CTV audience targeting: How to reach the right audiences

For years, advertisers have used broad audience demographics to decide where to place linear TV ads based on the types of channels or programs their target audience was likely to watch.

TV ratings and audience research could help advertisers identify which programming was most relevant, but because it was impossible to target individual viewers or households, you never knew if running an ad during a popular block like TGIF might put you in front of the younger viewers you wanted to reach or their parents who happened to be watching alongside them.

CTV advertising changed that.

Because CTV ads are delivered through internet-connected streaming devices, which can be linked to households using signals such as IP addresses, advertisers can use audience, geographic, behavioral, and first-party data to target ads with far greater precision than previously thought possible.

As a result, a 2026 study found that 26.4% of US CTV ad buyers cite accessing precision targeting not available in linear TV as one of their top priorities for CTV advertising.

But to make the most of these targeting options, you have to know how to use them.

Read on to learn more about CTV audience targeting and best practices for reaching the right viewers with your campaigns.

What should you consider when planning your CTV advertising targeting strategy?

Before you begin deciding which CTV targeting capabilities to use in your programmatic campaigns, it’s important to determine who you want to reach (and why).

Generating broad awareness for the launch of a new running shoe, for example, may require a different set of targeting tactics than a campaign that’s aimed at gaining incremental reach or re-engaging a B2B buyer who filled out a web form to learn more about your software, but never moved forward.

To narrow down which targeting tactics make the most sense, ask yourself questions like:

• Who is our target audience?
• What do we know about them?
• Do we already have access to first-party data?
• What action do we want viewers to take after seeing the ad?
• How much reach do we need to achieve our goals?

Answering questions like these can help you choose the right mix of targeting tactics and ensure they align with your campaign goals.

What CTV targeting options can I use for my campaigns?

CTV gives advertisers several ways to control who sees an ad and where it appears. Choosing the right targeting strategy ultimately depends on your campaign objectives, the data you have access to, and how much scale you need to achieve those goals.

Before going in-depth, here’s a quick breakdown of the main CTV targeting options available to advertisers:

Targeting approach	What it uses	Best suited for	Key consideration
Inventory targeting	Publisher or inventory packages	Choosing specific publishers, inventory packages, or broader run-of-network inventory	Available inventory varies by publisher and platform
First-party data targeting	CRM lists, website activity, and other first-party audience data	Reaching known audiences and staying visible across the customer journey	Requires usable first-party data and may be more limited in some regions
Lookalike targeting	Existing first-party audiences	Finding new prospects who share characteristics with known audiences	Audience quality depends on the data used to build the original audience
Geographic targeting	Household location	Local and regional campaigns; market-specific promotions	Greater geographic precision can sometimes reduce audience size and available inventory
Demographic targeting	Characteristics like age, income, gender, or household composition	Targeting broad audiences based on common characteristics	Demographics alone may not reflect interests or purchase intent
Behavioral targeting	Browsing, purchase, interest, and intent data	Reaching new audiences based on what they do or show interest in	The source, quality, and freshness of third-party data impacts how precise the targeting is
Contextual targeting	The content being watched	Targeting ads that are aligned with the types of content viewers are watching	Content-level data isn’t always granular enough for highly specific targeting compared to other options
Retargeting	Previous brand interactions or ad exposure	Re-engaging audiences across channels and moving them further down the funnel	Audience size depends on how many people have already interacted with your brand or ad campaign
Device targeting	Smart TVs, streaming devices, or platform ecosystems	Controlling which devices or platforms ads appear on	Certain inventory may only be available through specific platforms or devices

Inventory targeting

Inventory targeting combines the precision of CTV targeting with the one-to-many scale of traditional TV, helping advertisers expand their reach without sacrificing control.

In programmatic advertising platforms like StackAdapt, advertisers can choose curated inventory packages from publishers like Disney or Tubi to access specific, high-quality inventory across different streaming services and geographies. This can streamline campaign management while giving advertisers greater control and transparency over where their ads appear.

In some demand-side platforms, advertisers can also take this a step further using run-of-network inventory, which allows ads to be served across a broader pool of available inventory rather than being limited to specific publishers or packages. This gives advertisers access to the broadest possible reach available within a platform, helping maximize campaign exposure.

First-party data targeting

One of the biggest benefits of CTV targeting is the ability to reach specific households using first-party data.

In StackAdapt, advertisers can leverage data from CRM lists, custom audience segments, and StackAdapt’s proprietary Interest & Intent segments, which capture users’ behaviors and intent signals across devices, to build highly targeted and personalized CTV campaigns. This data is matched to households through StackAdapt’s internal identity graph, which connects IP addresses, device IDs, and other pseudonymous identifiers to create a cohesive cross-device view—ensuring advertisers can reach the same person who encountered a display ad while browsing a website with a follow-up ad while they’re streaming TV at home.

Additionally, StackAdapt’s Data Hub offers seamless integrations with leading CRM and data platforms such as HubSpot and Snowflake, allowing advertisers to automatically sync and activate their first-party data without manual uploads—enabling privacy-friendly, real-time audience updates and multi-channel activation across CTV and other channels.

That also gives CTV a role beyond awareness. First-party data can help advertisers re-engage high-intent audiences who have already interacted with their brand, making CTV ideal for performance-focused campaigns aimed at driving lower-funnel action and conversions.

As a result, advertisers in even specialized areas like B2B, which have traditionally shied away from TV advertising due to its broad reach and limited targeting, can reach decision-makers directly.

Read More: How to create a first-party data strategy in digital marketing

Despite its benefits, first-party data targeting can be more limited in certain regions, like parts of EMEA, where privacy regulations like GDPR place stricter requirements on how personal data and online identifiers are used for advertising. Because of this, it’s best to confirm which targeting options are available in your market.

Lookalike targeting

Building on first-party data, lookalike audience targeting uses an existing audience, such as website visitors captured through a pixel placed on your website, to find new users with similar behaviors or characteristics—helping advertisers expand their reach beyond people who have already interacted with their brand online.

Because these audiences are modeled on people who have already shown an interest in your business, lookalike targeting can help bring more relevant prospects into the top of the funnel by reaching viewers with similar characteristics, interests, or intents. 

In doing so, advertisers can expand their pool of potential customers by reaching audiences that may be more likely to engage with a follow-up CTV ad, respond to a cross-device retargeting ad, or take a direct action than a broader audience.

Geographic targeting

Geographic targeting allows advertisers to deliver CTV ads based on where viewers are located, whether that’s broad regions, like countries, states, or provinces, down to more specific locations, like cities, designated market areas, and even ZIP or postal codes.

Because CTV ads are delivered through internet-connected devices, CTV advertising platforms can use household IP addresses to determine whether a viewer falls within a targeted area. This makes geographic targeting especially useful for regional and local businesses—such as physical retailers, car dealerships, or restaurants—who can promote location-specific offers to drive foot traffic or reach customers within their service areas.

Advertisers can also combine geographic targeting with other targeting capabilities to get even more precise. For example, a B2B brand promoting a cybersecurity conference could target viewers within a specific market who work in the field.

But despite these capabilities, more precise targeting isn’t always better. The smaller the geographic area, the fewer households and available impressions you may have to work with—limiting reach and making it harder to spend your budget efficiently. If you’re also layering on additional targeting criteria, you may need to bid higher to compete for enough impressions and maintain reach.

The right level of geographic targeting ultimately depends on how much scale you need to achieve your campaign goals.

Demographic and behavioral targeting

Demographic and behavioral targeting both help advertisers reach relevant audiences, but in slightly different ways.

Demographic targeting focuses on broad audience characteristics, such as age, gender, household income, or family composition. These attributes can help advertisers focus their campaigns on the types of people most likely to be relevant based on factors like life stage or household makeup.

But demographics can only tell you so much. Two people of the same age and income can have radically different interests, needs, or desires, which is where behavioral targeting becomes more useful.

Behavioral targeting looks at what people do, such as what they browse, buy, watch, or research across devices. Using third-party audience data from publishers, platforms, and external data providers, advertisers can reach new prospects based on their interests or past purchases—even if those people have never interacted with their brand before.

For example, a marketer working for a resort could use demographic targeting to reach adults within a certain age or income bracket, then layer in behavioral data to focus on people who have recently researched flights, hotels, or vacation destinations for an upcoming winter getaway. Similarly, a B2B advertiser working in HR software could combine firmographic criteria, like company size or industry, with intent data that indicates someone may be researching a relevant product or service to reach prospects who may be in-market for a new solution.

In general, demographic targeting can help define a broad audience, while behavioral targeting can help make that audience more relevant to the campaign. Neither needs to be used on its own, and combining the two can help advertisers balance scale with greater precision.

Because of this, Gracenote reports that 29.5% of US marketers prioritize demographic targeting for their CTV campaigns, making it the top CTV audience targeting strategy, while 10.3% use behavioral targeting to reach viewers more effectively.

Contextual targeting

Unlike traditional audience targeting methods, contextual targeting uses information about the content itself to deliver ads based on what’s being watched instead of relying on audience data about who’s watching it.

In CTV, that mostly takes the form of inventory packages organized by genre or content type (like live sports, news, or entertainment) and AI-powered targeting solutions that analyze individual scenes within a publisher’s content and tags them based on factors like visual cues, tone, and sentiment to place ads alongside relevant moments in a TV show or movie.

Despite its potential, contextual targeting is still relatively underused in CTV today. Instead, targeting is often based on broader content categories and audience assumptions—like serving holiday ads on streaming services known for carrying a large volume of Christmas titles in the lead-up to the holiday season—rather than more granular show- or scene-level context.

As a result, EMARKETER reports that only 11% of US brands and agencies use channel-level contextual targeting in their CTV advertising strategies, with 47% of them citing limited show- or content-level data as the top barrier preventing them from increasing their CTV ad spending.

In the future, increased visibility into what genres, shows, or categories audiences are watching will give advertisers even more opportunities to align ads with relevant content.

Retargeting

Retargeting allows advertisers to re-engage audiences who have already interacted with their brand—whether that means they visited a website and completed a specific action, like filling out a form or viewing a product page, or were previously exposed to a CTV ad while streaming content.

For example, a brand could use display ads to drive initial website visits, then retarget those visitors while they’re streaming TV with a CTV ad that tells more of a visual brand story or goes into more product detail.

Alternatively, viewers who watch a CTV ad could later be re-engaged with follow-up ads on other programmatic channels, like display, native, or video—reaching them across devices like their laptops or smartphones to help move them further down the funnel.

With sequential retargeting, there’s no single sequence follow-up ads need to follow. The goal is to stay visible across additional touch points, no matter where that next interaction happens.

Device targeting

Unlike audience, contextual, or geographic targeting, device targeting focuses on which devices or platforms your ads appear on rather than just who sees them or what they’re watching.

For CTV campaigns, advertisers can use device targeting to reach viewers across specific smart TVs or streaming devices. In some cases, this can also provide access to inventory that’s only available via a particular device or platform ecosystem, such as Samsung or Roku—giving advertisers access to premium inventory that may not be available through other methods.

What are some common CTV targeting mistakes to avoid?

For CTV advertising to be effective, campaigns have to be set up the right way. In some situations, although narrowing your audience or—the reverse—going too broad may seem like the right thing to do, when taken too far, either one can actually limit performance.

Here are a few CTV targeting missteps that might cause your campaigns to stall, underdeliver, or reach the wrong audience.

Over-layering different types of targeting

Although one of the main benefits of CTV advertising is its hyper-focused targeting, layering on too many targeting criteria can significantly shrink your audience, reducing the potential impact of your media spend. This is especially true when CTV advertising is used at the top of the funnel, where building awareness often requires enough scale to achieve your campaign goals, or during live events, where layering on additional demographic criteria can quickly make the available audience too small.

Over-restricting geographic targeting

Similarly, getting too granular with geographic targeting can quickly limit your available audience and reduce reach. When possible, keep geographic targeting simple and avoid narrowing below the state or provincial level unless the strategy requires it, such as for a local political campaign targeting voters within a specific district.

Not separating prospecting from retargeting

Much like drinking a glass of orange juice right after brushing your teeth, it’s best to keep prospecting and retargeting in their own lanes.

Prospecting audiences are typically much larger than retargeting audiences and can quickly dominate delivery when both tactics compete for the same budget—canceling each other out and making it harder to re-engage high-intent audiences who have already interacted with and shown interest in your brand.

Not using lookalike audiences for conversion-focused campaigns

If conversions are your main KPI, relying only on broader prospecting audiences can leave possible leads and conversions on the table. Lookalike audience expansion based on CRM segments or primary conversion pixels can help direct spend toward audiences that more closely resemble the people already in your pipeline or who have previously converted with your brand, giving you a stronger starting point for reaching potential customers.

Bidding too low for premium publisher floors

CTV inventory can come with very different pricing floors depending on the publisher. Bids that are too low can prevent your ads from clearing, leading to under-delivery.

Use your platform’s forecasting tools to understand what bid levels are realistic for the inventory you want to access before launch.

For example, StackAdapt’s forecasting tool lets you plug in your geo, audience, and inventory packages to see projected impressions and spend at your target bid before launch. That way, you can set more informed bids that actually clear the publishers you want without overpaying.

Not setting dayparting

Without dayparting in place, your CTV budget can be spent during lower-engagement hours—like at 4 a.m., when inventory might be cheaper but the viewer is probably fast asleep. This leaves less budget available to bid on primetime slots when viewership is typically highest.

Restricting delivery to a more focused window—such as 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.—can help preserve budget for the hours when audiences are more likely to be streaming TV and actually paying attention to what’s on screen.

For campaigns running across multiple regions, make sure your dayparting accounts for local time zones, so you don’t unintentionally limit delivery in other markets.

Focusing too heavily on walled garden inventory

It can be tempting to concentrate ad spend on familiar walled gardens like YouTube or Amazon Prime. But doing so can limit the range of inventory available to your CTV strategy. 

EMARKETER reports that the average US and Canadian streamer is now subscribed to 10 different streaming services (four of which, on average, are free and typically ad-supported). Looking beyond the biggest platforms can help advertisers access additional publishers, audiences, and viewing environments that provide access to the same or similar viewers but might otherwise be overlooked simply because they’re slightly smaller than the biggest streaming platforms.

Not using CTV as part of an omnichannel strategy

Just like any other programmatic channel, CTV works best when it’s treated as part of a broader omnichannel strategy instead of a standalone activation. 

Reaching the same audience across display, video, CTV, and other channels gives you more opportunities to stay visible across multiple touch points, build familiarity, and move them closer to conversion.

Get more from your CTV targeting strategy

Effective CTV targeting isn’t about layering on as many targeting options as possible. It starts with knowing what you want to achieve, who you need to reach, and what audience data you have available—then choosing the tactics that provide enough precision to make an impact.

To do that, you need the right programmatic partner.

StackAdapt brings the targeting and measurement advertisers come to expect from digital advertising to CTV, combining premium inventory with audience data and technologies like ACR to help advertisers understand viewing behavior, reach relevant households, and drive results for their brand.

Speak with our team to learn more.

Next steps

• Explore CTV advertising with StackAdapt and sign up to start launching campaigns today.

• Download this guide to learn everything there is to know about CTV advertising and get best practices from industry experts.

• Find out how to capture attention with these CTV marketing strategies and see examples from our award-winning Creative Studio.

• If you’re in B2B, learn how to use CTV advertising to build awareness and grow your business.

CTV targeting FAQs