On March 5 in New York, industry leaders will gather at Convergent TV to debate a question that no longer feels theoretical: What does television look like when it is fully converged, measurable, shoppable, and AI-optimized?
Connected TV has moved well beyond experimentation. Global CTV ad spend is projected to surpass $40 billion in 2026, fueled by the rapid rise of ad-supported streaming and brands reallocating budgets from traditional linear environments into addressable, performance-driven ecosystems. The conversation has shifted and the question is no longer whether CTV deserves investment, but how intelligently it can be integrated into a converged media ecosystem.
This year’s agenda reflects that maturity. Five discussions in particular stand out not as isolated themes, but as structural shifts reshaping how brands approach modern television.
The CTV Home Screen
New research conducted in partnership with TiVo Ads highlights how the CTV home screen is evolving across the full funnel. Once considered a simple navigation layer, it is now emerging as premium, high-attention inventory. Its role is expanding beyond awareness into engagement and performance. Early 2026 trials show that interactive and shoppable home screen formats have delivered conversion rates up to 5X times higher than standard video ads. What was once supplementary real estate is becoming a strategically significant influence point within the streaming journey.
Unified Measurement & Attribution
As CTV investment grows, so does the demand for measurement clarity. Despite rapid adoption, fragmentation remains a key industry challenge, with 61% of marketers citing cross-platform attribution as their biggest obstacle.
Streaming platforms, mobile environments, retail data, and physical-world exposure often operate in silos, creating gaps in identity resolution and incrementality measurement. The focus is shifting from diagnosing fragmentation to building practical, unified reporting frameworks that bring consistency across screens. Without that integration, true convergence remains incomplete.
Monetizing the New TV: FAST, AVOD, and Platform Influence
Consumer behavior is reshaping television’s revenue model. Subscription fatigue has accelerated the rise of ad-supported tiers, with AVOD projected to reach $40.1 billion in 2026. Viewers are increasingly willing to trade attention for access, expanding inventory across streaming ecosystems.
At the same time, OEM-led platforms are gaining strategic control over data and ad delivery. Monetization is no longer just about selling impressions within content but also about optimizing yield, leveraging platform-level data signals, and building sustainable advertising models within connected TV environments.
The New Media Stack: Retail Media on the Big Screen
Retail purchase data is increasingly influencing CTV investment, marking a structural shift in how television is planned and optimized. Commerce signals once confined to digital performance channels are now shaping audience targeting and programmatic bidding on the largest screen in the home.
This reflects a broader move from channel-first planning to consumer-led orchestration, where exposure is aligned across environments based on real purchase behavior. The integration of retail data into CTV signals a deeper convergence between brand-building and performance media.
AI and Creative Intelligence:
AI remains central to the 2026 agenda, but the emphasis has shifted from content generation to creative effectiveness. Cognitive Customer Experiences (CCX) are driving this transition, enabling ads to adapt dynamically based on contextual signals such as weather, time, location, or inventory levels.
Recent data indicates that 63% of viewers find CTV ads more relevant when AI adjusts creative to their environment. Creative is becoming responsive rather than static, functioning as a dynamic system within campaigns. At the same time, AI-driven media planning is streamlining complex, multi-screen execution, positioning artificial intelligence as a strategic engine within modern media infrastructure rather than simply an automation tool.
Conclusion: A Converged Reality
If there is one defining takeaway from Convergent TV 2026, it is this: CTV now sits at the core of data, commerce, and cross-screen orchestration. CTV’s next chapter will not be defined by scale alone, but by intelligence, interoperability, and infrastructure where media, measurement, and monetization operate within a unified framework.
At Lemma, we’ve spent years preparing for this specific moment. Our vision has always been to break down the walls between the “Street” (DOOH) and the “Seat” (CTV). As the industry accelerates toward unified measurement and AI-led optimization, brands need more than access to inventory; they need orchestrated intelligence that connects screens, data, and outcomes into one cohesive system.
That is where the future of converged media is heading: toward systems, not silos.
