{if first_name} Hi {first_name},
{else if name} Hi {first(name)}, {else} Hi there, {/if} Thanks for joining What the fastest growing ecom brands figured out about TV yesterday. We covered why CTV is starting to look less like a “brand awareness someday” channel and more like a performance lever that can sit next to Meta, TikTok, retail, and retention. The big unlock is simple: attention has moved, but budgets have not fully caught up yet.
If you missed it or want to read the show notes: catch the recording here.
Thanks to Emily Huo for being so specific. She got into the actual mechanics of CTV buying, from premium inventory and show-level transparency to pixel setup, retargeting, measurement, and how long brands should give the channel before judging performance.
And big thanks to Paramount Ads Manager for making this possible. Five solid takeaways: -
At 3:47
, Nik broke down the attention gap. A lot of DTC brands put 30% or more of paid media into social, and plenty are closer to 70% or 80%. Meanwhile, CTV gets a much smaller share of budget, even though the average CTV viewing session is around 100 minutes and the average social session is closer to 8 minutes.
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At 8:00, the CTV buying model started to sound a lot more familiar. Emily and Nik talked through how CTV targeting now looks much closer to the channels most brands already know: interest segments, purchase intent, lifestyle categories, site pixels, lapsed customer audiences, app users, and retargeting.
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At 12:44, Emily made the point that not all CTV inventory is the same. Running an ad against premium shows with real cultural gravity is different from running across random streaming inventory. With Paramount Ads Manager, brands can see the shows they ran on, which gives the media buy more transparency than a generic CTV placement.
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At 22:46, the advice was clear: install the pixel before you launch. Emily said first-time TV buyers should think about measurement from day one. Nik added that he had just installed it for a brand, and it was basically copying the code from the backend and pasting it into Shopify or Google Tag Manager.
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At 25:42, Emily shared a practical retargeting example. Midwest Photo started by running Paramount campaigns to build a baseline, then tested retargeting after the pixel had time to warm up. The retargeting campaign drove 41% higher site visits and improved efficiency by almost 30%.
A few resources from Paramount Ads Manager that came up during the event:
Ready to plan your next CTV test around the right moments?
Paramount Ads Manager put together a 2026 CTV Media Planning Calendar to help brands map campaigns around tentpoles, premieres, product launches, and seasonal moments.
More events coming soon.
Nik |