CTV advertising opens the door to reaching viewers in a more intentional, data-driven way—but that only works if your audience targeting is set up to actually deliver.

The good news? You don’t need a massive budget or a 50-slide persona deck to make smart targeting decisions. In fact, that’s exactly what makes CTV such a strong fit for small and midsize businesses—it’s accessible, adaptable, and doesn’t require the backing of a full media agency to be effective.

In this post, we’ll walk through:

• Which targeting levers matter most (and which might be slightly overhyped)
• Common pitfalls that limit reach or waste budget
• Why privacy settings, shared screens, and data limitations matter—and how to work around them

Let’s get started.

What Matters the Most in CTV Audience Targeting?

If you’re looking to build a successful CTV campaign, it’s important to remember that not every targeting lever has the same impact. Knowing which ones to prioritize can make all the difference.

Some filters, like household income, might seem strategic, but can hinder your results if used too early. Others, like geography, are essential for getting results, especially for small and midsize businesses working with tighter budgets.

Geography

For small and midsize businesses, geographic targeting is usually the most important decision in a CTV campaign. This is particularly true if your business has a limited service area—in other words, with tight budgets, it just doesn’t make sense to reach folks you can’t turn into customers.

Even for online businesses, narrowing the geographic focus can lead to better delivery and clearer performance data. Trying to run a $1,500 campaign across the entire country rarely works—ultimately, it spreads your budget too thin to generate measurable results.

So, before you layer in age, gender, or other filters, make sure you're showing ads where you can actually deliver on your promises.

Age

Age can be a helpful filter—but only when it's backed by real data.

Too often, businesses make assumptions about who buys their product, and they end up narrowing their reach unnecessarily. Just because your current customers skew 35 doesn’t mean 21-year-olds wouldn’t be interested.

Unless you've got solid purchase data to justify an age range, it's usually better to start broad. Age-based exclusions can quietly limit your results without offering much upside.

In most cases, targeting shouldn’t be based on who you think will buy—it should be based on who actually does.

Gender

Gender targeting can be helpful—if it clearly aligns with the product or service you’re promoting. For example, if you're selling something designed *specifically *for men or women, such as makeup, skincare, and wellness products (e.g., self-care kits for new mothers)—it makes sense to reflect that in your campaign setup.

The real risk comes from targeting decisions based on unbacked assumptions rather than empirical data, especially when those assumptions start to stack up across multiple filters.

Unless gender directly affects whether your ad resonates, keep it broad. Let your performance data do the refining.

Income

Income is one of the most tempting filters to apply, especially for brands with premium products.

However, advertisers often mistakenly assume that higher-income households are their ideal audience—but those assumptions don’t always hold up. Narrowing by income can shrink your audience and limit campaign delivery, particularly if you’re making a smaller budget stretch.

The exception to this rule? If you have strong, data-backed reasons to filter by income. But if you’re just starting out, it’s best to keep it broad as you figure out what works (and what doesn’t).

Content

Beyond demographics, the content your ad runs alongside matters, too.

Content targeting involves placing your ad next to programming that is well-aligned with your tone or message—for example, a funny ad during a comedy program, a news-style explainer during a news segment, etc.

Again, for most small-to-medium-sized businesses, it’s important to avoid becoming overly narrow in your targeting. However, many platforms offer tools that can automatically spread your ads across a wide range of relevant genres—allowing you to maximize your reach and performance.

Common Challenges of CTV Audience Targeting

Audience targeting can be one of the most powerful parts of a CTV campaign—or one of the easiest ways to sabotage it.

From overly narrow filters to faulty assumptions and overlooked viewer behavior, small missteps can quietly and quickly limit reach or undercut performance. Let’s take a closer look at how to avoid some common traps.

1. Narrow Targeting

We‘ve discussed how getting too specific with your targeting can backfire, especially early in a campaign. It might feel strategic to filter by income, age, or lifestyle from the start, but overly narrow targeting often leads to underdelivery, inflated costs, and missed opportunities.

Some businesses rely too heavily on gut instincts or anecdotal knowledge of their customer base, missing easy opportunities to maximize their reach. Others fall into the trap of trying to mimic social or digital ad strategies that prioritize precision, even though CTV works best when you start wide and learn as you go.

Factors like shared devices, co-viewing, and limited third-party data can also make narrow filters less reliable than they appear on paper. Instead of guessing who will convert, cast a wider net at first. As your campaign runs, real performance data will tell you where to focus next.

2. Assumption-Based Decision-Making

Modern advertising tools make it easy to apply precise filters—but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Many campaigns fall short because targeting decisions are made too early, based on hunches, outdated personas, or surface-level audience outlines.

Many advertisers default to targeting folks they think will respond—e.g., past customers. But unless you have years of solid evidence to support that claim, you can easily over-optimize too quickly. Starting instead with a broader approach, advertisers will have a better shot at uncovering new audiences—all while gaining the kind of concrete data that can help you plan your next move.

3. Co-Viewing Audiences

One of the unique aspects of CTV targeting is that you're not always reaching a single, clearly defined viewer. Many households share screens—so, even if you're targeting a specific demographic, there’s a good chance someone else is watching alongside them—or instead of them.

Third-party data can help fill the gaps, but match rates are typically lower than might be expected. And with the growing use of privacy settings and incomplete or inaccurate profile information, it’s becoming harder to know exactly who’s on the other side of the screen.

Rather than over-optimizing for precision, the smarter move—at least when you’re starting out—is to treat CTV as a high-impact awareness channel. Then refine your approach as performance data comes in. Broad targeting doesn't mean waste—it often means scale, exposure, and better long-term results.

How Paramount Ads Manager Helps

Connected TV offers a powerful way to reach your audience—but only if your targeting strategy avoids common pitfalls. Start broad, focus on measurable performance, and stay aware of challenges like co-viewing and limited data accuracy. The more you test and refine based on real outcomes, the more efficiently your campaigns will run.

That’s where Paramount Ads Manager can make a significant difference. With access to premium streaming content, 30-second unskippable ads, and built-in creative tools at no extra cost, it’s built to help small and midsize businesses launch TV campaigns fast—without the high costs that used to shut them out of the big screen entirely.

Whether you're repurposing social creative or building something new with AI, you can get started for only $50 per day—and see your business on TV in less than 24 hours.