The Power of CTV as a Performance Channel: 6 Takeaways from Nik Sharma & Emily Huo

What does it look like when two people who’ve been at the forefront of every major shift in advertising sit down to talk about what’s next?

Nik Sharma has spent the last decade helping scale some of the fastest-growing ecom brands, earning him his well-deserved title “The DTC Guy.”

Emily Huo has a track record of getting in early and building advertising businesses at Twitter, Reddit, and Spotify, each tied to a new wave of attention, from social to community to audio. Now leading SMB Advertising at Paramount, she’s shifted her focus to the next biggest untapped opportunity for today’s advertisers: CTV.

In our recent webinar, What the Fastest-Growing Ecom Brands Figured Out About TV, the two joined forces to break down how CTV fits into the modern marketer’s media mix, especially for teams that already live and breathe performance marketing.

Here are the five biggest takeaways.

1. The real opportunity is the gap between attention and spend

Most brands are still heavily invested in paid social. According to findings from our CTV vs Social report, around 30% of advertising budgets are concentrated there - and in Nik’s experience, many of the DTC brands he’s worked with are closer to 70-80%.

On the other hand, only around 9% of budgets are allocated to CTV (also from the report).

But viewing habits are telling a different story.

“CTV viewing is 100 minutes and the average social session is 8 minutes… Attention lives on TV. Budgets are still on social. The gap, that’s the opportunity.” - Nik Sharma

That mismatch is where many brands are leaving performance on the table.

Of course, this isn’t about pulling back from social. There’s a reason performance-driven brands are focusing there… because it converts. But it is about recognizing that your current mix may be over-indexed in one place, while underutilizing a channel that can help generate the demand your lower-funnel efforts depend on.

2. CTV now behaves like a performance channel

A few years ago, most performance teams avoided TV altogether… and Nik was one of them:

“3 years ago, I would say absolutely not to any CTV company… You can't measure TV the same way you can measure [social]. But now you actually can, right? You've got pixel-based tracking. You have show level reporting, which is important because with Paramount, you actually buy against real shows people watch… So you're not just buying a time slot anymore. You're buying the audience." - Nik Sharma

What’s changed is how campaigns can be executed and measured, especially with platforms like Paramount Ads Manager:

• Advanced audience targeting like Interests and Behaviors, Custom Audiences, and Lookalike Audiences
• Retargeting based on past site visitors and ad viewers
• Pixel-based attribution that connects ad exposure to real outcomes like site traffic, purchases, and incremental lift

With these in place, CTV looks far less like a black box and much more like an extension of the systems marketers already use.

“At my core, I'm a performance marketer, right? I also have a team that is running paid media ads and I think I would be foolish to tell them to spend money on things that we cannot track and understand. There's been significant strides made [in CTV], especially on the Paramount side, where we're really thinking about the marketer experience and bringing it all together through a self-serve ads platform like Paramount Ads Manager. - Emily Huo”

3. CTV drives incremental lift across your entire funnel

One of the most important shifts isn’t just how CTV performs on its own, but how it impacts everything else.

"[CTV] is going to lift everything. Your branded search, your ROAS on Meta because warmer audiences are landing. And it gives you a better top of funnel that didn't exist before, where TV runs alongside [social] and these channels work together. - Nik Sharma "

When someone sees your brand on TV, it changes how they respond everywhere else. Instead of discovering you for the first time in a feed, they already recognize your brand - and other channels benefit (which is what we like to call the Peak Performance Effect):

• Higher conversion rates on paid social
• Increased branded search volume
• More efficient retargeting performance
• Stronger overall blended CAC

So don’t treat CTV as a standalone channel. It is a multiplier that makes everything else you’re doing work harder, and you work smarter.

4. Premium content drives premium outcomes

Not all impressions carry the same weight. It really does make a difference where people are (and the mindset that they’re in) when they’re seeing your ad. And that difference shows up in attention, recall, and ultimately performance.

"These are 15 and 30 second non-skippable full screen ads. Your audience is choosing to watch something they actually chose to watch, not just scrolling past your ad at 11 p.m. So the state of mind here is also really interesting because somebody's actually leaned in versus just leaning back." - Nik Sharma

With Paramount, brands are showing up alongside some of the most-watched shows, sports, and cultural moments on TV, reaching across networks like:

• Paramount+
• • The #1 fastest growing streaming subscription service for 3 years in a row (Source: Antenna Research - Share of SVOD Sign-Ups, Jsn 2023-Dec 2025, US Only)
• • With huge debuts like Marshals that drove 20.6M viewers at season premiere (Source: Nielsen Panel+ Big Data P2+ Prime AA, L+7, 2/23-3/01/2026 + Nielsen SCR, 7-Day Total Flight for streaming.)
• • Driving 21% higher ad attention rate than other AVOD services. (Source: TVision, 4Q’25. Attention to Duration. Competitive set: Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+, Prime, Peacock; Disney Streaming includes SCR Disney+ & SCR Hulu)
• CBS Sports, where NFL on CBS is the most-watched window in all of TV (Source: Nielsen Big Data+ Panel, Live + SD, 9/4/25 - 1/25/26; excludes Super Bowl)
• CBS, where die hard fandom lives on shows like CSI and Survivor - the #1 most social reality series among A25-54 even after 50 seasons (Source: Nielsen NPM, 9/15/24 Live+ 35 includes VOD 8+, CBS and Paramount Global internal data, AMA for first 35 days of FEP on Paramount+ and CBS TVE (CBS.com and CBS app); Streaming Total Viewers includes co-view for CTV viewing)
• PlutoTV, where 94% of viewers say the ad experience is better or the same compared to other similar streaming services (Source: Pluto TV User Exploration 2025)

This is premium content that audiences are actively choosing to watch - so the attention and engagement is already built in: And that level of engagement changes the dynamic. You’re not interrupting passive scrolling. You’re part of an experience people are already invested in. And that has a direct impact on attention, brand recall, and downstream performance.

When your brand shows up in moments people care about, it carries through the rest of the funnel.

5. Plan CTV campaigns around peak viewing moments

When it comes to running ads on CTV, timing plays a bigger role than most teams expect.

Shows, sports, and seasonal events create predictable spikes in both attention and purchase intent. Brands that plan around those moments show up when audiences are most engaged.

Emily broke it down perfectly:

“I think about the springtime as a way to build awareness for the market. At Paramount, there are a lot of shows coming out in the spring, so use that time to start your campaigns on TV, build that awareness, and install the Paramount Ads Manager pixel so you can start collecting that viewership data.

Then in the fall that's where you've already built out a lot of the awareness and you can then double down on sales. So, back to school, holidays, and again, that time also coincides with a lot of our fall lineup releases like Landman Season 3. I think about the fall time as like the start of your larger holiday campaigns, which is of course a very really busy time for all marketers.

So, if I had to break this down simply, what do you want to do in the spring and then how does that lead into your fall, which then leads into your holiday planning?”

Still not sure where to start? Download the 2026 CTV Guide to get a full-year calendar of key premieres, cultural tentpoles, and seasonal opportunities, along with best practices for making a full-funnel impact with your CTV strategy.

6. Getting started is easier than you think

One of the biggest shifts in the space is accessibility. CTV has opened the door for brands of all sizes to show up on the biggest screen in the home, without needing to plan months in advance or commit to massive budgets.

“The self-serve infrastructure exists. So you can start tomorrow. Log in, set a budget, pick your audience, launch.” - Nik Sharma

With platforms like Paramount Ads Manager, advertisers can:

• Launch campaigns on their own through our self-serve platform
• Set flexible budgets and build on what works
• Access premium inventory across TV’s biggest shows, sports, and movies
• Use built-in tools for targeting, ad creation, and measurement
• Install the Paramount Pixel to track real performance outcomes like site traffic, purchases, and more

For teams already running paid social, the learning curve is minimal. The difference is the environment your ads run in and the role they play in the broader funnel.

Sign up today, get on TV tomorrow >

Watch the full webinar

This recap covers the highlights, but the full session goes deeper into targeting, measurement, and real campaign examples.

Watch the full recording to learn how to turn CTV into a measurable growth lever with Paramount Ads Manager.