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Fragmentation in the media landscape, once a hurdle to overcome, is now being strategically engineered into a powerful opportunity. This pivotal installment in a groundbreaking series marks the culmination of a multi-year strategic roadmap, where innovation and intentionality converge to redefine the very essence of the "Big Screen" experience for advertisers and consumers alike. The industry is witnessing a significant shift, moving beyond managing fragmented digital video buys to architecting a cohesive and high-performance ecosystem.
The Innovation: Integrating Broadcast Content as a Critical Pillar
Driven by an unwavering commitment to pioneering experimentation, a leading agency has achieved a significant first by technically facilitating and testing the integration of Broadcaster Video On Demand (BVOD), specifically Sky’s content, into the DV360 ecosystem. This breakthrough paved the way for an industry-first Unified Connected TV (CTV) buy. This innovative approach consolidates various premium video content sources—including BVOD (such as Sky), Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) from platforms like Netflix and Disney+, and Advertising-funded Video On Demand (AVOD) from YouTube—into a single, high-performance buying engine. This unified platform allows advertisers to manage and optimize their entire digital video strategy from one central hub, a significant departure from previous siloed approaches.
The evolution of this strategy can be traced through a series of impactful initiatives. In May 2025, the initial paper in this series explored early unified buying strategies within DV360, integrating Netflix and YouTube. This demonstrated the potential to cut through fragmentation, delivering efficiency and effectiveness, and bringing the power of digital advertising to the home’s largest screen. Building on this success, the second paper in August 2025 expanded this unified buying to include Broadcaster YouTube, capitalizing on the impact of major broadcast moments within a single, dynamic campaign. The latest development, however, marks the integration of the long-standing "missing pillar" of broadcast content.
The Evidence: Unified CTV Proves Bigger and Better
A landmark campaign executed in partnership with Simply Business exemplifies the tangible benefits of this unified approach. By replacing disparate, siloed digital buys with a single, integrated entry point, the results were definitive and compelling. This strategic consolidation aimed to leverage the strengths of each platform while mitigating the inefficiencies of fragmented spending.
The core hypothesis was that a unified approach, encompassing BVOD, SVOD, and AVOD within a single DV360 ecosystem, would deliver significant improvements across key performance indicators. Specifically, the campaign sought to:
- Amplify Reach: Achieve greater total reach and incremental reach beyond traditional linear TV campaigns.
- Enhance Efficiency: Maintain or improve cost-efficiency despite the broader scope of the campaign.
- Drive Impact: Demonstrate measurable impact on brand metrics and business objectives.
The approach involved securing individual deals with Sky, Netflix, and Disney+ directly within DV360. These placements were meticulously aligned with Simply Business’s existing brand strategy and linear TV activity to ensure a cohesive and unified brand message. These premium content integrations were then housed within a single campaign alongside YouTube, with all inventory restricted to big-screen CTV devices. This created an unprecedented unified footprint, fundamentally transforming the campaign management workflow. What would have typically been managed as six separate, siloed campaigns was streamlined into just two: Linear TV and Unified CTV. This consolidation provided real-time oversight and management of the digital video component.
The campaign’s total reach was staggering, connecting with 5.1 million individuals within the target audience. Crucially, this reach was largely incremental to the existing linear TV baseline, with only a 6% overlap. This indicates a highly effective expansion into new audience segments. The Unified CTV test significantly scaled reach among younger demographics, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, who have increasingly migrated to on-demand and streaming services. The campaign delivered twice the reach among 25-34 year olds compared to linear TV alone. While linear TV maintained stronger reach among older demographics (55-64 year olds), the unified approach effectively complemented this by tapping into the audiences of each partner and maximizing effectiveness.
Furthermore, the methodology proved highly effective in delivering incremental reach, with an estimated 4.5 million incremental impressions. The integration of BVOD as the "missing piece" of the unified puzzle proved instrumental in reaching the target audience across some of the biggest and best content available. Every element of the plan, from the unified partners to linear TV, performed robustly, offering unique opportunities to reach and engage with the audience that other channels did not.
The Implications: Establishing a New Standard for Total TV
The success of the Simply Business mission signals a fundamental shift for the advertising industry. It proves that the complexity inherent in the digital migration is not an insurmountable challenge but a problem that can be effectively solved through strategic integration. By unifying the world’s most premium content into a single, data-driven view, the industry has moved beyond treating "digital video" as an optional add-on. This initiative has effectively established a new standard for "Total TV"—a paradigm where brands can command a dominant presence in the modern living room, leveraging the immense scale of broadcast television with the surgical precision of digital targeting. This represents not merely a new method of media buying, but a demonstrably superior pathway to business growth.
The implications for advertisers are profound:
- The Future of Total TV is Now: The immense total and incremental reach achieved through the Unified CTV test, alongside the complementary nature of each digital channel, underscores the scalability and importance of this approach. Continued experimentation with more broadcasters, OEMs, and streaming services will unlock further opportunities to connect with target audiences.
- Shifting Media Scales: The gradual but persistent digital migration is reshaping the media landscape. While a strong linear TV foundation remains valuable, the immense scale of digital offers the widest opportunity to target most demographics. Combining digital targeting with the transparency and accountability of digital platforms represents a significant advantage. For some brands, a digital-first or digital-only TV campaign may now be the optimal strategy, depending on their objectives and target audience.
- The Power of Unified Buying is Undeniable: The success of these case studies is largely attributed to the conditions created by the Unified Buy. It facilitates the collective leveraging of each partner’s effectiveness by providing a single, consolidated view of the target audience. Programmatic trading principles are applied, optimizing towards the best outcomes. Any advertiser not currently engaging in some form of Unified CTV buying is missing a significant opportunity.
- Enhanced Performance Through Dynamic Optimization: The advanced targeting and measurement solutions within CTV offer more than just granular reporting. The dynamic nature of digital allows for real-time optimization of campaigns based on audience response, consumption habits, and reach enhancement, all within the same budget. This level of in-flight optimization is simply not possible with traditional linear TV.
The Evolving Landscape of Total TV: From Linear Dominance to Digital Integration
For years, linear television served as the undisputed king of mass reach—a reliable, scalable, impactful, and cost-effective channel for connecting with audiences on the big screen. While linear TV still commands significant reach, its dominance is demonstrably waning, with Connected TV (CTV) experiencing robust growth. As viewers seamlessly navigate between diverse streaming services and platforms, their attention has increasingly gravitated towards digital content. However, this digital consumption remains highly fragmented.
Today, content is the primary driver of audience focus, with an unprecedented array of choices spanning live TV, sports, video streaming, on-demand services, and premium YouTube channels. This leads to highly personalized and varied viewing habits, differing from person to person and day to day. As audiences continue their migration towards CTV, and advertising opportunities on these platforms proliferate, the ability to identify and reach them through digital channels has become increasingly scaled, yet also increasingly complex. This fragmentation has long been a reality for advertisers and agencies, necessitating strategies to cut through the noise and fully capitalize on the opportunities presented by CTV.
Transforming Fragmentation from Barrier to Opportunity
Throughout this ongoing series, a consistent theme has emerged: advertisers and agencies can transform the fragmentation challenge into a high-performance opportunity through the strategic implementation of Unified Buying. The evolution of this strategy has been a deliberate journey, marked by key milestones:
- May 2025: The initial paper explored early unified buying within DV360, integrating SVOD (Netflix) and AVOD (YouTube). This foundational work demonstrated the potential for increased efficiency, effectiveness, and the application of digital advertising’s power to the big screen.
- August 2025: The second paper expanded this unified approach to include Broadcaster YouTube. This phase capitalized on the draw and impact of major broadcast moments, integrating them into dynamic, single campaigns.
- The Present: The current installment introduces the integration of BVOD, specifically Sky content, into the unified ecosystem, addressing a critical gap in the previous strategies.
The visual landscape of television viewing continues its rapid transformation. The average digital share of total weekly TV viewing has surged by 16% over the past two years, with this growth primarily coming at the expense of linear viewership. Across all demographic segments, less traditional digital avenues are expanding their footprint, resulting in a diverse and fragmented viewing experience for both consumers and marketers.
As an agency keenly observing the shifting balance within Total TV, significant value and performance have been realized through Unified Buying in CTV. Users are dedicating more of their time to Digital TV, and with the increasing availability of advertising opportunities on these platforms, relying solely on CTV to reach target audiences is becoming a viable strategy. However, one critical pillar of the UK viewing experience—BVOD—had remained somewhat siloed and elusive. Until now.
BVOD represents a substantial portion of reach for numerous demographics. The integration of the UK’s premium broadcasters into the programmatic ecosystem is not a random occurrence; it’s a direct response to a "perfect storm" of audience migration and unprecedented advertiser demand. From DSP integrations to the announcement of their own unified marketplaces, the current moment represents a tipping point. This makes it a crucial time to test the scale and impact of consolidating CTV into a single, Unified Buy. This is precisely what was achieved through a pilot test with the partner Which?.
The Pilot: A DV360 First for Sky Integration
The initiation of the pilot program was spurred by an opportunistic email: "We are nearly there with DV360, fancy testing something this side of Xmas?" The challenge, received just one week before Christmas, was precisely the kind of demanding scenario that the agency thrives on. Fortunately, the agency partners with ambitious clients who are equally keen to push boundaries. Kat Chinnock, Head of Brand & Comms Planning at Which?, readily embraced the opportunity.
The objectives of the pilot were clear: to test the technical feasibility of buying Sky Digital Linear and BVOD through DV360 and to evaluate its effectiveness in terms of reach and incremental impact. The core questions were simple: could this integration be achieved, and if so, would it deliver meaningful results?
The verdict was overwhelmingly positive: it is now possible to buy Sky Digital Linear & BVOD through DV360, and it works exceptionally well. A remarkable 80% of the reach achieved with Sky’s activity through DV360 was entirely incremental to the existing linear TV campaign, signifying the ability to connect with previously unreachable customers. This pilot, born from curiosity rather than a pre-existing campaign, not only proved technically viable but also significantly enhanced the linear baseline with remarkable success.
Beyond incremental reach, the pilot offered new programmatic buying capabilities. For the agency’s programmatic team, this marked their first experience buying TV content in this manner, enabling them to serve ads across live sports for the very first time. The campaign effectively incorporated:
- Live TV: The programmatic buying extended beyond BVOD to include Sky Go, Sky Glass, and NOW inventory on CTV devices, enabling reach to users watching live television. The campaign split was 25% Digital Linear and 75% BVOD.
- Live Sport: Within the Live TV component, the campaign served ads during live sporting events, including the Women’s Super League and the EFL.
- Premium Content: The campaign capitalized on the immense demand and viewership for highly popular content, such as episodes 4 and 5 of "Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," which achieved record-breaking ratings and drove significant reach.
The ability to buy Live TV programmatically in the UK is a long-held aspiration for many veteran programmatic professionals. It signifies the convergence of the best content with programmatic efficiency, merging the scale, trust, and cultural relevance of broadcast with the precision, flexibility, and accountability that digital advertising has always promised.
Crucially, the pilot yielded several key learnings:
- Technical Integration: The successful integration of Sky Linear and BVOD into DV360 opens up new avenues for programmatic TV buying.
- Incremental Reach: The substantial incremental reach achieved demonstrates the power of programmatic CTV to expand campaign effectiveness beyond traditional linear efforts.
- Content Impact: The ability to leverage high-demand content, such as popular series and live sports, proved highly effective in driving engagement and reach.
- Programmatic Evolution: This pilot marks a significant step forward in the evolution of programmatic TV buying, offering unprecedented control and insight.
With these newly established capabilities, the agency was poised to move beyond the pilot phase and test the broader implications of this unified approach.
Testing the New Balance of Total TV
The success of the Which? pilot transformed the conversation from theoretical possibility to tangible reality. By addressing the "missing pillar" of BVOD within DV360, the agency demonstrated that advertisers no longer face an "either/or" choice between the broad scale of traditional TV and the precision of digital. It was proven that broadcaster content could seamlessly integrate into a programmatic ecosystem, providing a clear, holistic view of how modern viewers engage with premium TV content.
The advantages extend beyond simplified reporting; they translate into a more effective approach to audience reach. By proving that BVOD can be unified into a digital environment, the fundamental management of the "Big Screen" at home can be revolutionized. This paper delves into precisely that, building upon the foundational work of previous publications and the technical breakthrough of the Which? pilot. The objective was to ascertain whether this integrated model could deliver at true scale, proving that the convergence of BVOD, SVOD, and AVOD within a single platform could:
- Drive Significant Incremental Reach: Expand audience reach beyond existing linear TV campaigns.
- Enhance Efficiency: Maintain or improve cost-effectiveness while increasing reach.
- Deliver Measurable Business Impact: Translate expanded reach into tangible brand and business outcomes.
To achieve this, a large-scale initiative was required, necessitating a partner with a sophisticated brand strategy and a team bold enough to push the boundaries of modern television advertising. This partner was found in Simply Business, one of the UK’s leading providers of small business insurance. With a compelling television asset, a history of successful linear TV campaigns, and a formidable marketing team unafraid to test and innovate, Simply Business was the ideal collaborator for the first full-scale execution of Unified CTV.
This initiative moved beyond previous integrations by aiming to consolidate the entire on-demand landscape—BVOD, SVOD, and AVOD—within a single DV360 ecosystem. The goal was to elevate the balancing act, not just seeking increased reach, but demonstrating the ability to scale incremental impressions effectively. The aim was to complement Simply Business’s robust linear TV plan while preserving the efficiency that fragmented approaches typically sacrifice. In essence, the campaign sought the "Holy Grail" of Unified Buying: proving that consolidation not only simplifies media plans but amplifies performance.
The Hypothesis
The core hypothesis posited that by moving away from multiple disconnected digital buys and consolidating them into a single, Unified CTV campaign, the overall performance of the media mix could be fundamentally improved. The campaign set out to prove that a BVOD, SVOD, and AVOD Unified campaign could deliver three key outcomes:
- Increased Incremental Reach: A significant uplift in reach beyond the existing linear TV baseline.
- Improved Efficiency: A more cost-effective way to achieve reach compared to fragmented digital buys.
- Enhanced Campaign Performance: Demonstrable positive impact on key performance indicators such as brand recall and purchase intent.
The Approach
The campaign secured individual deals with Sky, Netflix, and Disney+ directly within DV360, aligning these premium placements with Simply Business’s existing brand strategy and linear activity for a cohesive presence. These integrations were then housed in a single campaign alongside YouTube, all restricted to big-screen CTV inventory. This created a unified footprint at a scale never before attempted. This approach streamlined the workflow dramatically, reducing what would typically be six separate, siloed campaigns into just two: Linear and Unified CTV. This centralized management allowed for real-time oversight and balance of the digital video component.
"Simply The Best" Way of Reaching Our Audience
The results in terms of total reach were exceptionally impressive, connecting with 5.1 million members of the target audience. Furthermore, the campaign successfully reached highly incremental audiences compared to the linear TV baseline, exhibiting a surprisingly low overlap of just 6%. This indicates a highly effective expansion into new audience segments.
The Unified CTV test went far beyond simply scaling well. It effectively captured audiences missed by the linear campaign, particularly lighter TV viewers, Gen Z, and Millennials. It delivered twice the reach of 25-34 year olds compared to linear TV, aligning with the demographic shift towards on-demand and streaming. While linear TV maintained higher reach among older demographics, the Unified CTV approach effectively scaled reach for Simply Business’s target audience on top of their existing linear baseline by tapping into the audience reach of each partner and maximizing effectiveness through unified buying.
Was the Unified Methodology Effective?
The synergy of partners collaborating in a unified buy was evident in the staggering 4.5 million incremental reach delivered by the campaign. Understanding the effectiveness of this new unified buy as a whole was a primary objective. BVOD was integrated as the "missing piece of the Unified puzzle," capitalizing on its opportunity to reach the target audience across some of the biggest and best content. This proved highly successful.
In fact, every single element of the plan, from the unified partners to linear TV, held its own, providing significant scale against the target audience and unique opportunities for engagement that others did not. This suggests that the future of digital TV buying may indeed lie in this unified approach.
This data, derived from DV360’s upgraded Cross Media Reach (XMR) reporting, offered an unprecedented level of granularity and sophistication in analyzing the results of a TV plan and the interaction between various partners. The insights gained underscore the importance of utilizing such data to inform better decisions and enhance campaign effectiveness, regardless of the buying platform used for Unified CTV campaigns.
The low overlaps observed between partners, initially counterintuitive, were a deliberate and actively managed outcome by the programmatic team. The campaign’s objective was to maximize incremental reach, and through live XMR reporting and in-platform frequency controls, partner overlap was minimized. This forced partners to focus on reaching exclusive users, resulting in over 120,000 additional users reached for the same media budget.
The critical takeaway is the ability to optimize and make effective decisions. While various platforms and tools can be used for Unified CTV campaigns, DV360’s strength lies in its campaign data accessibility for mid-flight optimizations. This approach avoids the limitations of managing five disparate buys independently, allowing for a cohesive push in a singular direction. Visibility fuels optimization, and optimization drives outcomes. Beyond cross-partner frequency management, several key optimizations were implemented:
Finding the Right Total Frequency
An initial optimization focused on frequency. Simply Business’s advertisement was highly impactful and driving strong recall at a lower-than-usual frequency. This insight was used to tighten frequency, with the theory being that the freed-up budget could be reallocated to find more users at an effective frequency, thereby driving higher overall ad recall. This strategy proved successful.
Maximizing Campaign Outcomes Beyond Reach
Further analysis revealed that a specific demographic was responding exceptionally well to the advertisement and was comparatively under-exposed by the linear campaign. The Unified Engine was then strategically focused to find as many of these users as possible. This contributed to a significant impact on intent, resulting in an 18% search lift for the campaign.
Did All That Reach Have Any Impact?
The campaign’s results were overwhelmingly positive. It worked in tandem with the broader Simply Business plan, achieving its performance objectives, and providing invaluable learning. The confidence in Unified CTV as a powerful component of the future of Total TV has been solidified.
Michael Garvey, Director of Brand and Communications at Simply Business UK, commented: "At Simply Business, we know our creative is working hard to set us apart, so the task for us is to expose more of our target audience to our ‘Simply The Best’ ad – ensuring that when SMEs and landlords need tailored business insurance, ‘Simply Business’ is the first name they remember. Our CTV test with Brainlabs allowed us to do exactly that – making the most of an innovative new way of buying digital AV to drive efficient and incremental reach. While our linear TV plan continues to lay a strong foundation for the Simply Business brand, this industry-first test has helped us scale our campaign to new audiences, proving the power of a unified media strategy."
So What Does All of This Mean for Advertisers?
1. The Future of Total TV is Now: The immense total and incremental reach achieved, coupled with the complementary nature of each digital channel, underscores the scalability and importance of Unified CTV in reaching audiences. Continuous experimentation with more broadcasters, OEMs, and streaming services will unlock new opportunities.
2. The Scales are Tipping: The digital migration is a gradual but undeniable trend. While a strong linear foundation remains valuable, the sheer scale of digital presents the widest opportunity to target most demographics. Reaching them in an environment enriched with digital controls, visibility, and targeting is a significant improvement. For some brands, a digital-first or digital-only TV campaign may now be the optimal strategy, depending on objectives and target audience.
3. The Power of Unified is Real: The successful scale and impact are largely credited to the conditions created by the Unified Buy. It facilitates leveraging the effectiveness of each partner collectively, providing a single view of the target audience. Programmatic trading principles are applied to optimize towards the best outcomes. If advertisers are not engaging in some form of Unified CTV buying, they are missing a significant opportunity.
4. You Can Make it Perform Better: Advanced targeting and measurement solutions in CTV offer more than just granular reporting. The dynamic nature of digital allows for real-time optimization of campaigns based on audience response, consumption habits, and reach enhancement, all within the same budget. This in-flight optimization capability is a distinct advantage over linear TV.
And… What’s Coming Next?
While this series has explored a compelling trilogy of advancements, the dynamic nature of CTV suggests that the conversation is far from over. Continuous publisher launches and integrations, platform updates, data integrations, format evolutions, and new measurement opportunities emerge daily.
Current Top 3 Things to Get Excited About in CTV:
- The World Cup: Major sporting tournaments create dynamic consumption environments where digital campaigns can thrive. Extended viewing windows and digital coverage will make this a significant CTV event.
- Shoppable CTV: The integration of shoppable features, whether through QR codes or remote control purchases, is driving sales and represents a significant emerging opportunity.
- Sponsorships: Streaming giants like Netflix and Disney are effectively leveraging sponsorships of movies, TV series, genres, and live sporting events, bringing the impactful statement of traditional TV into the CTV world.
The journey towards a unified and optimized Total TV landscape is ongoing, driven by innovation and a clear understanding of evolving consumer behavior. The demonstrated success of integrated strategies marks a pivotal moment, promising greater efficiency, broader reach, and ultimately, superior growth for advertisers.
