How AI is reshaping connected TV ad buying and creative

As seen in Ad Age

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded across streaming platforms and devices, marketers are beginning to hand over some of their biggest connected TV decisions to machines.

Ad tech vendors are automating media planning and buying through AI agents that can purchase ads on brands’ behalf. Meanwhile, TV operating systems and streaming apps are layering in AI-powered search and personalization—unlocking new data signals that could reshape how CTV ads are created, targeted and optimized, executives told Ad Age.

These disruptions have been on full display at CES this week. Supply-side vendors Viant, Magnite and PubMatic announced new agentic offerings that seek to power more media planning, buying and selling duties for clients. NBCUniversal also announced an approach to agent-to-agent transactions for both linear and CTV ads through a new partnership with agency RPA, ad tech company FreeWheel and analytics firm Newton Research, according to Ryan McConville, EVP and chief product officer of advertising products and solutions at NBCU.

Also at CES, Google expanded its integration of Gemini into Google TV, enabling partner devices to offer a conversational AI experience for tasks such as content recommendation, internet search and settings changes. The tech giant even embedded its image and video generators, Nano Banana and Veo, for viewers to create their own content. And Samsung and LG announced partnerships with Microsoft to bring similar AI capabilities to their own devices.

This surge of AI personalization “presents an enormous opportunity for advertisers to align their messaging with the mood and temperament of the viewer,” said Tom Burchill, group director and head of programmatic at Monks.

Marketers are also seeing an influx of new AI tools specifically designed for CTV ad production. Disney announced a generative video platform for creating CTV-ready commercials. The announcement at CES came on the heels of the media giant’s content partnership with OpenAI—yet another indication of the strengthening ties between streaming and AI technology.

Here’s what marketers need to know about the new paths that AI is paving in the CTV advertising space.

How AI is disrupting CTV media planning and buying

When ad buyers need to identify inventory for media plans and determine the highest-performing ads to place, they are now turning to AI to make some of those key decisions. The focus is very much on CTV commercials as much as the rest of the internet.

For instance, Magnite, a supply-side platform with close ties to publishers such as Netflix, recently bought streamr.ai, a platform that creates generative AI ads that can run as banners on TV home screens, within suggested apps and as pause breaks. The idea is that the tech could make CTV advertising accessible to millions of businesses.

However, CTV, with multiple operating systems, apps and free ad-supported [FAST] channels, is perhaps one of the most complicated ecosystems for media buyers. AI is also being used to simplify this complexity. Adam Soroca, Magnite’s chief product officer, was at CES this week promoting a new “seller agent,” an AI assistant that helps execute ad buys and can identify inventory—including tile ads on homepages and pause ads in shows—across the CTV landscape.

“We like it because it allows new units or units that have not been previously made available programmatically to be transacted more easily,” Soroca said.

Magnite noted that LG Ad Solutions was among the CTV publishers with inventory open to its seller agent.

Harry Kargman, CEO of ad tech company Kargo, was also at CES showing off AI tools that influence CTV. Kargo launched an agent to help advertisers turn creative assets into ads that are usable in the new specs and sizes demanded by new CTV, Kargman told Ad Age.

“[The agent] is reformatting your existing assets, with rules, very clear rules, into all of the different correctly sized and formatted assets that run in all those unique places,” Kargman said. “Without actually having that agent that can do that reformatting, scaling, sizing with the right format type for all of these proprietary places, it doesn’t work.”

Media measurement provider DoubleVerify announced its own agentic offering at CES, which relies on agents to give brands more control over the kinds of content they advertise against. For instance, a pre-bid agent allows advertisers to describe their preferences and goals conversationally in order to capture nuance and plan media buys accordingly. The company’s post-bid agent reports measurement data based on these specific objectives before handing off the insights to another AI system responsible for optimizing campaigns.

“None of this [agentic technology] existed in 2025,” said Todd Randak, general manager of CTV at DoubleVerify. “2026 is the year where it really lights up across the board.”

How AI is paving the way for more personalized CTV ad content

The integration of AI search capabilities in CTV platforms from Google to Samsung could have a direct impact on the kinds of advertising opportunities available to marketers.

The idea is that the more personalized the search experience is for CTV consumers, the more data points are available for capture. AI systems can quantify and understand preferences over time, laying the groundwork for that data to eventually be monetized, said Monks’ Burchill. This process is how AI search platforms such as Google’s AI Mode show relevant ads within their chat features.

Now that the same AI technology is embedded in streaming environments, marketers could soon have access to new consumer data to inform their CTV ads strategies.

“There will be more signals that are available to these types of endemic search functions in streaming and TV that don’t currently exist,” Burchill said.

Samsung has already started to leverage its CTV AI features for more contextual advertising, the company’s ads division announced ahead of CES. As more users become more reliant on AI search capabilities, this opportunity for highly personalized CTV advertising could only grow for marketers, according to Burchill.

At the same time, companies like Disney are rolling out new production tools to help advertisers better target their CTV placements. Disney’s tool revealed during its tech showcase at CES is meant for creating CTV-ready commercials based on brand assets and guidelines. The thinking is that advertisers can now quickly create more content to reach different audiences, as opposed to running the same ads for all audiences. This variety could allow advertisers to get more impressions out of their ads, according to Burchill.

“We can be more flexible across a wider set of inventory to engage those audiences and arguably have more chances to engage them,” Burchill said.

Contributing: Garett Sloane