What might the state of adoption for programmatic TV advertising look like in 2030?
That was the jumping off point for an industry panel discussion at CIMM East Tuesday, where leaders from Dish, Disney and Google cited expectations for growth within the next four years but also see existing hurdles holding back greater adoption by advertisers today and discussed factors for realizing and unlocking programmatic value in the future.
CIMM Managing Director Jon Watts moderated the panel, which also included leaders from SSPs Magnite and FreeWheel, and asked speakers to forecast what proportion of the total U.S. TV ad market they expect will be transacted programmatically by 2030. To give some context, of the roughly $90 billion in U.S. TV ad spend in 2025 (across traditional linear and CTV), Watts cited a stat that programmatic transactions accounted for roughly one-third (or 33%), with connected TV representing the majority.
Dish, Disney, Google expect growth
A couple of years ago Disney “put a stake in the ground” when it said that by 2024, 50% of its non-linear ads business would be automated, according to Matt Barnes, SVP of Automated Sales at Disney Advertising.
Here, he distinguished between “programmatic” and “automated,” as Barnes believes there will be automated TV ad buying through avenues or mechanisms other than programmatic channels – some not yet being discussed and others enabled by new technologies like agentic AI.
By 2030 he thinks “more like 75%...of our non-linear business will be automated,” again here not specifically programmatic, but for TV ad deals and buys that “will be automated first direct IO [insertion order].”
Esra Bacher, a former programmatic investment exec at agency WPP Media and current CTV lead for Agency Exchange Partnerships at Google, thinks the figure will be around 50%.
However, in her view that depends how robustly and quickly the buy-side (meaning advertisers, brands or their agency partners) adopt the technology. Other dependent factors she cited include adoption of the infrastructure needed, whether commercial models between TV ad buyers and sellers evolve to encourage programmatic adoption, as well as integration into operational workflows.
Programmatic typically means impression-based and although she too thinks automation “will touch every single point,” doesn’t expect half of TV advertising to be transacted in an open auction programmatic bidding environment within the next four years.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said, noting that it will depend on deal guarantees, which are being enabled by tech.
Dish Media’s Liam Kristinnsson, meanwhile, thinks that programmatic specifically, as it stands today will represent around 60% of TV advertising transactions by 2030.
Partly because he expects it will “be a tight squeeze” to get around 20% of the American audience onto a trusted, fully convertible ID within the next four years, simply based on the law of averages.
“I think that we have to work on combating that in order to fully convert the industry into an impression-based model that's going to feel right for a lot of these larger legacy partners,” Kristinnsson said.
Impact of transition to IP-capable devices
The type of devices consumers use and whether they’re IP-capable is another factor that will impact adoption, according to Magnite’s Matt McLeggon.
With IP-capable devices, ad inventory can be digitized and made available programmatically.
U.S. TV ad spend is primarily divided into three main buckets of CTV, cable linear and broadcast linear.
Differences in the mix of spend by buying routes among the channels “is less about programmatic versus IOs, and more about are these environments IP-capable,” he said.
Inherent IP-capable CTV already dominates programmatic
The CTV channel, with its inherent IP capability is already dominated by programmatic ad spend at about 80%, according to McLeggon, who noted wide variations among traditional TV and digital-first advertisers within that.
Separately in 2025 MNTN said over 90% of CTV ad spend was being transacted programmatically.
“CTV is all in on programmatic because it’s IP capable,” McLeggon said. Whereas cable linear is more of “mixed bag.”
Some in the industry are innovating, like Dish. Since at least 2023 Dish has worked to digitize its traditional TV footprint and made its live linear TV inventory available programmatically to serve targeted ads to internet-connected (or IP-enabled) Dish TV set-top boxes. But a good amount of linear cable is not yet digitized or IP-cable.
And linear broadcast is “virtually untouched by IP versus virtually untouched by programmatic,” he explained. Meaning, “the question is about the pace of travel towards a future where everyone’s watching on an IP-cable device.”
In 2030 CTV is expected to account for about 60% of TV ad spend, according to McLeggon, representing the floor as he thinks almost all of CTV ad buying will be automated in some way.
Based on that, he expects between 60-75% of U.S. TV advertising to be transacted programmatically within the next four years “depending on what you count as automated.”
Programmatic adoption varies widely by advertiser
But for predicted growth in programmatic to be realized, Matt Clark, VP of Strategy & Partnerships at the Comcast-owned FreeWheel supply-side platform (SSP), shared nuance around the roughly 33% of U.S. TV ad spend being transacted that way in 2025 - as not all buyers or advertisers are equally on board with programmatic as it stands today.
Per Clark, “that average hides extremes,” noting FreeWheel has visibility into data around direct and programmatic sales side by side and advertiser by advertiser.
And when zooming in, what one finds is that the share of programmatic transactions varies widely across the top 50 TV advertisers, for example.
“You find that advertiser number one is 5% programmatic and then advertiser number two is 80% programmatic,” he said, with an inverse bell curve or barbell-shaped distribution as one continues down the list.
For programmatic growth projections to come to be, the question Clark thinks the industry then needs to ask, “is what has to become true for the 5% advertiser?” Who through their actions so far is sending signals “that they’re not sold at all on the price and complexity of transacting this way.”
He urged stakeholders to think carefully about what they need to deliver on for those advertisers not utilizing programmatic, or risk unrealized potential.
“Because these are very large, sophisticated brands who clearly aren’t sold yet on the promise.”
What’s holding buyers back from programmatic?
So why aren’t some advertisers or buyers leaning into programmatic?
Commercial agreements, legacy buyer CPMs
From Bacher’s view, there are clear reasons why brands aren’t investing in programmatic CTV – and they’re mostly commercial rather than technical.
A real challenge, she said, is the legacy linear TV advertisers that have long-bought TV advertising and secure the best CPMs, which are negotiated by agency partners on the advertiser’s behalf.
“Accessing premium inventory at those prices is unfortunately not necessarily possible when you buy through the technology” like programmatic,” Bacher said. “The commercial models are ultimately what is holding them back.”
Still, she believes that number is getting lower and more legacy TV advertisers are starting to buy programmatically.
Brand safety and transparency
The notion of brand safety and a lack of transparency are also factors Bacher sees holding advertisers back from programmatic transactions.
That’s because advertisers want to have confidence and visibility into what content their ads are running against and the audiences they’re reaching. From a Google SSP third-party publisher perspective, it’s one she thinks technology layer enablers on the supply-side are solving for to help give buyers more confidence that they’re getting the trusted data signals they need from publishers (assuming that the buy-side is rewarding sellers for that additional data signal layer).
Some factors are holding back great investment in programmatic CTV, but the panel discussed how the channel also opens the door to new advertisers and opportunities.
Programmatic CTV equals bigger TV ad spend pie
Helping to drive expected growth is the belief that programmatic enablement alongside continued TV consumption shifts to IP-based CTV will lead to a larger overall TV ad spend pie as a new pool of advertisers come into the fold.
Related SMBs: CTV wants you
StreamTV Insider has previously covered efforts by CTV players to attract and enable the potentially lucrative but largely untapped market of small-and-medium sized business advertisers and those focused on performance, which usually spend on search and social channels, and bring them into the TV advertising fold. Check out our earlier Special Report on the topic here.
Disney’s Barnes touched on this notion, saying that as TV consumption continues to move to IP-based, “we’re going to see a lot of new types of advertisers come into the ecosystem.”
Technology, new tools lower barriers for more advertisers
This isn’t all about programmatic buying, as other tools are helping to lower the barrier for advertisers. Such as genAI for ad creative and the ability to buy CTV at price points that traditional linear didn’t usually offer, with the ability to measure how investments actually perform.
“The promise and the luxury of what we all work on together is that now advertisers of all different shapes and sizes can come into this ecosystem,” Barnes said. “They can buy that user on that big screen, see how it performs and optimize in real time.”
New advertisers coming into the fold include those that have never historically advertised as TV and “you’re going to see search and social start to come into a premium TV environment,” Barnes said.
SMB explosion
Magnite’s McLeggon agreed.
“I think we’re sitting at the beginning of an explosion of SMBs and performance marketers into CTV,” he said, noting a progression of technologies that have allowed programmatic-made CTV more accessible.
“It used to cost $15,000 to build a CTV creative and what’s not attractive for a small business, now you can build one in a couple of minutes.”
Magnite itself last year purchased genAI tech company streamr.ai to make it easier for partners with SMB clients to bring them into CTV and drive ad spend.
And with agentic AI tools emerging, a small business owner can have a natural language conversational back and forth with platforms to build, plan and execute campaigns without the need for ad tech experiences.
With that in mind he thinks it’s not only the shift of viewers and ad inventory to IP-capable devices that will drive programmatic growth but, “just the explosion of new advertisers, we’re expecting billions [of ad dollars] by 2030.”
Not all CTV-driven growth? Role of addressable linear
While CTV is a growth channel and helps drive expectations for growth in programmatic transactions, FreeWheel’s Clark did note not all legacy linear TV is the same (where parent Comcast has a large linear addressable footprint).
“What we're going to see is that we're going to make linear addressable work, look and act, plan, transact, optimize, measure, like CTV over time,” he said, adding that will be another question regarding how much of that inventory can be made available programmatically.
From a Dish Media perspective, the goal has been to convert the business into fully impression-based, but where Kristinnsson acknowledged a lot of pitfalls and evident gaps.
He thinks, “there’s an opportunity for linear to be better merged and better married by 2030 into the programmatic ecosystem.”
What needs to be done for real benefits?
With growth expected, Watts questioned panelists on what still needs to be solved to unlock real benefits, get more advertisers into the programmatic marketplace in 2030 and deliver on the trust and transparency buyers and sellers need.
Some feel closer, more direct relationships and routes between buyers and sellers will help, as will cutting out a lot of “noise” seen in programmatic today, which creates friction around data that’s being passed. Still others cited discoverability and how quality inventory is described in systems as critical factors to future success in programmatic.
To Dish’s Kristinnsson the industry is collectively at an inflection point on programmatic where different stakeholders need to come together.
“It requires some cohesive collaboration to actually get to our end goals” of making more money and fulfilling user experience needs, he said.
Direct paths to publishers
In McLeggon’s view, challenges around programmatic and CTV are more related to open digital marketplaces that also sell programmatic web or online video.
Whereas for buyers that go directly to a publisher, or if advertisers are buying from a trusted partner with a direct publisher relationship “you’re not going to run into all the issues around trust and fraud and you’ll understand what the actual working media is.”
Technology will change, but he thinks most of the challenge ahead is around the need for more education and greater widespread adoption of best practices.
Similarly, FreeWheel’s Clark coming from an SSP perspective, believes “there’s a lot of value to be had by collapsing the supply chain” and buyers working more closely to the sell-side systems that remove some of the complexity through a more direct path.
DSPs’ critical role in ‘surfacing quality inventory’
Google’s Bacher took a slightly different angle, with the view that DSPs will play a critical role – particularly with agentic AI coming into the picture – “at surfacing quality inventory.” That’s because the discoverability of premium inventory within these systems becomes more important with various teams purchasing CTV inventory.
On the same coin, it will become crucial for publishers in terms of “how is my inventory represented on these technology platforms as we move more into automation” and that SSP’s ensure discoverability of quality media for ad buyers and to justify CPM investments on particular publishers.
Transparency, measurement and discoverability are going to be “the critical three ingredients for the buyside to adopt more programmatic,” Bacher said.
Three buckets to deliver on the programmatic promise
Disney’s Barnes also sees three similar buckets to help advance and deliver on the promise of programmatic:
Discoverability – he said the industry needs to ensure buyers can easily find premium quality inventory across the different marketplaces that various players all partner with.
Inclusion – working collectively when it comes to premium quality supply (meaning out of the digital display world) and ensuring buyers not only can find, but have access to it across the marketplace and different publishers.
Measurement - Making sure that partners can measure the inventory or what they’re buying across different partnerships in a scalable way.
“If we can figure out those three things together then the advantage of programmatic, which is giving the buyer, the advertiser, the brand, the choice and control, they're going to see the success, it’s going to drive the ROI, and I think we're all going to get there,” Barnes said.