Rethinking TV: Why How It’s Sold Matters As Much As How It’s Watched
By Campfire Consulting August 18, 2025
Streaming TV is having its moment. It’s where new dollars flow, where headlines live, and where the buzz around “the future of television” is loudest. But amid all that noise, one uncomfortable truth gets lost: TV’s future isn’t just about what people watch. It’s about how the inventory behind it is bought and sold.
If advertisers ignore that nuance, they risk overpaying for fractional audiences while missing the scale, efficiency, and balance TV is uniquely capable of delivering.
Streaming ≠ a standalone strategy
Connected TV now reaches nearly nine out of ten U.S. households and claims roughly a third of total viewing time. At the same time, ad-supported streaming accounts for just over 40% of ad-supported TV viewing. Linear still holds nearly half of all TV consumption—and nearly six times as many ad impressions as CTV.
Yet some media plans treat “streaming” as if it were the whole of TV. That’s a mistake. CTV is a delivery mechanism not a replacement for TV planning.
Look at cultural tentpoles: the Oscars, the Super Bowl, election-night coverage. These events are distributed across multiple endpoints, including apps and FAST channels. But the bulk of ad inventory is still sold through linear deals with networks and local stations. The streaming platforms may only control a fraction of those slots, often priced at 4–5x the CPMs of linear.
The result? Advertisers chasing “streaming impressions” are often fighting over a single-digit slice of inventory, while competitors secure the majority of impressions through linear buys at a fraction of the cost.
The supply chain no one wants to talk about
Here’s where the muddiness comes in: supply paths. A typical hour of TV programming includes about 20 minutes of ads. National networks sell most of those minutes in advance, with a small portion reserved for local affiliates. When the same program is delivered through a streaming distributor, those local slots may be resold by the platform. But the national inventory—the bulk of the impressions—was already sold as linear.
That means much of what we label as “streaming” viewing is actually supported by ad dollars transacted in linear. If you’re only buying through streaming DSPs, you’re not buying the full audience—you’re buying the leftovers.
Why this matters for brands
It’s tempting to think streaming alone can carry your TV strategy. But for advertisers who care about reach, efficiency, and brand safety, the real strategy requires understanding the sales model beneath the screen.
Scale matters. Linear continues to deliver massive impressions, particularly for live programming, and remains a cost-effective way to reach audiences at scale.
Efficiency matters. Streaming CPMs often run $20–35, compared to linear’s $10–15. Paying multiples for the same audience simply because they watched through a streaming app isn’t sustainable.
Balance matters. The most effective TV strategies blend linear’s scale with streaming’s precision, ensuring you’re not just bidding on scraps while competitors buy the full pie.
The takeaway
TV isn’t disappearing. But its viability depends on whether advertisers approach it with clarity about supply paths. Streaming has expanded how audiences consume, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed how most inventory is transacted.
If we want TV to remain a strong, sustainable channel for advertisers and for the people on the other side of the screen then we need to stop treating streaming as a strategy in itself. The future of TV will belong to the brands and agencies who understand that how you buy matters just as much as how people watch.
See us live at Programmatic I/O NYC
This conversation continues at Programmatic I/O New York, where our founder and CEO Chris Marine will join Carrie Riley, CMO of Aroma Joe’s, to unpack how one of America’s fastest-growing QSRs is scaling brick-and-mortar success through intentional media.
Together, they’ll explore how the coffee chain—working with Campfire—blends programmatic CTV, direct-to-publisher deals, and high-impact broadcast to unlock new value in both local and national streaming. Expect a candid look at why the next ad gold rush might just be brewing in local TV, where performance and brand equity intersect.
Going to Programmatic I/O? Don’t just sit in the audience—let’s connect over a cup of coffee and talk about where TV is headed next.
