CTV Isn’t the Future, It’s the Now of App Marketing

Your next user is looking for you. Are you present on their display? 

The world of advertising and connecting with new users has taken a huge shift because of Connected TVs (CTVs). The traditional method of presenting the same commercial to each person is a thing of the past; Smart TV and streaming services are becoming the dominant media source in every household across America, providing an enormous chance to reach out to your customers in a way that wasn’t even possible 5 to 10 years ago. 

If you are marketing an app in 2025, then you will want to include CTV in your marketing strategy. Here are some statistics: Over 80% of American homes are now using some form of CTV, and companies are spending massive sums of money with streaming apps (CTV ad spending is predicted to reach $27 billion in 2026). This isn’t merely a new marketing avenue; this is becoming the primary source for Americans to spend time in the evening.

What excites you about Connected TV as a marketer? First, it enables you to use the accurate targeting techniques you love with digital advertising on the largest screen in your home. You get to see exactly who viewed your advertisement on television, when consumers installed your application following your advertisement, and how they interacted with your application. No longer will you be throwing money away on advertising through television, hoping for results.

Think about how absent your tracking was in traditional television advertising. You would run your commercial and then… nothing. Was your commercial successful? Who knows? Connected Television will enable you to track every single step from when a consumer saw your advertisement to when they downloaded your app and how long they continued to use it. Do you want to see how Connected Television fits into your other marketing efforts? Take a look at our mobile attribution strategies to see the complete picture.

This guide is going to provide you with real-world strategies that marketers, like you, currently leverage for their applications. You will leave this guide with many practical strategies for implementing either connected television into your marketing strategy or improving your current Connected Television marketing campaigns.

Are you ready to change how you acquire and engage with users? Let’s get started!

Introduction to CTV Marketing

If you’re watching this video, you already know that many people around you have dropped their cable providers and are using devices such as Fire TV Stick, Roku, and smart TVs to watch television. This represents an entire paradigm shift in how consumers are consuming television and presents extremely valuable new opportunities for marketers of applications.

CTV Marketing Is a Must-Have!

Back when TV commercials were the only option for advertising, advertisers had no way of knowing who was actually seeing the commercials.  Vague demographic categories like “Men 25-35” or “Women 40-65” were about as far as most advertisers could go when trying to determine whether their ad would be effective.

However, Connected TV (also known as CTV) now allows for much more precision in targeting audiences with specific characteristics. Advertisers can now promote their applications to a very specific audience, for example, a group of individuals who are mobile gamers, watch cooking channels and have recently searched Google for fitness apps.

This precision of targeting results in less expensive acquisition costs for the advertiser and higher conversion rates for the app marketer.

Finally, Connected TV provides insights into audience behaviour at each stage of the customer journey – from viewer to app installer to loyal user. Gone are the days of speculation about how well a television ad campaign performed; advertisers can now determine how many people who saw their television ad took action, whether they downloaded their mobile application immediately or several days later.

Connected TV vs Traditional TV: No Comparison

To be honest, traditional TV advertising has always been like a game of chance. You would purchase a prime-time television advertising space, pay a lot of money for it and then hope for the best. The only “data” that you received was general viewing data that did not provide you with any valuable information about who actually saw your advertisement, or what they did afterwards. 

Connected TV has turned this process upside down. With Connected TV, instead of interrupting the viewers’ watching experience with irrelevant advertisements, you can enhance their streaming experience by providing them with advertisements that are relevant to their interests. With traditional television, viewers would typically pick up their mobile devices during the ad break and may not have even remembered your advertisement, but with Connected TV, they can easily click on an advertisement and download your application.

The difference in measurement is also easy to see. With traditional television advertising, you will likely see a general increase in downloads, but you will have a difficult time determining which advertisement placement created that increase. With Connected Television, you will be able to see exactly how many viewers you received from advertisements placed in specific shows, through specific devices, or as a result of advertising on particular days of the week.

What Is Currently The Newest Trend In CTV

The connected television marketplace is growing at an astonishing rate, and India, in particular, is projected to have over 60 million households with CTV’s by the end of this calendar year; therefore, there are 60 million homes potentially able to discover your application! 

Programmatic purchasing allows marketers to buy ads easily among several different streaming services and provides marketers with a real-time optimising capability with each of these placements; therefore, there is less waste and more effective campaign management. 

Intelligent marketers understand that they can track the path from CTV advertisement influences to other media influences, and therefore, if a consumer watched an advertisement for your application on their CTV, they may search for the application on their mobile device after they viewed it, or they may click on your advertisement on Instagram the next day. With proper attribution processes in place, marketers can determine how to effectively allocate credit for these more complex journeys.

A word of caution: with the influx of cash into CTV comes the influx of fraudsters taking advantage of this influx of cash. From simple impression fraud through complicated schemes mimicking legitimate CTV traffic, you must use solid anti-fraud tools and resources (such as those offered by Apptrove) to protect your ROI.

The takeaway here? CTV is not just another channel to add to the marketing mix — CTV has become the hub for progressive app marketers. Get in now while this space is emerging, so you will be ahead of your competitors that are still stuck with the traditional marketing mindset.

CTV Advertising Explained

Do you recall the days when advertisers used to just blast out their commercials on traditional television without any way of tracking whether they were reaching appropriate audiences? CTV advertising, however, has revolutionized how we think about advertising and the way we target consumers. I’ll walk you through an example from my own life to demonstrate how CTV works behind-the-scenes.

By doing so, you will clearly see how using technology-based solutions can provide your business with a competitive advantage by allowing you to precisely reach your target customer through CTV advertising.

The Actual Locations of Your Ads

All of your placement options give you a tactical advantage at each point along the viewing cycle:

For example, pre-roll ads allow advertisers to reach the viewer at the end of the first viewing cycle when they are most fresh and have not yet become fatigued from viewing content. They are more relaxed and focused with the remote control in their hand.

For example, mid-roll placements place your message between content breaks when people are very invested in the content. Very rarely are viewers looking for the skip button when using the app as a typical scenario. Thus, compared to other platforms, a viewer with a mid-roll is not likely to seek out the skip button.

It may seem counterintuitive to use post-roll; however, the viewers who stay on the app after viewing content are the “gold standard” audience since they are highly engaged and more likely to take action after viewing a post-roll ad. Testing placement on the app may yield some surprising results that are specific to your app. The difference between a breakout campaign and an average campaign could be simply identifying the sweet spot within your content cycle of how and when viewers are likely to see your message.

Targeting That Makes Traditional Television Seem Like Ancient Technology

You can leave traditional media in the dust thanks to

The combination of demographics and behaviour to discover your ideal consumers such as parents who have conducted searches for educational content and stream children’s shows.

The ability to compare viewing habits against device-specific metrics allows you to effectively reach users based on the requirements of your application.

By excluding current users from your target audience, you will ensure only new users receive your message.

This high level of precision directly translates into improved ROI by ensuring each dollar spent is generating ROI rather than wasted impressions as a result of untargeted audience members receiving impressions.

How to Measure the Attribution Puzzle

At long last, all the pieces of the attribution puzzle are now in place:

• You can now identify patterns that you are unable to measure using a traditional multi-touch attribution model. For example, exposure to your Connected TV advertising results in an increase in click-through rate for your social campaigns.

• You can now see how users travel from their first passive ad experience to their most recent active app engagement and download activity days later.

• You can now actually measure “influenced installs” that were previously hidden from you using traditional attribution methods (e.g., an individual sees an advertisement on Tuesday but does not download the application until Friday).

• You can now see which types or elements of your creatives are driving high-value users (not just the number of installs). For example, a cartoon mascot may drive a high number of installs, but a feature showcase creative will drive users who are more likely to spend money with you.

Creative That Works 

Creative offerings change the way you showcase your app; all viewers will see different app feature sets that depend on who they are (e.g. viewers of productivity content vs social networking).

Provide immediate activation through scannable QR codes that create an instant TV/mobile connection.

Share different variables within the messaging to each target audience without needing to create a new production run.

And, through the combination of big-screen production values and digital style (conversion by) tactics, you get the best of all worlds; emotional connection combined with measurable action.

CTV gives you access to a rare marketing channel that appeals to both the emotional heart and the critical analytical brain of potential app users. When creating your app marketing strategy, capturing the perfect balance between building the brand and doing performance-based marketing, all via the largest screen in your potential app user.

CTV Marketing Strategies for App Marketers

With an understanding of how CTV works, you’re ready to take action. It is not just following a generic marketing playbook; this is leveraging what makes CTV unique to get your app discovered, installed, and actually used by people. Here are ways to create campaigns that will stand out from all of the other streaming noise.

Strategy 1: Develop Video Ads That Capture Viewer Attention:

To be frank, the majority of Connected TV marketing fails to offer viewers anything memorable. Fortunately, your marketing can position itself as a leader in this category. 

When you are selling through this enormous marketing platform of a screen, the detailed subtleties of a mobile-phone-type ad that can go unnoticed become extremely important to consumers. Your visuals must be bright and bold across a large screen, such as 55 inches, when viewed from a distance. For instance, show off all the daring colour variations of your app interface that resulted when viewed in 3D mode.  

Because most consumers do not have the ability to skip the ads delivered via connected TVs (unlike most other digital devices), you will find yourself with a captive audience; therefore do not squander the opportunity by using boring copy in the first 5 seconds of your marketing message by using something unique to catch their attention.

Here’s the winning formula that has worked over and over again: 

• Show how your app can solve someone’s everyday challenge in a way they can relate to—they must feel it, not just know it. 
• Provide actual footage of your application use (no ‘talking heads’). 
• Have the name of your application on-screen at all times, as people may be using a device with the sound turned down. 
• Conclude with a clear, compelling call to action that recognizes the reality of cross-device activity (“search for ‘App Name’ in your device app store”). 

The best part is connected TV ad completion rates exceed 98%—far higher than most forms of digital advertising. This means you can afford to tell your complete story, create emotional connections and reinforce your message without concern of people skipping or ignoring it like other forms of advertising.

Strategy 2: Get Surgical With Who Sees Your Ads 

The capabilities of CTV (connective television) allow you to target very specifically and with almost frightening accuracy. Use this!

Forget about marketing to a broad demographic. Think about how customers are behaving. For example:

• If someone is watching streaming workouts, there’s a good chance they’d also be interested in a fitness app.
• If consumers are late-night binge-watching, they also could be your target market for a meditation app.
• If you have parents watching children’s programming, they could utilize a family organization tool.

You can create specific segments based on multiple data points:

• Combine viewing habits with household compositions.
• Layer in affinity for app categories to see if a similar app product already exists.
• Lean into timing filters to also target consumers when they may be more receptive.

And this isn’t only theory! Marketers are starting to allocate dollars toward CTV mainly because marketers are planning on spending on CTV because of its targeted audience capabilities.

In America, in a 2023 survey, 47% of video marketers planning to increase their CTV advertising spend say that’s why they are doing so, as CTV advertising provides targeted audiences. Developing this type of strategic targeting is not only an added benefit but is what’s driving acquisition from performance-based acquisitions.

Strategy 3: Build Links Among Devices 

The glaring truth about Connected TV is that viewers do not download applications directly from their televisions. In order to achieve success with your strategy, you need a connection across screens. 

Consider how often you will see something that you like on your television and then grab your mobile device to do research on it. Therefore, your marketing must reflect that flow: 

• Place the engaging brand story on CTV
• Retarget those same individuals who viewed the initial advertising on their mobile devices with an installation message
• Create continuity with visuals that will allow users to easily identify your brand across devices 

The outcome? Real, measurable results. Campaigns that combine CTV and Mobile Advertising achieve 5x more conversions than campaigns that do not. This is due to the fact that you have now created a user journey through Devices that they currently utilize, as opposed to trying to create new user behaviour, which is unlikely.

Strategy 4: Make Passive Viewing Active

Interactive Connected TV ads are still underutilized, giving you a chance to stand out in a sea of passive content.

When a viewer can actually do something during your ad – answer a question, tap to learn more, or even start an install process – they’re significantly more likely to remember your app later:

• Use clickable overlays that let viewers explore different app features
• Create branching narratives where viewers choose what they want to learn about
• Add QR codes that bridge TV viewing and mobile action instantly

This isn’t just a shiny new format—it performs. Interactive Connected TV ads can increase engagement rates by up to 52%, making them one of the most efficient ways to boost brand recall and app consideration. And because these formats encourage active participation, they also help pre-qualify high-intent users.

By combining these four strategies, you’re not just advertising – you’re creating a connected experience that guides potential users from awareness on their TV screen to active engagement on their phones and tablets. In today’s fragmented attention economy, that seamless journey is what separates apps that get downloaded once from those that become daily habits.

Obstacles Associated With CTV Marketing

Connected TV (CTV) provides extraordinary opportunities for marketing through apps, but as can be expected, challenges exist. Let’s explore some of the biggest hurdles you will encounter when trying to market your app via CTV and how to circumvent those challenges in order to remain competitive against others who may have difficulty navigating these frequently experienced challenges.

Challenge 1: Measurement & Attribution

The million-dollar question—did that user who just downloaded your app do so as a direct result of seeing your Connected TV ad last night?

Unlike many other digital channels that provide a direct click path between ad view and app install, Connected TV presents significant challenges in bridging the gap between the view and action. For example, when someone views your ad on their TV and later downloads your app on their mobile phone, connecting those two actions is extremely challenging.

In terms of attribution, both probabilistic matching and IP-based attribution present trade-offs.

Probabilistic matching can tell you a device in the same household downloaded your app after seeing your ad, but it cannot tell you that it was the same person who did so.

IP-based attribution can give you household-level attribution; however, it is not always accurate for mobile networks or when users are on the go.

To improve your attribution process, consider:

1. Incorporating incrementality testing into your campaign by running your CTV advertising in specific geographic areas and measuring lift compared to a control group.

2. Looking for patterns instead of striving for exact attribution—if you see consistent increases in installs following your Connected TV flights, even if you don’t have user-level attribution, you still have a valuable story to tell.

3. Use QR codes or unique promo codes in your Connected TV advertising to create a trackable path to app installations.

Challenge 2: Ad Fraud + Privacy Issues

As more and more ad spend goes towards Connected TV (CTV), fraudsters have jumped in; they’re getting creative. You could easily be overpaying for what you thought were premium time impressions and instead be showing your ads to bot farms and/or non-existent devices.

Fraud in CTV is particularly tricky for:

1. Server-side ad insertion makes it challenging to validate ad placement compared to traditional digital channels.

2. The fragmented CTV ecosystem leads to various standards for validating ad placement.

3. Privacy regulations will continue to tighten throughout the world, restricting how you can use household data for audience targeting.

To protect your investment: 

– Only work with premium publishers and demand transparent reporting. 

– Watch for red flags (i.e., perfect completion rates, viewing from the same devices 24/7).

– Include privacy compliance into your overall strategy; do not collect or utilise data that conflicts with the regulations in your target markets.

Problem 3: Creative & Format Considerations

An amazing app demo on Instagram might not be able to be read on a television screen 10 feet away from your sofa!

The creative requirements of Connected TV are different:

Text that was readable on a handheld device may not be readable on a TV.

Small visual cues that were visible to a person holding a mobile device may not exist in a living room environment.

Interactive elements need to function with a remote control and not a touch screen, therefore changing the UX requirements for the device.

In order to make your creative connection:

• Prior to finalising, test your ads from an actual TV screen, from the distance of a couch. 
• Keep it simple – tell one clear message instead of telling all the features. 
• Don’t forget about audio as much as you think about visual – many people are actually listening to your ad while looking at their phone.

These are not challenges to hold you back; they are opportunities to beat the competition that are not being thoughtful when it comes to their Connected TV strategy. If you can overcome these challenges with thoughtful solutions, you will be in the minority of app marketers that really take advantage of CTV, instead of just checking off a box in their media plan.

Keep in mind that the CTV space is still rapidly evolving. What works today may need to be adjusted tomorrow as platforms continue to update their capabilities, improve measurement capabilities, and change viewer behaviour. Stay flexible, continue to test, and look at these challenges as the price of admission to possibly the most powerful user acquisition channel for you to date.

Conclusion: Connected TV should be included in your App Plan 

Let’s get to the point – CTV marketing is not just another item checked off your marketing plan. It represents that rare point in time where a medium has reached a sufficient level of maturity to produce consistent results, yet is also “new enough” that it is reasonably unsaturated by competitors.

What is it about Connected TV that gives it its strength? CTV provides you with something you have always wanted, but have not been able to achieve: The emotional appeal of traditional television with the targeting precision of digital. When your app storyline airs during a viewer’s favourite show, it creates a contact opportunity. The same viewer sees your follow-up ad on his/her mobile device later that same day with the ability to directly install your application via an install button. Thanks to solutions such as Apptrove, creating cross-channel attribution models and linking touchpoints to drive performance are easier than ever before.

There are some challenges you will encounter as you navigate this space: Attribution is not perfect, and there is potential for fraud; in addition, TV-first creative requires a different set of skillsets from mobile-first creative. However, these hurdles may keep your less adaptable competitors away, while you continue to develop your experience and audience within this new space.

Numbers don’t lie; connected television will continue to experience growth while traditional television continues to decline, and advertisers will invest in connected television more than ever, but there is still a significant gap between how much audience spends watching connected television and how much money marketers are currently spending on connected television. Thus, your investment today likely has a much greater value to you than it will tomorrow.

Whenever you see that your costs of customer acquisition are rising with regards to your existing advertising channels, this is the time to add connected television to your portfolio — it’s going to provide you new opportunities for growth.

Now is the time to invest in connected television; don’t wait until all of your competition has figured out how to take advantage of the opportunity that connected television provides you in reaching users when they are most receptive to your message, with the ability to measure the real value of your advertising spend on installs and engagement through connected television. 

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