Planning connected TV advertising: a UK budget guide

What to take away

What the UK market looks like by route

Anyone asking for one growth figure for connected TV advertising is asking the wrong question. The category is not one market. It is broadcaster video on demand, subscription-platform ad tiers, free ad-supported services and app-based inventory sold through different pipes.

Each pipe has its own pricing logic. ITVX and Channel 4 sell against rate cards and known content slates. Netflix's ad tier and Amazon's ad-supported tier sell against audience data they control. Free ad-supported services such as Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, Rakuten TV and LG Channels reach buyers mainly through ad networks, which sell remnant impressions at whatever the auction clears.

Ofcom's Media Nations report is the standard public indicator for UK viewing shifts, and it is the first place to check how much viewing has moved to streaming. For the money side, the AA/WARC Expenditure Report and IAB UK's published adspend figures are the references the market cites, and both are updated on a regular cycle.

Treat any growth figure from those sources as a planning range, not a promise. A plan that assumes the same CPM inflation across all four routes will misprice at least one of them.

The practical response is to split the plan by supply route. Give each route its own target, its own measurement method and its own review date. Then the outlook becomes something you can manage rather than something you forecast once and forget.

What is actually changing in the market

Three shifts matter for UK buyers over the next 18 months.

First, ad-tier subscriptions have moved connected TV from a niche buy to a mainstream one. Households that once paid to avoid advertising now accept it at a lower price, which puts more addressable inventory in front of planners.

Second, retail media money is competing for the same screens. Brands that used to fund a pure brand campaign now want a performance wrapper around it, and platforms are building the tools to sell that.

Third, the buying interface is consolidating. More inventory is available through a smaller number of demand-side platforms — The Trade Desk, Google's Display & Video 360 and Amazon DSP among them — which reduces operational friction but increases dependence on a few vendors.

None of these shifts is a surprise on its own. Together they change the shape of a plan, because demand is also splitting by advertiser category: a grocer, a retailer and a financial services brand want different things from the same screen. A single growth assumption will not hold across all of them.

How the rules shape the plan

The regulatory direction is clearer than the commercial one. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport ran an online advertising programme consultation covering paid online advertising, including video formats. Any outcome from that process will land on connected TV buyers as well as on social platforms.

The existing codes do the heavy lifting in the meantime. The CAP Code sets the rules for non-broadcast advertising, including on-demand video, and the BCAP Code covers broadcast advertising; the Advertising Standards Authority enforces both, and CAP's advertising resource library covers digital and video guidance. The Online Safety Act 2023 puts new duties on online services, which Ofcom enforces, and the Ofcom Broadcasting Code still governs the broadcasters whose players carry much of this inventory. Buyers who have only ever placed linear TV spots will find some of the detail unfamiliar, particularly around targeting and data use.

There is also a technical standards layer. The British Standards Institution (BSI) maintains the standards catalogue, and the specifications UK video sellers actually work to come from IAB Tech Lab: the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) for creative delivery and the Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK) for independent verification. Asking which of these a vendor supports is a useful question in any pitch.

Before you sign an insertion order, check current CAP guidance on targeting and data use, confirm in writing who owns compliance on each side, and keep the seller's data terms on file.

Where measurement still lets buyers down

Platform-reported numbers are not comparable by default. One platform counts a view after two seconds, another after a completed ad, and a third only when the player is in focus. The definitions are published, but they are not harmonised. In the UK, BARB remains the industry currency for TV audience measurement, and CFlight is the main broadcaster-side attempt to report campaign performance across linear and on-demand together.

That leaves buyers with two options. Accept platform metrics and manage each platform separately, or pay for a third-party measurement and verification layer that attempts to deduplicate across them. The vendor list for that layer is short: DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science for verification, Kantar, Comscore and Nielsen for audience data, and Innovid for creative-level reporting.

Origin, the cross-media measurement programme run by ISBA and the IPA, is the industry attempt to give TV and online video a single deduplicated number. It is not yet the default currency, so plan to reconcile the platforms yourself in the meantime.

The first option is cheaper and simpler. The second is more defensible when a finance director asks what the money bought.

A workable middle path is to agree a single primary metric per platform before the campaign starts, then report a blended reach figure only where the seller will sign up to the same definition. If they will not, report the platforms separately and say so in the summary.

This is unglamorous work. It is also the difference between a plan that survives a quarterly review and one that does not.

A worked example with labelled figures

Take a fictional Leeds-based homeware brand with a £600,000 annual marketing budget. It allocates £180,000 to connected TV for the year, split across three routes.

The team agrees a base case where the broadcaster portion delivers its guarantee. The platform portion delivers within 10 per cent of target. The auction portion fluctuates by up to 25 per cent month to month. That is an illustrative planning assumption, not a market forecast.

In a constrained case, the auction portion underdelivers by 25 per cent. That removes roughly £10,000 of effective reach and forces a choice: top up the auction line or move the money to the broadcaster guarantee. In an upside case, the platform portion overdelivers and the team shifts £15,000 from the auction line into it for the following quarter.

The value of the exercise is not the numbers. It is that the team has already decided what it will do in each case, so the decision takes an afternoon rather than a month.

Typical UK cost benchmarks

Typical UK planning ranges for connected TV sit at around £20 to £40 per thousand impressions for broadcaster video on demand. Subscription-platform ad tiers typically run at £15 to £30, and open auction app inventory at £8 to £20. Cost per completed view typically falls between £0.03 and £0.10. These are broad planning ranges, not quoted rates.

The actual figure depends on targeting, timing, creative length, completion definition and whether the buy is guaranteed or auction-cleared. Ask each seller for its current rate card and measurement definition before you set a budget line.

Scenarios worth planning for

Base case: steady inventory growth

Ad-tier subscriptions continue to add households, inventory grows modestly and prices hold within normal seasonal swings. Buyers who locked annual deals get the benefit. The main risk is complacency: a plan that works in a stable market can hide weak measurement practice.

Constrained case: tighter supply or slower demand

If inventory growth stalls while advertiser demand rises, auction-cleared inventory gets more expensive first. Buyers with fixed-rate deals are protected; buyers relying on the open auction are not.

The trigger to watch is the gap between your negotiated rate and the clearing price on comparable inventory. When that gap widens for two consecutive months, revisit the mix.

Upside case: new formats scale

Interactive and shoppable formats have been promised for years and have scaled slowly. If one of them crosses into mainstream buying, the planning conversation changes because the unit of sale changes. The trigger is not a vendor announcement; it is when a format appears in standard rate cards from more than one major seller.

The cases interact. A squeeze in auction inventory often arrives at the same time as a demand shift from one advertiser category to another, so set your triggers against your own mix rather than against the market as a whole.

Who will execute the plan

The outlook depends on people as much as inventory. Connected TV buying sits between linear TV planning and programmatic trading, and few people are trained in both.

A planner may not be comfortable in a demand-side platform. A programmatic trader may not know how to read a broadcaster guarantee. The strongest teams pair the two skills.

Training matters, and the IAB UK events listing is a starting point for finding sessions where buyers compare notes. The connected TV advertising skills question is really about coverage: commissioning, planning, trading and measurement each need an owner.

How to brief a connected TV campaign

A brief that works for linear TV will not work here without changes. The audience definition needs to be expressed in terms a platform can act on, not in broad demographic language.

The measurement plan needs to name the primary metric and who reports it. The creative needs a version that works without sound, because a meaningful share of viewing happens in muted environments.

Finally, the brief should state what happens if the campaign underdelivers. A guaranteed deal has a remedy. An auction buy does not. Writing that down before the campaign starts prevents an awkward conversation later.

When you review the plan, compare what was promised in the brief with what the platform reported. Differences are usually definitional rather than performance-related, and they are easier to resolve early.

Sponsorship and other routes to consider

Connected TV is not only spot advertising. Sponsorship of on-demand content, branded hubs and takeover formats sit in the same environment and carry different pricing.

Thinkbox's overview of the different ways to use TV advertising shows how sponsorship and broadcaster video on demand fit alongside spot buying. It is a useful primer when a stakeholder assumes connected TV means pre-roll only.

Sponsorship is often sold on a fixed fee rather than an impression basis. Treat it as a separate line with its own success measure.

Update triggers to watch

Set a calendar reminder for each of these, and decide in advance what you will change if one fires.

These are administrative triggers, not predictions. Their purpose is to force a review at a sensible moment rather than after the budget has been spent.

What to do next quarter

Confirm the primary metric for each connected TV line in writing. Check that your creative works without sound. Then diarise the update triggers above.

If you are planning into next year, the structural questions are the ones to watch: how much inventory stays behind paywalls, how measurement consolidates and whether interactive formats finally scale. Our note on connected TV advertising 2027 trends goes further out than the next two quarters.

None of this requires a new platform or a bigger budget. It requires a plan that states its assumptions and a team that knows when to revisit them.

Common questions

Is connected TV advertising still growing in the UK?

The direction of travel is growth, driven by ad-tier subscriptions and more addressable inventory. Ofcom's Media Nations report is the place to check the viewing-side evidence each year.

How should I budget for connected TV in 2027?

Build a base, constrained and upside case rather than one number. Use the cost benchmarks above as a sanity check. The worked example above shows the mechanics with labelled pound figures.

What rules apply to connected TV ads in the UK?

The existing advertising codes apply, enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, and the Online Advertising Programme consultation may add further requirements. Check current CAP guidance before you sign anything.

Do I need different creative for streaming ads?

Often, yes. Viewing environments vary and a share of viewing is muted, so a version that reads clearly without sound is worth producing. Check the seller's specification before delivery.