CMOs are spending $40 CPMs on OTT and CTV to replace what used to cost $5 to $10 on traditional television. And they’re calling that a programmatic strategy.

It’s not. It’s a panic move.

The shift away from linear TV scared a lot of brands into “doing something” with streaming. So they moved budget into OTT and CTV, but they didn’t actually change the strategy. No real audience targeting. Maybe geos. Maybe age with a huge margin of error. No integration with the rest of their media. The quality of programming? Not guaranteed.

They replaced cheap reach with expensive reach and called it innovation. That’s not programmatic. That’s just more expensive television.

What Real Programmatic Advertising Looks Like

At Colling Media, we’ve managed over $50 million in ad spend across every major channel. The biggest mistake we see is brands treating programmatic as a single tactic instead of what it actually is: an integrated strategic layer across your entire marketing operation.

We build programmatic campaigns through the same framework we use for everything. Brand, Demand, Performance, and Nurturing (BDPN):

Brand: Upper-funnel awareness through in-banner video, programmatic audio, CTV, and digital out-of-home. Reaching people before they even know they need you.

Demand: Mid-funnel engagement targeting people who are actually in-market for what you sell. Not 100% of a population. The 2 to 4% who are actively looking right now.

Performance: Lower-funnel conversion through retargeting, intent-based audiences, and cross-channel attribution tied to real business outcomes.

Nurturing: Sequential messaging across display, video, audio, and native. Keeping your brand top of mind through the entire decision cycle.

That’s the difference between “doing programmatic” and running an integrated programmatic strategy.

The $40 CPM Problem: Why CTV Without Strategy Is Just Expensive TV

Let’s talk about what’s actually happening in the market right now. Brands are terrified of cord-cutting. They see the audience migrating from linear television to streaming platforms, and they panic. The response? Move budget into OTT and CTV.

But here’s the problem. Most of these brands are buying CTV the same way they bought television. They’re reaching broad audiences with minimal targeting, paying a premium CPM, and hoping the impressions translate into something. Sometimes the only targeting is geographic. Sometimes it’s age, with significant margin of error.

When you compare a $5 to $10 CPM on traditional television to a $40 CPM on OTT or CTV with no meaningful audience targeting, you haven’t upgraded your strategy. You’ve just made it more expensive.

Real CTV and OTT buying within a programmatic framework looks completely different. You’re targeting people who are actually in-market for what you sell. You’re sequencing creative across devices. You’re measuring influence on downstream conversions. That’s the version of CTV that moves the needle.

Most Brands Are Only Using a Fraction of What’s Available

If your programmatic strategy is just display ads and maybe some CTV, you’re leaving massive opportunity on the table. The programmatic ecosystem today includes:

• In-banner video that captures attention while people browse premium content
• Programmatic audio across Spotify, podcasts, and streaming radio
• OTT and CTV with real audience targeting, not just geos
• Digital out-of-home reaching people in the physical world with digital precision
• Native advertising that blends into the content experience
• Premium display across verified, brand-safe inventory

Each format reaches people differently, at different moments, in different mindsets. An integrated strategy uses all of them together. You’d never run just one ad group in a search campaign. Same principle.

And if you’re only running search and social, you’re missing a massive untapped audience. Search captures demand that already exists. Social interrupts a feed. Programmatic reaches people across the entire internet while they’re reading, watching, listening, and browsing, based on actual purchase intent and behavioral data.

Sometimes only 2 to 4% of an entire population might be in-market for a product over the course of a month or two. Meanwhile, most brands are trying to reach 100% of an audience. Programmatic, done right, finds the people who are actually ready to buy.

How to Measure Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic won’t always show up cleanly in your CRM. It’s not like search where someone clicks and converts in the same session. The metrics that matter go beyond last-click attribution:

View-through conversions. Did someone see your ad and convert later? This is the most basic measure of programmatic influence, and most brands aren’t even tracking it properly.

Influence metrics. How did programmatic exposure affect conversion rates across other channels? When someone sees your programmatic ad and then searches your brand name, that’s programmatic working.

Incrementality. What outcomes would not have happened without the investment? This requires controlled testing, but it’s the gold standard for proving programmatic value.

Cross-channel lift. Did search and social perform better when programmatic was running? In almost every case we’ve seen, the answer is yes.

This is where a strategic partner matters. The tools are becoming commoditized. Any DSP can serve an ad. The difference is in the strategy, the audience architecture, the creative sequencing, and the ability to read the data and optimize in real time.

It’s Not About the Tools. It’s About the Strategy.

Here’s what the market gets wrong about programmatic. Too many people focus on the technology. Which DSP are you using? What data provider? Which exchanges?

Those things matter, but they’re becoming a commodity. Almost every major platform has access to the same inventory, the same data sources, the same optimization algorithms.

What separates great programmatic from mediocre programmatic is the strategy and execution behind it. How are you building audiences? How are you sequencing creative across the funnel? How are you integrating programmatic with search, social, and your broader marketing operation? How are you testing and optimizing in real time?

That’s the work that actually drives results. And it requires strategists who understand the full picture, not just the platform.

The Bottom Line

Programmatic isn’t new. The core technology has been around for a decade. But it’s gotten significantly better, and ironically, the market has gone backward in how it’s being used. Too many brands treat it as a checkbox instead of the strategic engine it should be.

The brands winning right now are integrating programmatic across their entire marketing operation. Not as a supplement to TV, but as a foundational layer that supports awareness, demand generation, performance, and nurturing simultaneously.

That’s how we approach it at Colling Media. As a Top 3% Google Premier Partner with over 18 years of experience managing integrated campaigns, we build programmatic strategies that work as part of your complete marketing ecosystem, not in isolation.

If you want to talk about what an integrated programmatic strategy could look like for your brand, contact our team.