Half of senior marketers increased their connected television budgets over the past year, yet only 33% fully trust the performance claims those platforms report back to them, according to research Jamloop released today.

The survey of 120 senior brand and agency marketers, published under the title "CTV Is Winning Budget. Trust Is Still Catching Up.", documents a channel that has secured its place in media plans faster than it has secured the confidence of the people funding it. According to Jamloop, a performance CTV platform based in Walnut Creek, California, 62% of respondents express some level of skepticism toward platform-reported results, even as budgets continue to flow toward streaming inventory.

The tension is not new, but the numbers give it a sharper edge. According to the research, 63% of marketers say CTV already plays a strong performance role in their media mix or is becoming a more accountable performance channel. At the same time, only 42% say CTV is currently held to the same accountability standards as search and social. The channel is being asked to behave like a performance medium while its measurement infrastructure still trails the channels it competes against for budget.

What the survey found

The budget picture is unambiguous. According to Jamloop, 50% of marketers report that their CTV budgets increased year over year. The confidence picture is not. Just 33% say they fully trust most platform-reported performance claims, and only 39% feel very confident defending CTV investment to leadership based on current measurement and attribution. That last figure carries organizational weight: a marketer who cannot defend a line item internally is a marketer who will hesitate before growing it.

The growth constraint appears to be proof, not appetite. More than 70% of respondents say they would increase CTV investment if measurement, attribution, and proof of business outcomes improved, according to the research. Fraud concerns compound the hesitation. More than 60% say they are concerned about fraud or misrepresented inventory in CTV environments - a finding consistent with what verification firms have been documenting for months. DoubleVerify data published in March 2026 showed that more than one in three CTV impressions deliver to screens that are switched off, contributing to an estimated $1 billion in annual wasted spending. The same company's 2026 Global Insights report, published on May 7, 2026, found that CTV fraud schemes and variants rose 140% in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier.

"The industry has already proven that advertisers want CTV," said Jeff Fagel, Chief Marketing Officer at Jamloop, according to the announcement. "What buyers are asking now is a tougher question: what business outcomes does CTV actually drive? Advertisers don't need another dashboard. They need proof they can defend."

According to Fagel, the platforms that can demonstrate business impact "in ways marketers can actually see and feel, not just through dashboards showing media metrics moving in the right direction, will be the ones that win the next wave of CTV investment."

No agreement on what performance means

Beneath the trust question sits a definitional problem the survey quantifies in detail. Respondents remain divided on what CTV performance should actually mean. According to the research, 35% prioritize qualified leads, 30% point to online sales and revenue, 30% define performance through revenue or sales lift, and 24% focus on store visits, appointments, or calls.

That performance fragmentation has practical consequences. When buyers cannot agree on a common success metric, comparing results across campaigns becomes difficult, benchmarking against other channels becomes nearly impossible, and category-level confidence stays low. The finding echoes what IAB Europe's CTV Working Group documented in March 2026, when five industry experts identified identifier fragmentation and inconsistent attribution standards as the primary blockers preventing CTV from functioning as a fully measurable performance channel.

For many buyers, the research suggests, performance now means more than site traffic or media metrics alone. It means proving online sales, offline revenue, leads, visits, or installs in a way leadership teams can recognize. Reach and completion rates, the metrics CTV platforms have traditionally reported, do not answer that question. Industry analysis published in early July 2026 argued that the 98% completion rates common on non-skippable CTV formats are structurally guaranteed rather than earned, which makes them a poor proxy for actual attention or outcomes.

A shift in the wider media mix

The survey also points to movement on the other side of the budget ledger. More than 63% of respondents say they are seeing at least some diminishing returns from lower-funnel channels such as paid search and paid social, according to Jamloop. That erosion creates the opening CTV vendors have been positioning for: if the channels that traditionally absorbed performance budgets deliver less incremental return, the money looks for a new home.

"CTV no longer needs to prove it belongs in the media mix," Fagel said, according to the announcement. "It needs to prove it belongs in the next wave of performance budgets."

The distinction matters commercially. Performance budgets - search, social, programmatic direct response - are typically larger and more consistent than brand budgets. A channel that credibly drives lower-funnel outcomes gains access to a bigger pool of money. That logic explains the wave of performance-oriented CTV products launched this year, from Moloco's Performance CTV offering for app marketers in April 2026 to Teads combining its CTV formats with AI-driven lower-funnel buying tools in June 2026.

Jamloop itself operates in this segment. The company runs a proprietary bidder with access to inventory across more than 300 national networks and more than 800 local publishers, according to the announcement, and offers managed service, self-serve, and white-label options. Earlier this year the company launched ActiveVoter, a product that removes already-voted households from political CTV ad delivery, addressing a different form of wasted impression. The survey should be read with that commercial position in mind: Jamloop sells outcome-based CTV advertising, and research documenting demand for outcome-based proof supports its pitch. The individual findings, however, align closely with independent studies from trade bodies and measurement firms published throughout 2026.

Why this matters

The Jamloop figures land in a market where the gap between investment and verification has become the defining story of the channel. IAB Spain's fifth annual CTV study, presented on May 6, 2026, found that 44% of advertising professionals expressed neither much nor little confidence in current CTV measurement systems, with completion rate persisting as the second most common KPI despite its structural limitations. IAB Europe's January 2026 survey recorded 70% of advertisers frustrated with performance measurement, a tension that dominated the organisation's Virtual Programmatic Day discussions in April 2026.

The stakes scale with the money. eMarketer projects CTV ad spending to reach $38 billion in 2026, representing 43% of all US television advertising budgets. Against that volume, a 33% full-trust rate describes billions of dollars deployed on reporting the buyers themselves discount. Gracenote research published on May 14, 2026 quantified the opportunity cost from the supply side: 86% of media planners said they would move more linear TV budget into CTV if show-level targeting and reporting were consistently available.

There is also a template for what closing the gap looks like. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's October 2025 guide on Conversion APIs argued that standardized server-to-server data frameworks could bring CTV measurement in line with search and social, reporting that two-thirds of advertisers who implemented such APIs improved their return on ad spend. The Jamloop survey adds a demand-side data point to that argument: the money is waiting, and more than 70% of buyers say better proof would release it.

For marketers, the practical takeaway sits in the internal politics the survey exposes. Only 39% of respondents feel very confident defending CTV spend to leadership. Budget reviews reward channels whose numbers survive scrutiny. Until CTV reporting reaches the standard finance teams already apply to search and social, the channel's growth will depend less on audience reach - which is no longer in question - and more on whether its measurement can withstand a CFO's second look.

Timeline

  • October 30, 2025: The Interactive Advertising Bureau publishes its guide urging industrywide adoption of Conversion APIs to close CTV's outcome measurement gap
  • February 26, 2026: Jamloop launches ActiveVoter, a CTV product that removes already-voted households from political ad delivery
  • March 11, 2026: IAB Europe's CTV Working Group publishes expert analysis identifying fragmentation and attribution gaps as blockers to CTV performance measurement
  • March 2026: DoubleVerify data shows more than one in three CTV impressions deliver to screens that are switched off, an estimated $1 billion in annual wasted spend
  • May 6, 2026: IAB Spain presents its fifth annual CTV study, finding 44% of professionals lack confidence in current CTV measurement
  • May 7, 2026: DoubleVerify's 2026 Global Insights report documents a 140% rise in CTV fraud schemes and variants in Q1 2026
  • May 14, 2026: Gracenote publishes research finding 86% of media planners would shift more linear budget to CTV with consistent show-level data
  • July 9, 2026: Jamloop releases "CTV Is Winning Budget. Trust Is Still Catching Up.", a survey of 120 senior brand and agency marketers

Summary

Who: Jamloop, a performance CTV platform headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, surveyed 120 senior brand and agency marketers. Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Fagel provided commentary on the findings.

What: The report, "CTV Is Winning Budget. Trust Is Still Catching Up.", finds that 50% of marketers increased CTV budgets year over year while only 33% fully trust platform-reported performance claims. Additional findings: 62% express skepticism toward reported results, 42% say CTV meets the accountability standards of search and social, 39% feel very confident defending the spend internally, more than 70% would invest more if measurement improved, and more than 60% are concerned about fraud or misrepresented inventory.

When: The research was released today, July 9, 2026.

Where: The findings apply to the CTV advertising market, primarily in the United States, where eMarketer projects CTV spending to reach $38 billion in 2026. The full report is available on jamloop.com.

Why: CTV is absorbing performance budgets as marketers report diminishing returns from paid search and paid social, but the channel's measurement and attribution infrastructure has not yet earned the confidence its budget growth implies. The survey quantifies the trust deficit that determines whether the more than 70% of buyers willing to increase investment will actually do so.