Three trends in CTV that advertisers should watch at Advertising Week

The news: At Advertising Week New York 2025, industry leaders shared insights on the future of connected TV (CTV) advertising—opening up opportunities for the format to gain on linear by offering brands features that traditional TV can’t.

Interactive ads gain momentum: Consumers are increasingly engaging with interactive ad formats, spanning from polls to QR codes and clickable options. Engagement with interactive ads is higher than standard ads, with the format boosting unaided recall by 36%, foot traffic 13%, and brand affinity 33%, per BrightLine.

In a conversation with EMARKETER, Reed Kiely, director of data insights and trends at the Video Advertising Bureau, said interactive formats like shoppable ads help “drive bottom funnel outcomes directly on the screen, and do that in a measurable and attributable way” in a way that standard CTV formats haven’t achieved.

Pause is proving potential: Innovative formats like pause ads are driving success in CTV. With 63% of audiences preferring pause ads to frozen screens, according to Matt Van Houten of DirecTV, these ads are emerging as key drivers of growth.

Brands are tapping into pause ads for three key reasons, TripleLift chief revenue officer Ed Dinichert said at a panel Monday:

• Pausing is user-initiated, meaning viewers are more welcoming to ads they see.
• Users pause for an average duration of three minutes, giving plenty of time to communicate brand messaging.
• Pause ads deliver a 34% lift in unaided ad recall compared with traditional ads.

AI is on the rise: Artificial intelligence is driving growth for CTV ads. Brian Danzis, chief revenue officer for neuro-contextual advertising company Seedtag, noted how AI can be leveraged to understand audience emotions and intent when engaging with content—contributing to better ad targeting.

And AI is being incorporated into CTV in many ways, helping to streamline the media buying process to enable performance optimization and bid management and addressing the challenge of measurement in CTV marketing by creating data-driven feedback loops that improve attribution and accuracy.

What brands can do: Become early adopters of CTV trends before interactivity, pause innovation, and AI become more widespread advertising practices—while keeping in mind some of the lingering limitations of each.

• Interactivity drives results, but brands must understand what viewers want. Blending interactive ads with the streaming experience and aligning content with what the viewer is watching will promote better outcomes.
• Pause ads promise engagement, but the need for strategies that connect remains. Viewers prefer pause ads that provide the ability to save offers and reminders that are relevant to what they’re viewing. Incorporating these elements will enhance the overall experience.
• AI can be leveraged for its ability to optimize ad performance, but should still be used sparingly for creative development. Lauren Chaplin, SVP of media investment for Digitas, noted that audiences are still skittish about AI-created ads. Using AI to speed up some elements of content creation without relying on it for complete ad generation will be critical for the foreseeable future.