When we asked 9,000 consumers across nine countries, together with Censuswide, about brands they’d seen on both the TV screen and premium digital environments, 57% could recall them, and among Gen Z, the figure climbed to 65%. The findings suggest a relationship between consistent cross-screen exposure and both stronger recall and higher stated purchase likelihood. That consistency is exactly what the structure of most video plans makes difficult. Linear, connected TV advertising, and online video still tend to be planned by separate teams against metrics that don’t translate into each other, so the same household gets bought three times over while hearing the brand in unrelated fragments.
Nearly 30 of America’s biggest advertisers are now funding Aquila, the ANA’s cross-media measurement venture, largely to count how often their own plans overlap, and Aquila estimates that duplication costs around 10% of a media buy’s efficiency. Measurement can find the overlap, though only the plan that created it can remove it. That removal is what a unified omnichannel video strategy does, and the returns reach past efficiency into recall and purchase intent.
What Consistent CTV Campaigns Earn Across Screens
The recall numbers open the case for unification, and the rest of our research with Censuswide strengthens it. Among people exposed to consistent Connected TV (CTV) advertising and premium digital messaging, purchase likelihood ran at 58% overall and 67% for Gen Z, so the same discipline that helps people remember a brand also moves them closer to buying from it. Context added its own layer, with 69% of consumers globally saying they engage more readily with ads relevant to what they’re viewing, which means a connected story placed in the right environments compounds twice over.
of Gen Z consumers say they’re likely to purchase from brands they’ve seen advertised consistently across CTV and premium digital environments.
Source: Teads x Censuswide, 2026
The pattern across all three numbers deserves a closer look, because the strongest responses keep coming from the youngest viewers. Gen Z grew up moving between screens without noticing the transitions, and a campaign that moves the same way appears to earn their attention in a manner that isolated exposures rarely manage.
The Cost of Planning Connected TV Advertising Separately
The waste on the other side of the ledger has become measurable too. Aquila, which went to market this spring with data partnerships spanning Comscore for linear and Samba TV for streaming, projects that deduplicating reach will return around $50 million in productivity to its participating advertisers over three years. British advertisers reached the same conclusion earlier and built Origin under ISBA, and both ventures now sit inside the World Federation of Advertisers’ global Halo framework, which tells you the duplication problem looks the same in every market.
For the teams doing the planning, the overlap shows up in familiar ways. Frequency runs unmanaged across screens because each channel caps exposure on its own, creative built for one environment gets reused in others where a different length or format would perform better, and comparing what CTV ads delivered against a linear flight means converting between metrics that were never designed to align. None of this reflects poorly on the people involved, since each team is optimizing exactly what it was asked to optimize. The structure around connected TV advertising simply predates the way audiences now watch.
What a Unified Omnichannel Video Strategy Changes
Unification starts with a decision about workflow rather than a purchase of technology, and in practice it comes down to three moves:
- One connected audience strategy: CTV targeting and digital activation work from a single household-based definition of who the campaign needs to reach, which manages frequency across every screen and replaces the parallel segment-building that produces overlap in the first place.
- Creative briefed as a sequence: Build a modular creative idea that can adapt across CTV ad formats, online video, and display, according to the audience, context and moment. Each exposure should reinforce the same brand platform while contributing something appropriate to its environment, without assuming that every consumer will encounter the channels in the same order.
- Measurement built around shared outcomes: Evaluate CTV and digital through a connected framework spanning incremental reach, attention and business outcomes, while retaining the metrics appropriate to each environment.
One Plan With Three Decisions:
This is where Teads’ proposition extends beyond consolidated access. By connecting CTV HomeScreen, CTV InStream and premium digital environments through shared audience intelligence, creative capabilities and outcome-based measurement, Teads helps advertisers coordinate how these channels contribute, without forcing every consumer into the same sequence.
Where the Unified Plan Pays Off
For agencies, a unified strategy changes the conversation with clients in a useful direction, because a connected plan can show how connected TV advertising contributes to full-funnel outcomes alongside every other channel on shared terms, and the industry's investment in ventures like Aquila has already made the cost of the alternative a matter of public record. Audiences stopped experiencing video as a set of separate channels years ago, and the plans getting the most from connected TV advertising in 2026 are the ones built the way people already watch.
Ready to orchestrate your video strategy across screens with a single omnichannel platform? Get in touch to explore our solutions.