In this week’s newsletter of Inside Performance Advertising, Jason reveals why this year marked a turning point for performance TV and our team.
It’s Thanksgiving week, and I’m taking time to reflect on the work that defined our year. For me, that starts with the deeply dedicated team at tvScientific, the people who show up every day, push the work forward, and make progress possible. It also means looking at our broader industry and celebrating how things are moving in a better, more outcomes-driven direction for advertisers.
Industry trends I’m thankful for
The industry finally feels like it’s turning a corner. After years of hand-waving metrics, black-box platforms, and soft accountability, we’re seeing a shift toward precision, measurability, and rigor. The kinds of changes performance advertisers have been waiting on for more than a decade.
Here are three trends pushing the industry forward that I’m grateful for:
1. Media is finally shifting toward accountability
For years, digital advertising ran on vague proxies and soft metrics. That era is ending. Marketers today demand proof. The broader industry is waking up to the idea that accountability is a competitive advantage. Channels that can’t prove value will lose share to the ones that can.
2. Performance CTV is moving from optional to essential
TV has spent decades as a brand-first channel, slow to change and even slower to measure. But the rise of Performance CTV is rewriting the rules. Advertisers are realizing that TV can drive outcomes, and that when it does, it often outperforms legacy digital channels. For the first time, TV is earning its place in the performance marketing mix. That shift is expanding the entire TV advertising market, making TV a performance channel for not just the top 500 advertisers.
3. AI-powered optimization is transforming how marketers work
AI is no longer theoretical. It’s actively reshaping how campaigns are planned, optimized, and scaled. Real-time algorithms are catching inefficiencies that humans simply can’t. Automation is freeing teams from the manual grind. Marketers are using AI to test ideas, refine creative, and make smarter decisions faster. As a result, the industry gets less guesswork, more precision, and a step-change in how quickly teams can learn and adapt.
tvScientific wins I’m thankful for
Thanks to the tvScientific team, we hit milestones that defined our year and signal a more innovative future for performance TV. Here are the three wins I’m grateful for that simply wouldn’t have been possible without my exceptional team:
1. Our Series B funding round
We’re especially thankful for the support of our investors: NewRoad Capital Partners, along with Roku, Second Alpha Partners, Norwest, S4S Ventures, and Progress Ventures. With their backing, we raised $25.5M earlier this year, giving us the fuel to move faster and think bigger.
That capital strengthened our go-to-market foundation and accelerated the AI measurement and optimization work that sits at the center of performance TV. Most importantly, it gave us the runway to keep pushing TV toward the level of accountability and efficiency marketers expect from digital channels.
2. The launch of Guaranteed Outcomes
This year, we ran an industry-first campaign, guaranteeing outcomes for customers using our platform. We gave advertisers a way to buy TV based on the outcomes they care about, with a guaranteed cost per outcome (CPO). Marketers set the CPO, and our AI-driven platform delivers against it with full transparency.
Launching Guaranteed Outcomes took months of engineering, measurement rigor, and cross-functional collaboration. It’s a major step toward making TV not just measurable, but performance-guaranteed.
The most powerful validation this year came from the outcomes marketers achieved on the platform. LG drove an 1,100% increase in revenue year over year, and Wildgrain grew subscribers by 150%. Across the board, teams of every size used measurable, outcome-based buying to unlock growth previously out of reach on TV.
3. Recognition on the 2025 LinkedIn Top 50 Startups List
Finally, I’m grateful for a win that reflects the people behind everything we’re building. In October, tvScientific was named on the 2025 LinkedIn Top 50 Startups List, an annual, data-driven ranking of the 50 fastest-growing young companies in the US.
What makes this meaningful is the signal behind it: our team, our culture, our product, and our mission are resonating well beyond our walls. We’re attracting world-class talent, shipping at a pace that stands out in the industry, and building something people genuinely want to be part of.
For a startup, that’s the strongest signal of momentum you can ask for.
As we head into 2026, our focus stays the same: pushing the industry toward accountable, performance-driven television and helping marketers translate big ideas into measurable business results. We’re entering the next year with momentum and a lot to be thankful for.
Inside Performance Advertising with Jason Fairchild delivers unfiltered insights, strategic perspective, and hard truths from a founder’s point of view inside the world of adtech — cutting through the noise with the real lessons behind building high-performance teams and scaling category-defining startups. Subscribe here.
