
Programmatic advertising has provided part of the solution. This is the intelligent, automated buying and selling of TV ads using software and data, which helps advertisers reach audiences more efficiently. Rather than buying a 30-second slot during a specific show, advertisers can target audiences by age, interests and devices. AI-powered programmatic can extend these benefits, allowing advertisers to optimise business outcomes in real time and support TV companies in enhancing how their inventory is packaged, priced and delivered.
“Historically, TV has had a hard time comparing itself with social media platforms, where it’s a lot easier to measure the performance of advertising spend,” says Bremond. “Advertisers know that TV builds great brands, but what they’re asking for now is simplicity, availability and better KPIs, so that when they compare the metrics against performance channels, they can say: ‘Yes, premium video works and therefore I’m going to invest more money into TV because it delivers’.”
The rise of programmatic advertising has been successful in attracting new advertisers. FreeWheel’s report revealed that unique programmatic advertisers grew by +21% year-over-year as publishers continue to seek more diversified demand pools for their supply and buyers look to find greater access to premium inventory.
An AI-powered advertising ecosystem
But TV’s advertising evolution goes beyond automation alone. Companies like FreeWheel are helping build a more connected ecosystem – one designed to reduce friction between buyers and sellers and make premium video easier to transact across different environments.
FreeWheel’s technology acts as a central hub connecting broadcasters, streaming services, agencies and advertisers. This enables more consistent workflows across planning, targeting and reporting, and helps to replace manual buying and selling processes.
It also plays a key role in ad decisioning and delivery. When a viewer watches a programme on a streaming app or connected TV, FreeWheel tech helps determine which ad should be shown, delivers the ad, tracks campaign performance and measures delivery across platforms in seconds.
Historically, TV has had a hard time comparing itself with social media platforms, where it’s a lot easier to measure the performance of advertising spend
Bremond says interoperability is another critical function. “Publishers and advertisers are building their own AI tools to create automated workflows,” he says. “Our tech enables their AI tools to directly connect and send instructions to FreeWheel, which our system understands.”
Agent-to-agent advertising transactions are a growing trend documented in FreeWheel’s report. Increasingly, buyers and sellers are using agents to execute, optimise and scale the delivery process in real time. This reduces supply-chain complexity and improves operations with each ad served. The result is that teams are freed up to focus on strategy rather than time-consuming execution.
GenAI is also helping publishers and advertisers achieve different goals. In 2026, it’s predicted that 40% of video ad creatives will either be built or enhanced using GenAI. This allows advertisers to produce ads at lower cost and, in turn, create a more robust and diverse demand pool for publishers.
The viewer experience and the future of advertising
Ultimately, the success of TV’s advertising evolution will be decided by viewers. Through the ‘Viewer Experience Lab’, FreeWheel conducts ongoing research that provides valuable insight not just into how ads are bought and sold, but into viewers’ feelings and expectations. FreeWheel’s latest findings show that there are still gaps between advertisements on streaming platforms and the expectations of viewers. Some 66% of those surveyed reported seeing repeated ads. Repetition remains a major streaming problem, with viewers tuning out after repeated ads.
Ad relevancy is another issue for advertisers and publishers. Only 35% of viewers say ads are tailored to products they are interested in or would buy, while 49% say ads are disruptive because they’re not relevant to them. Solving this problem could have a real and positive impact on commercial outcomes. Relevant ads play a powerful role in driving positive brand outcomes, with viewers reporting two times more liking and engagement when ads are relevant.
In the near future, one of the key challenges, and opportunities, for publishers will be to use viewer experience data as commercial metrics to prove that premium viewing environments drive better advertising outcomes than high-volume social media environments.
“In the next two to five years, TV has to complete its linear transformation,” predicts Bremond. “In an ideal world, that means publishers and broadcasters being able to package and sell their linear and digital inventory as a unified proposition. At that point, the scale of premium video becomes incredibly powerful, rivalling social media platforms in terms of reach, but with the added value of a premium viewing environment. Our focus is on enabling that shift – helping to simplify transactions and make it easier for buyers to access that scale.”
Find out more about FreeWheel’s AI-powered advertising ecosystem
For almost a century, television advertising followed a simple formula. Broadcasters scheduled programmes for mass audiences, viewers tuned in at fixed times, and advertisers paid premium rates to place commercials around popular shows. The model was predictable, powerful and highly profitable.
Then streaming changed everything. The launch of YouTube in 2005, followed by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and connected TV platforms, fragmented viewing habits across devices and services. In the process, it transformed the economics of television advertising.
Over the past decade, the industry has rebuilt TV advertising for a streaming-first world. As FreeWheel, a global platform that powers advertising across the streaming ecosystem, identified, the challenge hasn’t just been reach, but creating infrastructure that allows premium video to be planned, bought, delivered and measured with the speed and accountability advertisers expect elsewhere.
