Your H2 Media Budget: Why TV Deserves a Bigger Slice

If you're still treating Connected TV (CTV) as a line item to "test eventually," the second half of 2026 is a good time to revisit that. Streaming viewership is at an all-time high, the summer and fall TV lineup is stacked, and the brands showing up now will have a real head start by the time the holiday season kicks in. Below is why TV deserves a bigger slice of your H2 media budget, and what you stand to gain by investing sooner rather than later.

Your Audience Is Already Here (and Growing)

Let's start with reach, because it's undeniable at this point:

• US CTV households are expected to reach nearly 120 million in 2026, representing 89.3% of all US households, well above total pay TV households at 64.7 million.
• CTV users now make up 71.7% of the US population, projected to climb to 74.6% by 2029.
• Adults will spend 4 hours and 35 minutes per day with digital video in 2026, with a significant portion going to OTT streaming services.
• For the first time ever, US adults spent more time watching video on CTV than on linear TV in 2025, a meaningful milestone for anyone still treating streaming as a secondary channel.

Advertising Budgets Are Following the Eyeballs

The industry is finally catching up to viewer behavior:

• Digital TV (streaming platforms and CTV combined) is projected to grow 3% to $21 billion in 2026, and CTV ad spend is forecast to surpass linear TV entirely by 2027.
• Digital video and CTV together now command a 23% share of total US ad spend, the largest of any media channel per the IAB's 2026 Ad Spend Forecast. Social is next at 18.4%, paid search at 16.2%, and linear TV at 11.1%.
• Nearly 80% of CTV ad buyers are already planning to shift some linear spend to CTV this year.
• And this isn't only a large-brand conversation. When determining advertising budget for 2026, 68% of SMBs say they plan to increase their marketing spend, with 74% expecting to put more time into marketing overall.

With Paramount Ads Manager, CTV's self-serve accessibility has made it a practical option for businesses of every size, with no agency or large minimum required.

What Makes CTV Worth the Investment: Attention, Brand Impact, and Performance

Of course, reach alone doesn't justify advertising budget allocation. Here's what CTV delivers on top of it:

1. Attention is higher on TV.

Findings from our CTV vs Social report revealed that viewers spend 2 hours and 35 minutes per day on TV, compared to 1 hour and 31 minutes on social. CTV ads are full-screen, non-skippable, and watched in a lean-back environment, often with others in the room. Your ad isn't competing with a scroll. It's part of the viewing session.

2. Brand impact is measurably stronger.

The report also revealed that CTV ads drive 80% brand recognition, compared to 60% for social ads. That's the kind of recall that builds familiarity over time and makes downstream channels more effective.

3. Performance lifts across your whole media mix.

Here's another good stat from our report: adding CTV to a campaign increases paid social conversion rates by +8.5%. Plus, one of our agency partners running CTV alongside their existing channel mix saw 60% greater reach than with social alone, 14% higher click-through rates among CTV-exposed audiences, and a 313% lift in lead form completions.

4. Marketers are increasing their CTV performance expectations.

90% of marketers expect performance TV to help them achieve revenue goals in 2026, up from 67% who said it delivered in 2025. And they're measuring beyond just reach: 86% of CTV advertisers track reach and frequency, 85% track brand lift, 84% measure sales lift, and 77% track impressions by network. Evaluating advertising spend on CTV looks increasingly like evaluating any other performance channel.

H2 2026: A Strong Calendar for CTV Investment

The second half of 2026 presents some of the strongest CTV viewing windows of the year, across sports, movies, and entertainment - especially across Paramount-Skydance networks, where 1 out of every 5 streaming minutes was viewed in 2025 (Source: Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings, National Sample. Persons 2-99, 1Q25 - 3Q’25. Top 500 Shows per Quarter).

And just in time for most brands’ most important sales season of the year.

Q3: Summer Sports, Holidays, and Back-to-School

Sports content on streaming has grown faster than Kylian Mbappé this year. 77.5% year-over-year across major SVOD platforms, to be exact, with those services doubling their sports catalog share over the past 18 months. And combined linear and streaming sports TV ad spending is projected to grow $5.3 billion between 2026 and 2030.

Of course, we can’t mention sports streaming without mentioning Paramount+. It was officially the leader in sports programming in Q1, accounting for 30% of all games, events, and sports show episodes.

Here are the sports franchises streaming on Paramount that will be drawing big audiences in Q3:

• 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup Coverage on CBS Sports (June-July 19)
• • FYI: CBS won’t be streaming the live event, but will certainly be covering the games.
• • The World Cup has contributed to a 45% increase in American soccer fandom in the past 5 years *(Sources: Nielsen Fan Insights: April – June 2025, Kantar Sports Monitor: 2025, The Harris Poll: 2025) *
• WNBA Games & Coverage on CBS Sports and Paramount+ (ongoing through September)
• UFC Fight Nights (ongoing throughout the year)
• • 350+ hours of live UFC content per year on Paramount+, with the potential to reach 53M+ total UFC fans (Source: YouGov USA Profiles+ Oct 2024, based on adults18+ “fan” = top-two box interest)
• Serie A Season Kickoff (August)
• • Continued soccer momentum for a fan base that's been growing fast (see World Cup stat above)
• NFL Season Kickoff (September)
• • CBS Sports' NFL coverage averaged 21M+ viewers in 2025-26, the most-watched regular season ever. (Source: Nielsen Big Data + Panel, Live + SD, 9/4/25 - 1/4/26)

Back-to-school season also runs alongside this sports calendar, and it's a bigger retail moment than many advertisers treat it as.

According to the YPulse 2025 Back to School Shopping Report, 83% of consumers view back-to-school as its own distinct shopping season, and 70% of parents planned to do back-to-school shopping in 2025.

Most shoppers get started in August (39%), and despite inflation weighing on sentiment (77% say it has a major impact on their spending), shopping dollar estimates were actually up across nearly every category in 2025.

For retail, education, apparel, and family-focused brands, this is a high-intent window that warrants its own campaign moment.

Beyond sports and back-to-school, Q3 also includes big summer viewing moments like:

• 4th of July / America's 250 (July 4)
• Mobland S2 Premiere (July 25)
• Special Ops: Lioness S3 Premiere (July 28)
• The VMAs on MTV, CBS, and Paramount+ (September 27)
• • The 2025 MTV VMAs brought in 59M+ viewers - a +63% YoY jump. (Source: Nielsen Panel-only, Live+7, 09/07/2025; simulcast on CBS, MTV, and Paramount+)

Q4: The Highest-Attention Quarter of the Year

Q4 is the most competitive (and hopefully, most rewarding!) quarter for advertisers. Streaming viewership peaks as holiday programming, live sports, and cultural tentpoles take over, and brands that have spent Q3 building audience familiarity are positioned to convert it.

Key Q4 moments on Paramount include:

• Paramount+ & CBS Fall Premieres (September-October)
• • Audiences will be tuning in to returning favorites like Landman S3, Yellowjackets S4, Dexter: Resurrection S2, FBI S9, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4, and exciting new shows like NCIS: New York and Cupertino.
• NBA Season Kickoff on CBS Sports (October)
• Halloween Peak Screaming Collection on Paramount+ and Pluto TV (October)
• • Last year, Paramount+ saw 16% growth in households viewing while the Peak Screaming Collection was live compared to the prior 28-day period. (Source: Subscription Core KPI Dashboard, Subscription KPIs Daily tab: 9/13/24-10/31/24 vs. 8/16/24-9/12/24 as 28 day pre-premiere time frame)
• Election Day (November 3)
• Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday (November 26-30)
• • AKA the biggest shopping weekend of the year
• Holiday Specials & Collections across Paramount streaming networks (December)
• • Paramount viewers are +82% more likely to make a purchase and +69% more likely to talk to someone about the brand after viewing a holiday ad (Source: Source: Paramount Advertising, 8/14/25 Suzy Fielding, 500 total respondents)

The Case for Planning Now

Viewers choose CTV for the ability to watch on their own schedule (70%), more content options (47%), cost-effectiveness (47%), and fewer ads (41%). That last point is especially relevant for advertisers: a less cluttered ad environment gives each message more room to land.

Streaming campaigns also take time to build. Advertisers who start in Q3 establish remarketing pools, gather performance data, and optimize creative ahead of Q4's peak demand. Waiting until October to start holiday planning means entering the most competitive window cold.

A well-structured CTV advertising budget allocates spend across the funnel: awareness campaigns during high-attention moments, retargeting to reinforce the message, and conversion-focused placements during high-intent periods. The H2 calendar creates natural timing for each of those stages.

Start Building Your H2 CTV Plan

Use our 2026 CTV Guide to map your campaigns to the moments that matter most, and start building the audience familiarity that pays off all the way through the holiday season.

Ready to start building that awareness to set your brand up for H2 success? Paramount Ads Manager gives you access to premium CTV inventory across Paramount+, CBS, CBS Sports, Pluto TV, and more. So you can sign up today, and get your brand in front of TV’s biggest shows by tomorrow.

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