Originally published on New Digital Age
Sport has long championed the idea of marginal gains: small, intentional improvements that compound into big outcomes. TV advertising can work the same way. When brands focus on incrementality—reaching new audiences instead of simply hitting the same heavy viewers more often—they unlock better efficiency, stronger effectiveness, and real business growth.
TV is still the backbone of many media plans, but the economics of reach are shifting. At first, investing more in TV pushes reach up quickly. Then it flattens. Why? Because additional spend often over-delivers frequency to the same heavy viewers. Meanwhile, light and younger audiences remain hard to find on linear alone, causing the cost per point of reach to rise. That’s the cue to blend TV with high-quality digital and CTV. Done well, you can push back the point of diminishing returns, extend into new households, and control frequency more intelligently.
The evidence backs this up. In a meta-analysis of 60 campaigns in France, which Teads commissioned in partnership with Mediamétrie, we found that TV’s frequency distribution was highly uneven: the top 20% of TV viewers saw ads 15 times more often than the bottom 20%. But, by replacing expensive, high-frequency TV impressions at the top end of the curve with cost-efficient, quality digital reach across screens – mobile, tablet, desktop, and TV – it’s possible to get a far more balanced distribution, narrowing the exposure difference between the most and least exposed to just 20%.
There are several ways to make the most of this Digital and CTV contribution:
Creative Curiosity. Bringing creative innovation to the big screen and looking for exclusive and curated premium partnerships with TV manufacturers and broadcasters opens up new placements on the home screen and in-stream.
Every viewing journey starts on the home screen, which makes it a uniquely efficient place to address the un-addressable: those who’ve gravitated to ad-free SVOD platforms. Think of it as a bold new canvas you can activate like digital out-of-home: own big moments such as sporting fixtures or product launches to build attention before viewers enter content. And use formats designed to engage – 3D units, personalised audio experiences powered by AI and QR codes for example —to grab attention and drive action.
Contextual Relevance. This is crucial for extending TV reach effectively. Unlike the open web, contextual signals in CTV bidstreams are sparse and often device-specific, which makes scalable audience segments and contextual targeting tough. The solution is to homogenise targeting across screens so you can reach ‘one audience everywhere’ but crucially to also map for contextual interest. In essence, this is a modernisation of the classic TV planning principle: put the right message, to the right people, in the right context to earn attention and drive outcomes.
Measurement. Cross-screen measurement tools now provide post-campaign reporting showing total and exclusive reach across web, CTV and new surfaces such as CTV home screens. When combined with linear TV reach, advertisers can estimate overall cross-screen performance and deduplicated reach across standard demographics. Omnichannel planning tools are also evolving to make incremental reach planning more scalable and predictable.
Foundational to this will be the ability to use IP addresses matched to household devices (mobile, PC, TV) to integrate deep contextual and behavioural data to understand what people are reading and watching, enabling precise, privacy-safe audience estimates.
As CTV grows, outcomes will be at the heart of measuring the campaign’s success with reach and frequency remaining crucial supporting metrics. The clear takeaway is that growth is founded on efficient, incremental reach. Blending linear TV with digital and CTV will help advertisers manage frequency, improve cost per incremental reach point, and extend into audiences that traditional TV underserve via the big screen.
And the incremental gains add up. According to an Ekimetrics’ meta-analysis of 132 MMM studies for FMCG brands across six European markets, platforms delivering cross-screen reach, such as Teads, delivered an average ROI of 3.6X – around 20% higher than brand benchmarks. Incrementality is an essential lever to pull to push back diminishing returns and maximise the value of your media investment.