Today, TV probably has around 5,000 advertisers.
Compare that to the largest social platforms, which, as of 2020, claimed tens of millions of advertisers globally.1 That gap doesn’t reflect a lack of effectiveness on TV’s part, but rather an issue of access.
Social platforms didn’t grow because they had more inventory. They grew because they built systems that made advertising easy, measurable, and accessible to anyone. Self-serve tools, real-time feedback loops, and clear performance measurement unlocked demand at massive scale. Millions of advertisers could enter, test, optimize, and grow profitably.
For most of its history, TV hasn’t worked that way. But that’s starting to change.
As TV becomes measurable, programmatic, and easier to activate, the same forces that scaled social platforms are beginning to take hold. The channel is moving from a limited, high-barrier environment to one that can support a much broader advertiser base.
The question now is how big TV can get, and whether it can ultimately rival, or even surpass, the scale of today’s dominant digital platforms.
The supply is already there
While demand is catching up, the supply side is already massive.
Today, nearly 100 million U.S. households stream roughly five hours of TV per day. That adds up to more than 170 billion hours of annual viewing.2 A growing share of that is ad-supported.3
With a relatively light ad load—around nine minutes per hour—you get approximately eighteen 30-second ad opportunities per hour of viewing. That translates to roughly 2.25 trillion CTV ad impressions per year today, growing to around 2.7 trillion over the next few years.4
In other words, the inventory already exists to support a much larger market. The missing ingredient has been demand.
When demand scales, pricing follows
Once demand begins to scale, pricing dynamics change quickly.
CTV already commands premium pricing because of its high-quality, lean-back viewing environment. As CTV becomes more addressable and performant, more advertisers will continue to invest in the channel. Competition will increase, and pricing will become more durable.
To understand where pricing can go, it helps to look at how adjacent markets value attention. Linear TV has historically operated with blended CPMs in the $20 to $30 range, with premium inventory commanding significantly higher rates.5
On the performance side, even channels that appear structurally different reveal similar economics. Paid search, for example, is bought on a cost-per-click basis with an average of $2.69, but when translated to a buy-side CPM (using the formula CPM=CPC×CTR×1000), it often exceeds $30.6 Social platforms operate at lower CPMs, but rely on massive scale and frequency to drive revenue.7
CTV sits at the intersection of these models. It combines high-quality, immersive attention with the emerging ability to measure and optimize for business outcomes. As those measurement systems mature and consistently demonstrate strong return on ad spend (ROAS), more performance marketers will enter the channel and compete for that inventory.
At that point, pricing will be set by what the outcome is worth. We’ve seen this dynamic play out in paid search, where proven ROAS pushed click prices up dramatically over time as more advertisers entered the market and competed for high-intent outcomes. The same mechanism applies here: as confidence in CTV’s ability to drive revenue increases, demand will scale and pricing will move toward a durable equilibrium in the $30 CPM range in the short term, with the potential to be much higher.
At that $30 CPM, the current and near-term supply of CTV inventory translates to roughly $80 billion in annual media value in the U.S. alone. That puts connected TV in the same order of magnitude as the largest advertising channels in the world.
CTV doesn’t need 10 million advertisers
The largest digital platforms achieved their scale with massive advertiser bases—up to ten million globally.1
CTV will likely look different. It doesn’t need that many advertisers to surpass search and social’s revenue levels, namely because the average spend per advertiser is higher. The format supports larger budgets, higher-value conversions, and more meaningful outcomes.
Even a CTV market with one million advertisers—an order of magnitude smaller than the largest digital platforms—creates sufficient competition to support strong pricing and efficient allocation of spend.
At that point, the economics start to resemble a mature, high-liquidity market that actually surpasses the biggest advertising channels of the last decade.
A different kind of ceiling
For decades, TV has been viewed through the lens of “brand budgets,” while search and social commanded the performance dollars. That is now an outdated framework.
As TV becomes more measurable and accessible to performance marketers, its growth is no longer constrained by legacy planning models or outdated assumptions. It is driven by the same forces that built the largest (performance) advertising platforms, and will remain appealing for mass market brand advertisers. So TV represents the perfect union of brand and performance advertising models, which will drive an even higher ceiling.
That’s the direction we’re heading now. So how big can CTV get? Realistically, bigger than social.
Sources:
- AdExchanger, Facebook Is Up To 10 Million Active Advertisers, United States, February 2020
- Comscore, 2025 State of Streaming Report, United States, October 2025
- Nielsen, Ad-Supported TV Viewing Q4 2025 Ad-Supported Gauge, United States, January 2026
- Wurl, CTV Trends Report, Global, March 2025
- Marketing Dive, Streaming Continues Ad Revenue Gain on Linear TV, United States, 2025
- Business of Apps, Cost Per Click (CPC) Rates, Global, 2025
- eMarketer, US Social Ad CPMs Forecast, United States, 2025
Inside Performance Advertising with Jason Fairchild delivers unfiltered insights, strategic perspective, and hard truths from inside the evolving world of adtech—cutting through the noise to focus on what really drives outcomes. Subscribe here.
