CTV Infrastructure: Where the Industry Is Heading

I was at the IAB Tech Lab CTV conference recently, and it reinforced several trends I've been watching in the Connected TV space. The technical challenges facing this industry are substantial, and the solutions being developed will shape how digital advertising infrastructure works for years to come.

Fraud Is Getting More Sophisticated

The fraud problem in CTV has evolved significantly. We're not dealing with amateur operations anymore. Large-scale botnets are specifically targeting CTV because the economics make sense for them. High CPMs, strong advertiser demand, and less transparency than we have in desktop environments create the perfect conditions.

Device attestation and the Open Measurement framework are being promoted to enhance reliability and minimize fraudulent activity. The technical complexity of securing CTV at scale while maintaining performance is a real engineering challenge.

Attribution Remains Tough

Most CTV attribution relies on IP addresses. Anyone working in this space knows how unreliable that is. The problem is we haven't agreed on a better standard yet.

Companies like Blockgraph are developing advanced audience-building tools that move beyond IP-based tracking. These early advancements show what’s possible once the industry agrees on shared infrastructure. The shift toward more accurate and privacy-aware attribution will create significant opportunities for companies that can adapt early.

New Ad Formats Mean New Technical Requirements

Pause ads, menu ads, squeezebacks, overlays, in-scene ads, screensaver ads: new formats are emerging rapidly. This introduces real engineering complexity, but it also expands what’s creatively and commercially possible in CTV.

Supporting these formats at scale with personalization and sub-second latency is a different technical problem than traditional video ad insertion. But for companies willing to invest in flexible, modern ad delivery architectures, this opens the door to entirely new revenue streams and user experiences.

Live Events Push Infrastructure to Its Limits

Live event streaming is where you see the real stress tests. A major TV premiere can generate the same concurrent traffic as a championship game. The infrastructure has to handle massive spikes while still delivering personalized ads to millions of viewers simultaneously.

This pressure is forcing innovation. New standards and architectures are emerging, pushing the industry closer to elastic, resilient systems. Companies that figure this out will unlock some of the highest-value CTV inventory available.

The API Layer Is Finally Catching Up

The Deal API and Forecasting API took thirteen years to develop. That tells you how complex programmatic operations have become. These tools should streamline workflows, but they also represent how far the technical requirements have evolved from where we started.

Innovation Happening at the Edge

Fastly's work on protecting publishers from unauthorized AI crawling is interesting, but what caught my attention was their experimental work with live stream ad overlays on perimeter boards. This is edge computing applied to real-time video manipulation. Still early, but it points to where processing is moving.

Telly TV impressed with a free, ad-supported TV device featuring a companion contextual screen, camera, and people detection, demonstrating the value advertisers see in CTV.

What This Means for Infrastructure

If you're building systems in this space, these trends point to some clear requirements. You need to handle unpredictable traffic spikes. You need sub-second response times at scale. You need to support multiple ad formats with different technical requirements. And you need to do all of this while the industry is still figuring out fundamental questions around measurement and attribution.

The companies that solve these infrastructure challenges will have a significant advantage. The ones that don't will struggle to compete as the technical bar keeps rising. If you’re navigating these evolving CTV infrastructure opportunities and want a partner who can help you build for scale, performance, and the future of digital advertising, reach out to us, we’d love to help.