How to Build Your 2027 CTV Plan Before Q1 Hits

Picture this: It’s the first week of January. Your pixel has been collecting data for weeks (or months!), your creative is finalized, your budget is set, and your first CTV campaign of the year goes live in the morning. Nothing is rushed, because you made every one of those decisions back in November (i.e. now).

That’s what planning ahead buys you, and the research shows it pays off. In our report, How SMBs Can Win the Year with CTV, advertisers who planned their CTV campaigns three or more months ahead were:

• 46% more likely to be top performers (advertisers who met or exceeded their CTV goals) than later planners
• 157% more likely to feel confident in their Q4 media mix than later planners

Download the full report for more ways top performers are winning the year with CTV, and read on for your step-by-step workback calendar on how to plan a CTV campaign the way they do.

Your CTV campaign planning checklist

Here’s how to plan a CTV campaign at a glance:

Step	Timing Before Launch	What To Lock In
1. Install the pixel	Now	Sign up for Paramount Ads Manager and install your CTV pixel
2. Lock in your goals	2-3 months before launch	Campaign goals, KPIs, and reporting cadence
3. Plan your schedule	2-3 months before launch	Always-on campaigns and seasonal moments
4. Plan your creative	1-2 months before launch	Creative mix, lengths, and production timeline
5. Set your budget	1-2 months before launch	Budget for your always-on base and each seasonal push
6. Define your targeting	1 week before launch	Location, audience, and placements
7. Setup your campaign	1 day before launch	Turn your plan into a campaign with Paramount Ads Manager

Step 1: Sign up for Paramount Ads Manager and install the pixel on your website

Start here, even if your first campaign is weeks away. The Paramount Ads Manager Pixel is a small piece of code on your website that connects your CTV ads to what happens next: site visits, leads, and purchases. It starts collecting data as soon as it’s live, and the earlier it’s in place, the more you’ll have to work with at launch.

The research backs it up. Advertisers with a pixel installed were 28% more likely to meet or exceed their goals and 106% more likely to confirm cross-channel lift.

Here’s what the Paramount Ads Manager Pixel makes possible:

• Measurement: Paramount Ads Manager is one of the self-serve TV advertising platforms with real-time measurement, and installing your CTV pixel unlocks down-funnel metrics like site visits, leads, and purchases driven directly by your ads.
• Retargeting: It also turns every site visitor into an audience you can reach again with a CTV ad. In an A/B test, ecommerce brand Midwest Photo saw a 41% higher site visit rate (1.4x their standard campaign) and 29% more efficient spend with retargeting.
• Easy setup: The pixel easily integrates with platforms you’re likely already using, including Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, BigCommerce, and Weebly.

Step 2: Lock in your 2027 goals

Your campaign goal is the first choice you make in Paramount Ads Manager, and it decides which metrics you’ll measure.

Start with the business result you want, then match it to a goal:

If you want to...	Choose this Campaign Goal	Measure your campaign by
Reach new audiences and build visibility	Brand Awareness	Reach, impressions, video completion rate
Drive visits to your website	Site Traffic	Site visits, cost per site visit
Bring customers through your store doors	Foot Traffic	In-person visits, cost per in-person visit
Bring back past site visitors	Retargeting	Leads, cost per lead
Drive online purchases	Sales	Purchases, cost per purchase, ROAS
Bring back past site visitors	Retargeting	Conversions, cost per action

Top performers lead with Brand Awareness more often than other advertisers (53% versus 36%) and keep it running for 3+ months. For most 2027 plans, that makes it your base campaign, with the other goals layered on top.

Pick one primary KPI per goal before you launch, and put your review dates on the calendar. Self-serve TV advertising platforms with real-time measurement make check-ins easy, so a weekly look at your dashboard is a realistic habit.

During our holiday webinar, The Marketing Sanctum CEO & Founder Jessica Pelligra shared another helpful rule of thumb: give a campaign 60 days to prove itself, with early indicators at 45.

Step 3: Plan your campaign schedule

A strong schedule is the heart of any CTV connected TV advertising 2027 plan, and it has two layers. Only 18% of advertisers run always-on and moment-based campaigns together, yet 71% of them met or exceeded their goals, compared with 38% of advertisers running moment-based campaigns alone.

For Q1 2027, that could look like:

• First week of January: Launch your always-on Brand Awareness campaign. It keeps your brand visible between moments and builds the retargeting pool you’ll use later.
• January-March: Pick the moments throughout Q1 you want to layer onto your awareness campaign with seasonal sales pushes.

Peak CTV Viewing Moments

Here are some of the dates worth putting on your CTV advertising 2027 calendar, when audiences are tuned in to Paramount’s biggest shows and sports:

• Jan 10: Golden Globe Awards
• Jan 16: NFL Playoffs

NFL on CBS averaged 21M+ viewers in the 2025-26 regular season, its most-watched regular season ever (Nielsen).

• Jan 27-30: The Sentry at Torrey Pines

PGA Tour on CBS averaged 2.5M viewers per event in 2026, up 16% year over year (Nielsen).

• Jan 31: AFC Championship Game
• Feb 14: Valentine’s Day

In February, romance streaming jumps 16% on Paramount+ and user sessions rise 19% on Pluto TV (Paramount+ and Pluto TV internal data).

• Mar 10-14: Big Ten Basketball Championship
• Mar 16-Apr 5: NCAA March Madness and Final Four

Ads in the first weekend of the 2026 NCAA Tournament scored 19% above the TV industry average for attention (iSpot).

Key Seasonal Sales Tentpoles

Here are a few upcoming peak sales moments to plan around by industry:

Industry	2027 Tentpole	Dates
Retail, ecommerce, and auto	Valentine’s Day	Feb 14
Retail, ecommerce, and auto	Presidents’ Day	Feb 15
Retail, ecommerce, and auto	Easter	Mar 28
Health, fitness, and wellness	New Year’s resolution season	Early Jan
Financial services	Tax season, through Tax Day	Apr 15
Home services and real estate	Spring project and home-buying season	Mar-May
Travel agencies & services	Spring break planning	Feb-Mar

A schedule built around both calendars gives your CTV advertising 2027 plan a reason to run in every month of the quarter.

Step 4: Plan your creative mix and map your production timeline

Among top performers, 56% built net-new assets for TV and 35% repurposed their social creative. A practical plan uses both: launch with repurposed social creative or a creative tool, then build net-new TV assets for your priority moments.

Creative timelines vary a lot by approach, so decide early which route you’re taking:

Net-new TV creative: About 1-2 months from planning to delivery.

Repurposed social creative: About 1-3 weeks. Just make sure you’re following these social to CTV creative best practices.

Paramount Ads Manager creative tools:

• Creative Express: Our in-platform AI tool that builds a TV-ready ad from your website URL. (Less than 1 day turnaround)
• Creative Plus: Work with the Paramount team to create an ad for you. (~72 hours turnaround)

This is also the time to plan your ad creative length. We’ve found that Paramount Ads Manager campaigns running both 30-second and 15-second spots drive 51% higher site visit rates than those running only 30s.

Our tip: lead with a 30-second ad for your core message, then work in 15-second cutdowns of your top performers.

Step 5: Set your budget

Your CTV advertising budget is easier to set once you know your goals and schedule, because both tell you how many campaigns you’re funding and for how long.

Here’s a simple way to set your CTV ad budget:

1. Start with a test slice. Move a portion of your social or search budget to CTV and hold it for at least 30 days. Our holiday webinar offered a rule of thumb for brands spending $30,000 to $50,000 on paid social: cut that in half for a first CTV run, so about $25,000.
2. Budget for 2+ campaigns. Advertisers who ran two or more CTV ad campaigns on Paramount Ads Manager saw 5.3x higher ROAS than one-time buyers. A good model is one always-on Brand Awareness campaign as your base, with one or more seasonal pushes on top (see Step 3).
3. Get a pricing estimate. Our pricing calculator shows how far your CTV advertising budget could go on Paramount Ads Manager before you spend a dollar.

Step 6: Define your audience targeting

Paramount Ads Manager gives you multiple targeting options to reach the right audience:

Option	One-Click Targeting	Full Audience Control
Best when:	You're just starting off, or want to get going fast	You know exactly who you want to reach
Location:	Run nationwide	Run in specific states, cities, ZIP codes, or DMAs where your target audience lives
Audience:	Peak Audience: Let our algorithm find the viewers most likely to convert based on real platform signals	Demographics: Reach a specific age range, gender, and household income. Interests & Behaviors: Target specific buying signals like Homeowners, Parents, or Business Decision Makers
Placements:	Choose Peak Placement for full library reach across TV’s biggest shows	Choose up to three custom placements, like Sports, News, Comedies, or Spanish Language

Step 7: Ready to put your plan into motion?

That’s how to plan a CTV ads campaign from first click to launch day. Pick your launch date, use the CTV campaign planning checklist at the top of this post to work backward, and start with the step that’s due now: the pixel.

Self-serve TV advertising platforms affordability means you can begin with the budget you have, and CTV connected TV advertising in 2027 rewards the advertisers who start early.

Sign up for Paramount Ads Manager to get your brand in front of TV’s soon-to-be biggest shows of 2027.

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