Webinar Recap: 4 CTV Challenges Facing Independent Agencies — and How to Solve Them
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Pathlabs Marketing |
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April 21, 2025 |
CTV advertising is no longer a trend—it’s a requirement for advertisers. With U.S. CTV ad spend expected to reach $33.35 billion in 2025, independent agencies must adopt modern strategies to stay competitive. But many are still struggling to integrate CTV into their media mix effectively.
Two of Pathlabs leading CTV experts, Vice President of Agency Growth, JC Clarke, and Vice President of Media Products, Nick Lange, sat down with Real Time Solutions’ SVP of Media, Jen Pera, to discuss four hurdles keeping many independent agencies from taking advantage of the CTV boom and strategies to bridge the gap between linear and CTV advertising.
Read our recap here and then access the full webinar to jumpstart your independent agency’s CTV efforts.
The Top 4 CTV Advertising Challenges Facing Independent Agencies
According to the panel, the gap between linear (traditional) and CTV advertising capabilities has grown so large that their most notable similarity today is that they both have TV in their name. The capability gap will only increase, with CTV set to surpass linear TV ad spend by 2028.
These four barriers are what our experts see as blocking most independent agencies from tapping into CTV growth.
Limited Buying Power
Independent agencies like Real Time Solutions punch above their weight and compete for big clients. However, their limited buying power weakens the reach of CTV campaigns, limiting campaign scale and reducing ROI - making it harder to justify further investment in the channel.
Lack of People Resources
A lack of people resources doesn’t mean a lack of expertise.
Instead, many independent agencies lack the resources and bandwidth to optimize their campaigns for maximum efficiency consistently. Without dedicated platform specialists, many agencies can’t keep pace with evolving attribution models, ad formats, and optimization levers. That’s where having an MEP partner becomes a game-changer.
“It’s not that they [independent agencies] might not have the expertise- they just don’t have the resources or bandwidth to make it as effective a channel as they’d like to.”
Operating in a Fragmented Ecosystem
Reaching one TV screen involves navigating a complex ecosystem of content owners, aggregators, OEMs, and others.
Independent agencies must have relationships with each platform and distributor to reach their audience. However, forming and maintaining those relationships takes time and expertise that agencies can only access by growing their team. Hiring CTV advertising experts is a significant investment that can take months of hiring and onboarding before an agency sees any results.
Complex Measurement and Attribution
Linear TV has methods like Nielsen panels that sample audiences to produce critical consumer behavior insights. Discerning a CTV ad's true reach across a digital audience is much more complex, but with the right tools and expertise, it can be much more effective.
Due to the fragmented nature of the CTV advertising landscape, there is no easily accessible dashboard or single source across metrics that independent agencies like Jen’s can turn to to measure performance. Instead, the data they need to optimize their campaigns is spread amongst several siloed data providers.
In turn, it’s difficult for agencies like hers to grasp the actual effectiveness of their CTV campaigns and optimize for performance.
Think of CTV advertising like a workbench—and measurement tools as the set hanging above it. In the hands of a skilled expert, that setup can unlock powerful insights. Without guidance, though, most teams are left guessing.
Why CTV Advertising Delivers Results for Independent Agencies
It’s understandable to see the scope of these barriers and push the brakes on CTV advertising. Independent agencies have enough challenges on their plate as is. Yet, our experts point out that CTV’s potential makes it more than worth overcoming these hurdles due to two powerful capabilities.
“When your advertisement shows on the television all those consumers think of that as a reputable brand. When you’re running with a limited budget the CPMs are daunting, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t allocate there because of that brand equity.”
CTV Attribution and Targeting Affects Customer Behavior
CTV advertising is fundamentally a top-of-funnel method, but due to advances in attribution and targeting, it can affect customer behavior further down the funnel.
For example, Nick can use CTV data to produce a path to conversion report that tracks how every impression pushes an individual to convert. He can also create cross-device attribution that understands an IP address, examines devices on that address, and tracks which device a conversion happened on.
The data you pull from CTV attribution isn’t limited to CTV campaigns. Jen’s agency applies what they learn from their CTV audience to their linear TV audience to enhance their campaigns there.
CTV Advertising Opens New Doors to Engagement
CTV offers new opportunities to engage your audience that will never exist in linear TV.
Shoppbable ads, scrollable ads, and even ads where the viewer chooses what ad they’ll watch encourage engagement and give key insights into audience behavior that simply aren’t available in linear. In fact, 46% of consumers have made at least one purchase via shoppable commerce.
Every campaign wants engagement. CTV advertising empowers independent agencies to drive measurable engagement for their brands–if they can embrace it.
A CTV strategy supercharges an independent agency’s ability to gather data, optimize campaigns, and then target their audience in a cycle that leads to more efficient campaigns.
Pathlabs Is the Solution for Independent Agency Teams with Big Client Needs
While the panel sees the number of ways that consumers access CTV narrowing in the future, they also forecast an increase in CTV data and data providers, meaning agencies will need more experience and bandwidth to access the latest data strategies and tools.
“To have partners that you’re going to feel comfortable and confident in... makes it such an easy step to grow into CTV and grow into other digital channels as they come up on the horizon.”
As a Media Execution Partner (MEP), Pathlabs delivers a team of experts who are in the trenches of CTV advertising daily. Independent agencies that partner with us can bring the latest CTV strategies to the table for their advertisers in weeks instead of building out a tech stack and raising headcount over months or even years.
All from a single point of entry–so you don’t have to work across siloed teams and platforms that drag down efficiency and raise the cost of moving budget where data shows you’ll find the best return.
Linear or connected, there’s nothing quite like seeing your brand on a TV screen. With Pathlabs, your agency gains the CTV advertising expertise to turn that moment into measurable impact — and lasting brand equity.
