Is CTV advertising better than cable or broadcast TV?
Streaming buys an audience and reports back. Linear buys a time slot and estimates.
For most businesses under a national scale, yes, but linear still wins in specific situations and it is worth knowing which. CTV buys an audience and reports what it delivered. Cable and broadcast buy a time slot and estimate who was watching.
Where CTV wins
- Targeting. You can reach households by zip code, income band, purchase behavior, or a matched list of your own customers. Linear reaches whoever had that channel on.
- Reporting. You get impressions delivered, completion rate, frequency, and device type per campaign. Linear gives you a rating estimate and an affidavit that the spot aired.
- Flexibility. You can change creative, pause, or shift geography mid flight. Linear schedules are bought in advance and are hard to move.
- Audience age. Under 50, an increasing share of viewing simply is not on cable anymore.
Where linear still wins
Local broadcast can deliver enormous reach in a single market at a CPM that programmatic streaming cannot match, particularly around live sports and local news. If your goal is blanket awareness across an entire DMA and you do not need targeting precision, a local station buy can be the cheaper path per person reached. Older demographics also remain reachable there in a way they are not on streaming.
What it costs to start
CTV clears the entry barrier that used to protect linear. Paramount Ads Manager's published 2026 guidance shows entry level CTV campaigns commonly starting between $25 and $65 CPM, with self serve platforms now selling in small increments. LevelUp's own minimum for a managed CTV or OTT program is $10,000 per month in ad spend for a tight single market and $15,000 or more for a full metro. That is still far below a serious local broadcast schedule.
The practical answer for most mid sized advertisers: start on CTV, because you will learn something you can act on.
Related: What is CTV advertising and how does it work?, Disney, Paramount and Fox team up with VideoAmp, Measuring streaming and display results.