If you’re running a media buying agency, you already know that Connected TV (CTV) is one of the hottest channels in digital advertising right now. But convincing clients to commit serious budgets to CTV without proof of performance is a real challenge. That’s where agency test budgets come in. A well-structured CTV test budget lets you gather meaningful data, demonstrate ROI, and build client confidence — all without burning through resources. In this article, we’re breaking down three proven CTV budget split strategies that agencies are using right now to win fast, move efficiently, and scale with confidence. Whether you’re new to CTV or looking to sharpen your existing approach, this guide gives you the tactical framework you need to succeed.
Why CTV Test Budgets Matter for Agencies
Agency-client relationships are built on trust — and trust is built on results. When a client asks you to allocate spend toward CTV, they’re taking a leap of faith. Your job is to make that leap as small and calculated as possible. Test budgets reduce risk while maximizing learning opportunities. They allow you to answer critical questions before scaling:
- Which CTV platforms deliver the best reach for the target audience?
- What creative formats drive the highest completion rates?
- How does CTV exposure influence downstream conversions?
- What frequency cap prevents ad fatigue without sacrificing impressions?
Without a structured test, you’re essentially guessing. And in a competitive media landscape, guessing is expensive. A smart CTV test budget gives you real performance data within a controlled spend environment, which makes scaling both justifiable and strategic.
Beyond the data, test budgets also serve a psychological purpose. When clients see that you have a disciplined, phased approach to CTV investment, they trust you more. They see you as a strategic partner, not just a spend manager. That positioning is invaluable for long-term agency growth.
Understanding the CTV Advertising Landscape in 2024
CTV advertising has exploded in recent years. Streaming viewership continues to grow, with millions of households cutting the cord in favor of platforms like Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, Tubi, Pluto TV, and Amazon Fire TV. According to eMarketer, CTV ad spend in the US alone is projected to surpass $30 billion annually by 2025.
What makes CTV so appealing to advertisers?
- Premium inventory: Ads appear alongside high-quality, professionally produced content
- Precise targeting: Demographic, behavioral, geographic, and household-level targeting options
- High completion rates: CTV ads often see 90%+ video completion rates
- Measurable outcomes: With ACR data and pixel integrations, CTV is increasingly attributable
- Non-skippable formats: Viewers can’t simply skip through like they can on YouTube
However, the CTV ecosystem is also fragmented. There are dozens of DSPs, supply-side platforms (SSPs), streaming apps, and device types. For agencies, this fragmentation is both a challenge and an opportunity. A well-structured test budget helps you navigate this complexity by isolating variables and identifying what actually works for each client’s unique goals.
Understanding the difference between CTV and OTT (Over-the-Top) is also important. While the terms are often used interchangeably, CTV specifically refers to content delivered through internet-connected televisions, while OTT is a broader term covering any streaming content delivered over the internet. For media buyers, CTV inventory is typically more premium and commands higher CPMs, but also delivers stronger brand awareness metrics.
What Makes a Good CTV Test Budget Structure?
Before we dive into the three specific splits, it’s worth establishing what characteristics define a strong CTV test budget. Not all test budgets are created equal. A poorly designed test yields inconclusive data. A well-designed test yields actionable insights.
Here are the core principles of an effective CTV test budget:
- Statistical significance: You need enough impressions to draw meaningful conclusions. As a rule of thumb, aim for at least 500,000 to 1 million impressions per test cell.
- Clear KPIs defined upfront: Are you testing for brand lift, site visits, app downloads, or direct conversions? Define success before you spend a single dollar.
- Isolated variables: Change one thing at a time — platform, creative, audience, or format — so you know what’s actually driving performance differences.
- Sufficient flight duration: CTV tests should run for at least 2–4 weeks to account for frequency buildup and audience learning algorithms.
- Reasonable budget floor: CTV testing typically requires a minimum of $10,000–$25,000 to generate statistically reliable data. Below that, results are often too noisy to be actionable.
With these principles in mind, let’s explore the three proven CTV budget splits that winning agencies use to get fast, reliable results for their clients.
Split #1: The 70/20/10 Discovery Model
The 70/20/10 model is one of the most widely adopted frameworks in media buying, and it translates beautifully to CTV testing. The basic idea is simple: allocate the majority of your budget to what you know works, a smaller portion to promising new approaches, and a sliver to experimental tactics.
How the 70/20/10 CTV Split Works
- 70% — Core Proven Inventory: Spend the bulk of your test budget on platforms and audience segments with the strongest historical performance in your vertical. If you’re in automotive, Hulu and Peacock often outperform niche streaming apps for reach. This portion minimizes risk and ensures you’re generating baseline data.
- 20% — Emerging Opportunities: Allocate this segment to a newer platform, a different inventory type (e.g., free ad-supported streaming TV, or FAST channels like Tubi or Pluto TV), or a different targeting layer (e.g., switching from demographic targeting to behavioral or contextual). This is where you look for efficiency gains.
- 10% — Pure Experimentation: This is your creative sandbox. Test a different ad format (15-second vs. 30-second), an interactive CTV unit, or a programmatic guaranteed deal. Even if it fails, the learnings are valuable, and the small budget allocation ensures failure doesn’t hurt the overall campaign.
Why This Model Wins Fast
The 70/20/10 CTV model is beloved by agencies because it balances performance with discovery. Clients see strong baseline results from the 70% allocation, which gives them confidence. Meanwhile, the 20% and 10% buckets generate insights that can improve future campaigns. This creates a flywheel effect — every test cycle, your 20% findings graduate to the 70% bucket, and you keep discovering new winning tactics. – Fraud in OTT/CTV: Device Spoofing — 5 Proven Patterns
This split is especially effective for first-time CTV clients who are cautious about the channel. It shows them you’re being responsible with their budget while still pushing the envelope strategically.
Split #2: The Platform-First Diversification Split
The second proven CTV budget split focuses specifically on platform diversification. This model is ideal for agencies working with mid-to-large advertisers who want to understand where their audience is spending time across the fragmented CTV ecosystem.
How the Platform-First Split Works
In this model, you allocate your test budget across multiple CTV platforms simultaneously, keeping creative and targeting as consistent as possible. The goal is to isolate platform performance as the variable being tested.
A typical platform-first split might look like this: (Learn more about ctv)
- 40% — Premium Subscription Platforms: Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, Max — these platforms deliver premium, engaged audiences and strong CPMs, but also higher brand safety and completion rates.
- 30% — FAST Channels (Free Ad-Supported): Tubi, Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, Roku Channel — lower CPMs but massive reach, especially among cord-cutters and younger demographics.
- 20% — Programmatic CTV via DSP: Allocate a portion through a demand-side platform like The Trade Desk or DV360 to access open auction CTV inventory. This lets you compare programmatic efficiency versus direct or PMP deals.
- 10% — Private Marketplace (PMP) Deals: Negotiate a curated inventory deal with a specific publisher. This tests whether premium, handpicked inventory outperforms open auction on a cost-per-outcome basis.
Why This Model Wins Fast
The platform-first approach answers one of the most common questions in CTV media buying: “Where is my audience actually watching?” By spreading spend across multiple environments with consistent creative, you let the data tell you where to double down. The insights from this split are incredibly actionable — you walk away knowing exactly which platforms deliver the best CPM, completion rate, and downstream site traffic for your client’s specific audience.
This model also helps agencies build platform-specific benchmarks for different verticals. Over time, your agency builds a proprietary knowledge base that gives you a competitive edge when pitching new clients in similar industries.
Split #3: The Audience-Layered Testing Framework
The third proven CTV budget split shifts focus from platforms to audiences. This model is best for agencies working with clients who have complex or multi-segment target audiences — think retail brands targeting both millennials and Gen X, or healthcare advertisers trying to reach both patients and caregivers.
How the Audience-Layered CTV Split Works
In this framework, you hold platform and creative constant while varying audience targeting segments. The budget is divided based on audience priority and estimated size:
- Segment A (50%) — Core Customer Profile: Your highest-value, most-defined audience. This might be first-party CRM data matched to CTV households, or a third-party data segment that closely mirrors your best customers.
- Segment B (30%) — Lookalike or Expansion Audience: Audiences modeled to resemble your core customers. This tests whether you can cost-effectively reach a broader pool without sacrificing relevance.
- Segment C (20%) — Contextual or Interest-Based: Audiences defined by the content they watch rather than who they are demographically. For example, targeting households that regularly watch home improvement content for a home goods brand.
Advanced Layering Options
Within each segment, you can further layer targeting to add granularity:
- Geographic layering: Test performance in DMA markets where the brand has strong retail presence vs. weaker markets
- Device type layering: Compare performance on Smart TVs vs. streaming sticks vs. gaming consoles
- Daypart layering: Test primetime (8–11 PM) vs. daytime (12–5 PM) to find when your audience is most receptive
- Frequency layering: Test different frequency caps (3x/week vs. 7x/week) to find the sweet spot between awareness and fatigue
Why This Model Wins Fast
The audience-layered approach is particularly powerful because audience quality often matters more than platform in CTV. Finding the right audience on a mid-tier platform will outperform reaching the wrong audience on a premium one. This model helps agencies demonstrate sophisticated, data-driven targeting capabilities — a major differentiator when competing for client budgets against less specialized competitors.
How to Measure CTV Campaign Success During Testing
One of the persistent challenges in CTV advertising is measurement. Unlike search or social media, CTV doesn’t have a native click-through mechanism. Attribution requires a more sophisticated approach. Here are the primary measurement tools and methodologies you should deploy during test campaigns:
Brand Lift Studies
Brand lift studies survey exposed and unexposed audiences to measure the impact of CTV ads on brand awareness, ad recall, purchase intent, and brand favorability. Most major CTV platforms offer built-in brand lift measurement. These are especially useful for upper-funnel campaigns. – Why 98% CTV Delivery Benchmarks Expose 3 Proposal Lies
Pixel-Based Attribution
By placing conversion pixels on a client’s website, you can track whether households exposed to CTV ads are more likely to visit the site, complete a form, or make a purchase. This requires a household IP matching approach and is best executed through a sophisticated DSP or measurement partner like iSpot.tv, EDO, or Innovid.
Matched Market Testing
Run CTV campaigns in select markets while holding back similar markets as control groups. Compare performance metrics between exposed and unexposed markets to calculate incremental lift attributable to CTV. This is considered one of the most rigorous measurement methodologies available.
Key Metrics to Track
- Video Completion Rate (VCR): Percentage of ads watched to completion — benchmark is 85%+
- CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): Evaluate efficiency across platforms and audience segments
- Reach and Frequency: Are you reaching enough unique households, and how often?
- Site Visit Rate (SVR): Percentage of exposed households that visit the advertiser’s site
- Incremental Conversions: Conversions driven by CTV exposure above baseline
- Brand Lift Metrics: Awareness, recall, and purchase intent shifts
Common Mistakes Agencies Make with CTV Test Budgets
Even experienced media buyers make costly errors when setting up CTV test campaigns. Avoiding these pitfalls is just as important as implementing the right strategies.
Mistake #1: Spreading Budget Too Thin
Dividing a $15,000 test budget across 10 different platforms or audience segments will give you inconclusive data from every cell. Concentrate your spend enough to reach statistical significance in each test variable. (Learn more about ctv)
Mistake #2: Changing Multiple Variables Simultaneously
If you change the platform, creative, audience, and flight dates all at once, you’ll never know what actually moved the needle. Isolate your variables. Change one thing at a time for clean, actionable data.
Mistake #3: Ignoring Creative Quality
CTV is a premium, full-screen, sound-on environment. Repurposing a low-quality pre-roll video or a 6-second bumper ad designed for mobile will underperform dramatically. Invest in CTV-native creative — 15 or 30-second ads that are visually engaging and tell a complete story even without audio.
Mistake #4: Setting Unrealistic Expectations
CTV is primarily an upper and mid-funnel channel. Expecting last-click direct response conversion rates comparable to paid search will lead to disappointment. Frame client expectations around awareness, reach, and brand lift — with downstream attribution as a secondary signal.
Mistake #5: Not Establishing a Pre-Test Baseline
Before running your CTV test, document baseline metrics: organic site traffic, branded search volume, conversion rates. Without a baseline, you can’t accurately measure the incremental impact of your CTV campaign.
Scaling CTV Budgets After a Successful Test
Once your test campaign delivers meaningful results, the next challenge is translating those findings into a compelling case for increased investment. Here’s a structured approach to CTV budget scaling that agencies can use to move clients from test to full-scale campaigns:
Step 1: Build a Clear Test Results Report
Document every metric from the test phase, comparing actual performance against your pre-defined KPIs. Use visual charts and graphs to make the data accessible to non-technical stakeholders. Highlight wins clearly and address underperformance honestly — clients respect transparency.
Step 2: Identify Top-Performing Variables
From your test data, determine which platform, audience segment, and creative combination delivered the best outcomes. These become the foundation of your scaled campaign structure. Eliminate underperformers and reallocate that budget to proven winners.
Step 3: Build a Phased Scaling Roadmap
- Phase 1 (Months 1–2): Scale winning test configuration with 2–3x budget increase. Add one new variable to test.
- Phase 2 (Months 3–4): Integrate CTV with complementary channels — digital audio, display retargeting, or paid social — to create a full-funnel strategy.
- Phase 3 (Months 5–6): Optimize toward advanced measurement (brand lift + site visits + incremental conversions) and explore addressable CTV opportunities using first-party data.
Step 4: Lock in Annual Commitments for Better Rates
Once a client is confident in CTV performance, negotiate annual programmatic guaranteed deals with preferred publishers. Year-long commitments typically unlock lower CPMs, priority inventory access, and value-added measurement tools.
Final Thoughts: Building a Repeatable CTV Testing System
The agencies that win in CTV advertising aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets — they’re the ones with the most disciplined testing systems. The three budget split models outlined in this article — the 70/20/10 Discovery Model, the Platform-First Diversification Split, and the Audience-Layered Testing Framework — give your agency a structured, repeatable playbook for generating fast wins in CTV.
Each model serves a different strategic purpose:
- Use the 70/20/10 model when you need to balance risk with innovation for a first-time CTV client
- Use the Platform-First split when you need to understand where your audience lives across the fragmented streaming landscape
- Use the Audience-Layered framework when precise targeting and audience quality are the primary performance drivers
By building a systematic CTV testing practice, your agency creates compounding value over time. Every test teaches you something. Every campaign makes you smarter. And as your CTV knowledge base grows, so does your ability to deliver results — and command premium retainers.
CTV is not a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in how audiences consume content, and it’s increasingly central to how advertisers reach them. Agencies that develop rigorous, data-driven CTV testing capabilities today will have an enormous competitive advantage as budgets continue to shift from linear TV to streaming. The time to build your CTV testing playbook is now — and these three proven budget splits are the perfect starting point.
