If you’ve spent any time researching video advertising lately, you’ve probably run into two acronyms that get used almost interchangeably. There’s CTV and OTT. They’re related, but they’re not exactly the same thing. It’s important to understand the difference if you want to build a media strategy that actually works.
In this blog post, we’re going to break down the difference between CTV (connected TV) and OTT (over-the-top) advertising. You’ll know exactly what they are, the difference between them, and how they compare to each other.
OTT stands for "over-the-top." It refers to any video content delivered over the internet, bypassing traditional cable, satellite, or broadcast providers. The term describes the content delivery method.
OTT is the umbrella category. It includes streaming services like Hulu, Peacock, and Paramount+, and it covers content watched on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. If you're streaming a show through an app instead of through a cable box, you're consuming OTT content, no matter what screen you're watching on.
CTV stands for "connected TV." It refers specifically to internet-connected television sets: smart TVs, or regular TVs connected through a streaming device like a Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV, or a gaming console.
OTT describes how content gets delivered. CTV describes where it's watched: on the actual television screen, in the living room, usually on the biggest display in the house.
OTT refers to the delivery method: streaming over the internet rather than through cable or satellite. CTV refers to the device: a television connected to the internet.
Every CTV ad counts as an OTT ad, since it's delivered over the internet. But an OTT ad isn't always a CTV ad. Someone watching Hulu on their phone during a train ride is consuming OTT content on a mobile device, not CTV.
For advertisers, this distinction affects targeting, ad experience, and measurement. A 30-second spot playing on a 65-inch living room TV during family viewing time behaves very differently than the same ad playing on a phone screen during a quick scroll break.
Traditional TV advertising, the kind bought through cable and broadcast networks, works on broad demographic targeting like age, gender, and general viewing habits, and relies on Nielsen-style ratings to estimate reach. Ads run on a fixed schedule to a mass, largely anonymous audience.
CTV advertising works differently. Because CTV ads are served over the internet, they inherit the targeting and measurement capabilities of digital advertising. Advertisers can target audiences based on interests, behaviors, purchase history, or location instead of relying on broad demographics alone. Ads can reach specific households or devices rather than blanketing everyone watching a channel. Performance becomes trackable, including completion rates, impressions, and often attribution back to website visits or conversions. And the ad experience itself stays full-screen and largely non-skippable, similar to traditional TV, but backed by digital-level data.
Put simply: CTV combines the reach and impact of TV with the precision and accountability of digital.
Viewers have moved. More households are cutting the cord or skipping cable altogether, watching everything through streaming apps. Advertisers have to follow the audience, and increasingly that audience is on connected TVs.
CTV also helps close the gap between reach and performance. Traditional TV is strong for broad awareness but weak on measurement. Digital is trackable but often lacks the premium, big-screen impact of TV. CTV sits in between, offering both.
Targeting reduces wasted spend, too. Instead of paying to reach an entire broadcast audience, brands can target specific segments by geography, interest, or purchase behavior, cutting down on impressions that were never going to convert anyway.
And CTV campaigns can scale to fit a range of budgets. Traditional national TV buys often require large minimum spends, but CTV makes premium video advertising accessible to businesses that couldn't previously afford a national TV presence.
CTV works best as part of a broader media strategy rather than a replacement for everything else. A common approach looks something like this:
For awareness, CTV delivers premium, full-screen video to build brand recognition, much like traditional TV. For consideration, OTT on mobile and desktop keeps the brand visible as people move between devices throughout the day. For performance, pairing CTV with search, social, or programmatic display lets impressions get tied back to site visits and conversions, giving a fuller picture of ROI.
For brands that have relied heavily on traditional TV or purely digital channels, CTV often serves as the bridge, bringing TV-level impact into a strategy that can still be measured and optimized like a digital campaign.
The theory behind CTV is compelling, but it's worth looking at how it plays out inside an actual media plan. A few recent Bloom Ads campaigns show what CTV can add when it's layered into a broader strategy rather than run on its own.
Chicken Salad Chick, tailgate season. Bloom Ads built a regional campaign to make Chicken Salad Chick part of game-day tradition, combining CTV and TV placements in premium sports content, including Full Episode Player inventory, alongside SEM, social, programmatic display, OOH, and direct mail. The campaign drove a 201% increase in impressions, a 235% increase in clicks, a 140% lift in revenue, and a 33% increase in ROAS. CTV's role here was to build upper-funnel awareness during a high-attention viewing window (live sports), while retargeting and search picked up the resulting demand.
Sprouts Farmers Market, grand opening. For a new store launch in Tampa, Bloom Ads used localized CTV and streaming ads on premium content to reach health-conscious shoppers within a tight geographic radius, paired with SEM, Waze, programmatic display, OOH, and social. The campaign generated 5 million total impressions, a 32% lift in foot traffic over baseline, a 65% boost in sign-ups, and a click-through rate 170% above benchmark. CTV extended reach beyond digital and out-of-home, helping ensure shoppers in the target radius saw the brand across screens, not just on a billboard or in a search result.
Capriotti's, retention strategy. When Capriotti's needed to reverse a retention problem (under 1% of customers were returning), Bloom Ads split the strategy by store footprint. In higher-footprint markets, CTV and streaming TV worked alongside CRM retargeting on Meta, YouTube, and TikTok to keep the brand visible to past customers while retention tactics did the conversion work. The overall campaign drove a 14% increase in POS sales ($63M total), a 12% increase in shop traffic (2.5 million visits), and $1.24 million in incremental sales.
The common pattern across these three: CTV rarely closes the sale by itself. It shows up earlier, building the kind of broad, high-attention awareness that search, social, and retargeting can then convert. That's consistent with how the channel is designed to work, but it's a useful reminder for anyone building a media plan around CTV that the channel performs best as part of a sequence, not a standalone tactic.
OTT covers the broader category of internet-delivered video content, watched on any device. CTV covers the specific slice of that category watched on connected television sets. The distinction affects how you target, how you buy, and how you measure success.
As more viewing time shifts to streaming, connected TV advertising has become one of the most effective ways to combine the emotional impact of television with the precision of digital targeting. For brands looking to modernize their media plan without giving up the power of the big screen, CTV is increasingly where that strategy starts.
Want help turning CTV into an actual line item in your media plan? Bloom Ads works with brands to plan and buy connected TV campaigns, from audience targeting and inventory selection to measurement and optimization, so you're not guessing at what's working. If you're ready to add CTV to your strategy, reach out to Bloom Ads to get started.
