The State of Performance TV in 2026

Attention is the hardest thing to buy. And everyone else is bidding too.

People are scrolling, skipping, swiping, and split-screening their way through the day

Which is exactly why TV stands out. It offers a rare, uninterrupted moment where your audience is truly paying attention.

Performance TV combines the power of TV advertising with the precision of digital marketing, enabling brands to easily launch Connected TV and linear TV ad campaigns, optimize them with AI technology, and measure true business outcomes in real time.

And that moment matters. It’s what captures the high-quality customers that 73% of marketers say they're struggling to find. This pain point has nearly doubled since 2025, when it stood at just 45%.

But finding quality customers is just one of the pressures marketers are facing right now. Marketers' stress about AI has skyrocketed since 2025 as they face mounting pressure to adapt to a landscape that changes by the minute.

These are signs of an industry in rapid transformation. This is why tvScientific surveyed 600+ marketers across brands and agencies: to uncover the shifts reshaping advertising, from how budgets are moving to what's keeping marketers up at night.

Let's take a closer look.