The addressability dividend
When an advertising channel becomes addressable, does advertisers investment grow — and how long does that advantage last? We put LiveRamp's addressability data next to MediaRadar's ad spend measurement across eight quarters of connected TV. The results uncovered a pattern that applies to CTV and emerging channels alike.
Turning addressability on is a critical step in platform emergence and maturity.
Streaming platforms that newly enabled addressability saw the biggest jump in advertising revenue growth. Once addressability is established, though, it stops being a differentiator — it becomes table stakes.
That makes connected TV a case study in how an advertising channel matures — and a reasonable guide to what happens next in the channels now taking shape around AI.
Ad spend growth for a streaming platform in the six quarters after it switched on identity-based addressability, relative to platforms that were already addressable throughout the same period.
One platform gave us a clean before and after
Midway through 2024, one major streaming platform turned on addressability for the first time, and its activation footprint climbed from nothing to a substantial and growing base over the following six quarters. That gives us something rare in media research: a real before-and-after, inside a single dataset, with comparable platforms available as a reference group.
We split the eight quarters at the integration date and compared how average quarterly ad spend changed across that boundary — for the newly addressable platform, for the platforms that were already addressable, and for a premium streaming property that had no identity integration at all and therefore acted as a control.
Ad spend growth across the integration boundary
Change in average quarterly ad spend, the six quarters after the integration went live versus the two quarters before it.
Pre-period: the two quarters to mid-2024. Post-period: the following six quarters to Q4 2025. Peer set: six premium ad-supported streaming services. Sources: LiveRamp audience distribution data; MediaRadar advertising spend measurement.
The platform that turned addressability on grew fastest. Platforms that already had it grew at about half that rate. Inventory with no addressability grew the slowest, at roughly a quarter of the newly addressable platform's pace. One caveat belongs alongside that finding: that platform was scaling its ad-supported subscriber base rapidly over the same period, so we can show that addressability and investment moved together but cannot isolate one as the cause of the other.
Because the activation ramp was gradual rather than instant, we tested whether the answer depends on exactly where we draw the line between "before" and "after." It doesn't — the gap holds within half a percentage point across three different cut-points.
| Pre-period definition | Newly addressable | Already addressable | No integration | Gap vs. peers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two quarters to integration | +25.9% | +13.3% | +7.4% | 12.6 pts |
| Three quarters to integration | +25.5% | +13.1% | +7.3% | 12.4 pts |
| Full year before | +25.0% | +12.9% | +6.4% | 12.2 pts |
Across premium streaming, activation and investment rose in step
Looking at the whole addressable set, both measures climbed steadily across the eight quarters, and stayed within a few index points of each other for most of the window. Ad spend finished the period growing somewhat faster than activation.
Audience activation and ad spend, indexed
Seven premium streaming platforms with continuous coverage. Both series indexed to Q1 2024 = 100, on a single shared scale.
Over the full window, activation grew 20.4% and ad spend grew 28.7%. The two series share a trend; this is co-movement, not a causal estimate. Platforms that share a single identity destination are counted once.
Comparing full years rather than quarters, the addressable set grew ad spend 13.9% from 2024 to 2025. The non-addressable control grew 6.4% over the same two years — less than half the rate.
Addressable premium streaming grew its advertising revenue more than twice as fast as comparable inventory that advertisers could not target by identity.
- 01
For media owners: the commercial return on addressability is concentrated in the period right after you enable it. Being early wins a premium, and the platform in our natural experiment captured roughly double the market growth rate in the six quarters following its integration.
- 02
For media owners without an identity integration: Over two years, the control group grew at less than half the rate of its addressable peers, a gap too large to be ignored.
- 03
For advertisers and agencies: a platform's activation volume is not a proxy for how well it will perform for you. Once a platform is addressable, every advertiser should take advantage of the enriched targeting and measurement available.
- 04
For everyone: addressability is table stakes in connected TV. The window in which it functions as a competitive advantage rather than a baseline requirement is closing — and the next channel to open that window has already started to form.
The Next Channel is Forming, With The Identity Layer To Come
Connected TV did not invent this pattern. Social media ran the same course a decade earlier: addressability arrived, conferred an advantage on the platforms that moved first, and then became something advertisers simply assumed. What this report adds is a measurement of how quickly that transition happens, and how much it is worth while it lasts.
The channels now forming around AI are at the stage connected TV occupied before 2024. Conversational assistants, AI-native search and agentic interfaces are beginning to carry commercial messages. Formats are experimental, inventory is not standardized, measurement barely exists — and identity, in the sense this report uses the word, is just beginning.
If the pattern documented here holds, the implication is an uncomfortable one for anyone planning to wait. The return on connectivity was largest at the moment a channel became addressable and decayed as addressability became universal. For the channels being built around AI, that moment has not happened yet.
The window in which addressability is an advantage rather than an expectation opens once per channel. In connected TV it is proven. In AI it is just beginning.
The Addressability Dividend
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