Affiliate Summit West 2026 set an exciting tone for what Performance TV will look like this year and beyond.
I spent the week in customer meetings, agency conversations, and keynote sessions. Across them, one thing stood out: Performance TV is no longer an emerging channel.
Instead, teams now discuss it alongside established performance channels, evaluate it with the same rigor, and hold it to the same expectations around proof, efficiency, and scale.
Here’s what the market is saying.
Performance TV is judged on proof, not promises
Across nearly every customer conversation, one word kept coming up: incrementality.
For many advertisers and agencies, performance alone isn’t enough. Incremental impact has become the gating factor for scale. In multiple conversations, teams shared a similar pattern. Once incrementality is proven, budgets expand, campaigns roll out more broadly, and Performance TV moves from a test line item to a core part of the advertiser’s marketing mix.
This was especially evident in agency-led conversations. Once proof is established, hesitation disappears. Performance TV stops being “interesting” and starts being non-negotiable. We’ve seen shift play out with brands like Wildgrain, and LG Electronics. If you’re curious how that looks in practice, you can hear from them yourself.
Waiting is more expensive than testing
Several speaker sessions reinforced something customers echoed in meetings: delaying channel tests comes with a real cost.
One session Invisible Commerce Unveiled: The Playbook for Compounding Channels Across the Customer Journey, featuring Marina Zitser, VP of Ecommerce at Remedy, and Jessica Lukon, Owner of Luminary, highlighted how brands that wait for “perfect readiness” miss early signals. Those early insights often inform everything from audience strategy to creative direction and product positioning.
That same mindset showed up clearly in customer conversations. Many brands didn’t come to Performance TV because it was trendy. They came because traditional TV felt inaccessible, while Performance TV offered a way to test, learn, and expand quickly based on real results.
Early momentum (even without perfect data) created confidence. That confidence led to scale. We’ve seen brands take this approach by starting small, learning quickly, and using early signals to inform bigger decisions later on.
Agencies are scaling what they trust
One of the most encouraging patterns from Affiliate Summit West was how agencies think about Performance TV once it earns their trust.
Rather than evaluating it one advertiser at a time, agencies increasingly view Performance TV as a portfolio-level solution. In agency conversations, the shift wasn’t about testing one more channel. It was about building repeatable frameworks they could apply across advertisers. That same thinking shows up in how our agency partners approach Performance TV today.
Agency advocacy compounds faster than individual wins. When agencies believe in performance, scale follows.
AI is accelerating expectations across performance teams
Another strong theme from both speaker sessions and customer conversations was AI, not as a buzzword, but as an operational reality.
Teams are using AI to move faster, iterate more efficiently, and make decisions with fewer resources. At the same time, pressure to prove ROI is rising, especially as AI investment grows more expensive.
That tension showed up clearly in customer conversations. Performance teams want tools that help them move quickly without sacrificing accountability. Onsite at ASW, Elias Saas, Head of Partnerships at Empowerly, shared how AI-enabled workflows helped their team stand up attribution and reporting faster than expected.
By connecting ad exposure to downstream lead data, their team was able to move from directional signal to measurable insight, raising internal expectations around what could be proven and how quickly decisions could be made.
Speed matters, but transparency and proof matter more in guiding decisions. We’ve been spending a lot of time translating these use cases into practical workflows for performance teams.
As teams gain faster access to signal, the bar for what “works” continues to rise.
Performance TV is converging with the affiliate mindset
Perhaps the most important takeaway from Affiliate Summit West is how Performance TV is being evaluated in practice.
Across conversations, teams referenced familiar performance frameworks, including:
- Geo lift and PSA testing
- Mid-funnel activation
- Creative experimentation by vertical
- Incrementality as the final decision-maker
As incrementality becomes the deciding factor, teams are leaning on established measurement techniques to guide investment. Performance TV now sits alongside platforms like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, earning its place in the media mix when proof is clear and data is transparent.
We’ve seen this most clearly in affiliate-led Performance TV programs built for durability, like LG’s long-term partnership with tvScientific and CJ, where consistent measurement and incrementality made TV a sustainable part of the affiliate mix
A meaningful moment for the category
One moment that captured this evolution was the awards dinner, where tvScientific was named ‘Affiliate of the Year’.
A few years ago, Performance TV was still met with skepticism. The channel wasn’t widely trusted, and many conversations focused on whether it could work rather than how to scale it. Our team showed up to explain the model, not to collect awards.
Today, that recognition feels less like a milestone for a single company and more like a signal for the category itself. Performance TV has moved from being questioned to being validated, not because of hype, but because of measurable results delivered in-market.
What made the moment resonate was how closely it aligned with everything we heard throughout the week. Customers talked about incrementality as a prerequisite for scale. Agencies pointed to trust as the unlock for portfolio-wide adoption. Performance teams emphasized accountability, proof, and transparency as the factors that ultimately earn buy-in from CMOs and CFOs.
Performance TV is becoming a core part of how performance-minded teams think about growth, measurement, and scale. The industry recognition reflects that shift.
Looking ahead
Affiliate Summit West reinforced that Performance TV has entered a new phase.
The focus has shifted from explaining what Connected TV can do, to demonstrating what it delivers incrementally, transparently, and at scale.
In 2026, brands need to learn faster, validate earlier, and scale what works. Based on what we heard in Vegas, Performance TV is firmly part of that future.
Curious how teams are approaching Performance TV this year? We’re always happy to compare notes. Get in touch.
2026 Performance TV FAQ
- Why is incrementality such a critical factor for Performance TV right now? Incrementality determines whether Performance TV is driving net-new outcomes or simply capturing existing demand. For many teams, proving incremental lift is the deciding factor between a small test and meaningful scale.
- How are agencies approaching Performance TV differently in 2026? Agencies are increasingly viewing Performance TV as a portfolio-level solution rather than a one-off experiment. Once results are validated, they look to expand it across multiple advertisers using repeatable performance frameworks.
- How does AI factor into Performance TV decision-making? AI is helping performance teams move faster and test more efficiently, but expectations around ROI remain high. Speed is valuable, yet accountability and measurable impact continue to guide investment decisions.
- How does Performance TV align with the affiliate mindset? Performance TV is now evaluated using familiar performance frameworks like geo lift testing, creative experimentation, and mid-funnel activation. This alignment makes it easier for performance-minded teams to integrate TV into their broader growth strategy.
