The 2026 Advertiser’s Guide to Streaming TV

The U.S. Streaming TV ad market is approaching $40 billion, and $7.4 billion of that is being lost to fraud.

The rest?

Mostly invested without a clear feedback loop to know what’s actually working.

That’s the reality that prompted this collaboration between State of Streaming and [cognition].

Together, we built a guide that connects the dots between what’s happening in the streaming landscape and what advertisers can actually do about it.

What’s inside:

The guide is structured in three parts.

• Part one breaks down the fragmentation problem, why the ecosystem is fractured across publishers, ad tech stacks, and an ever-shifting M&A landscape, and what that costs you in practice.

• Part two maps the opportunity: 93% of U.S. households are connected to the internet, streaming accounts for over half of all TV time, and live sports have permanently migrated to streaming platforms. We cover the biggest sports streaming moments of 2025–2026, the rise of FAST channels, and what it takes to reach Gen Z (hint: they never had cable to cut).

• Part three lays out the solution, a unified Streaming TV stack built on three pillars: identity, activation, and measurement.

This isn’t theory. Every section is backed by current data, real platform milestones, and frameworks you can put to work now.

Leaders from both organizations, such as [cognition]’s Carson Henry and Amber Daniel and the State of Streaming editorial team, will share why the standard playbook is failing and what comes next.

If you buy, sell, or manage Streaming TV advertising, this guide was built for you.