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.

The underlying story is clear.

The rules for earning attention are changing across every major channel. Marketers are responding by leaning into a channel built to amplify the rest of the mix and meet customers where attention holds strong.

These numbers mark a turning point: a recognition that the old playbook for attention no longer works.

Using AI doesn't make you special. Proving impact does.

Over half of marketers feel their career growth depends on proving results with AI.

This solidifies that in 2026, saying "I use AI" is like bragging about having Netflix DVDs delivered in 2005. Everyone is using AI. So unless you can demonstrate that it's actually helping you drive results, it's nothing to brag about.

Marketers feel this pressure to their core.

The result is an industry moving at breakneck speed, where adopting AI isn't the finish line, but the starting point.

In 2026, marketers are using AI to develop ad creative and accelerate testing at a pace that was unthinkable two years ago. More variations, more formats, more messages, all to figure out what converts on TV.

The pressure is more than professional. It's personal. Half of marketers feel at risk in their job if they don't embrace AI in their media mix. The stakes have never been higher.

The competitive anxiety is real, too.

The key is finding AI tools that go beyond automation. The most effective platforms, like tvScientific, use AI to continuously learn and optimize in real time, driving measurable improvements across outcomes such as sales, installs, return on ad spend, website traffic, and clicks.

The next frontier of measurement is radical transparency and cross-channel impact.

The era of TV measurement as a mysterious black box is over. This year, marketers are done with isolated channel reporting and lack of transparency.

Marketers want clarity on what's actually working.

They're also demanding unified measurement — integrated with search, social, and every other channel — that tells the full story, not just parts of it.

And while marketers know cross-channel measurement is important, it's not without its challenges. 52% say they lack consistent measurement standards and 76% struggle with siloed data or limited technology integrations. This isn't a marketer problem, it's an access-to-the-right-resources problem.

The belief that TV is only for big brands is the industry's biggest misconception.

The old gatekeeping myth that TV is only for massive advertisers with unlimited budgets? Completely shattered.

The channel is opening up across the board. This signals an industry shift about who can compete and what strategies are possible.