CANNES – Connected TV audiences have raced far ahead of the infrastructure meant to support them, ad and media leaders said in this panel discussion hosted by Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Consumers have embraced streaming as their default, but advertisers, agencies and platforms are still grappling with fragmented systems, outdated standards and uneven measurement, panelists said to moderator Mike Shields, founder of Next in Media.
Adoption outruns technology
Lori Goode, chief marketing officer at adtech company Index Exchange, said the pandemic supercharged streaming adoption, but the technology stack lagged behind.
“We applied all of the standards and the protocols that were used in digital web and applied them to streaming TV… Web is not streaming TV,” she said, pointing out that some specs hadn’t been updated since 2016.
Even with improvements like OpenRTB 2.6, Goode argued the industry is “still trying to catch up with technical capability” while consumers expect seamless experiences.
Agencies and brands struggle to keep pace
Megan Jones, chief media officer at Publicis Groupe’s Digitas North America, described agencies as caught between legacy linear and emerging CTV.
“Planning and buying CTV is not the same as planning and buying linear TV,” she said.
While consumers, particularly younger audiences, are already streaming-first, she said clients and agencies are “still trying to play catch up,” facing fragmented infrastructure and measurement gaps.
She coined the current ecosystem as operating in “hedged gardens, ” a world where players appear open but remain siloed.
Platforms push innovation ahead of demand
Frances Callaghan, head of product commercialization at streaming platform Roku, highlighted how platforms have had to anticipate behavior before advertisers or audiences were ready.
Roku launched interactive “action ads” years ago, she noted, but adoption is only now catching up.
Callaghan also pointed to Roku’s new partnership with Amazon, which syncs identity data across both companies’ ecosystems.
“We’ve taken down some of the walls… advertisers now have addressable, measurable media in a deterministic fashion,” she said, adding that consumer ad frequency dropped by 30% in testing.
Rethinking infrastructure with AI
Tammy Blythe Goodman, vice president of brand marketing and communications at video technology platform EX.CO, stressed that the CTV ecosystem can’t simply retrofit web-era models.
“The programmatic pipes were broken and in many ways the infrastructure was outdated,” she said.
Goodman argued that AI will be critical to building smarter ad serving and yield systems that can support real-time, automated monetization while also improving user experience.
Shoppable TV: Excitement meets reality
The panelists agreed that shoppable TV has potential but isn’t yet consumer-ready.
Jones emphasized that commerce features should feel authentic and unobtrusive: “Most media can be commerce, but it shouldn’t be intrusive.”
Goode cautioned against overestimating interest, citing research that while many viewers claim they would scan a QR code, “0.004% of those people actually did it.”
Callaghan compared today’s moment to “season one of American Idol,” when Ryan Seacrest had to teach viewers how to text to vote, arguing that CTV likewise needs consumer education.
Measurement hurdle
Media mix modeling (MMM) remains a sticking point. Jones said many clients still rely on MMM, even though it undervalues CTV, putting agencies in a “tough position” when executives use it as the “source of truth.”
Goode added that marketers are under “significant pressure to demonstrate ROI quickly,” but that the industry must develop long-term valuation frameworks before CTV’s budgets can scale further.
What’s next
Looking ahead, the panelists pointed to several emerging themes: Goodman forecast that AI-driven yield engines will soon be standard; Callaghan predicted democratization of CTV access for smaller brands via self-serve tools; Goode said updated standards for live event streaming will unlock new ad formats; and Jones highlighted the rise of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) as a key trend, particularly among younger viewers.
Together, their perspectives underscored the same tension: consumers are already living in a streaming-first world, but the ad industry is still learning how to catch up.
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