GeoEdge & Beeler.Tech
As content and advertising continue to merge in the streaming era, viewer expectations are climbing and CTV publishers are under pressure to deliver not just premium programming, but premium ad experiences.
As the industry matures, one reality is impossible to ignore: The ad experience is the viewer experience.
“Viewers have higher expectations than ever for the content they consume and want high-quality ad experiences that match the premium content they’re watching.”– Nicole Scaglione, VP OTT and CTV, PubMatic
Today’s viewers aren’t just passive observers, they're active participants in shaping what modern TV means. And when it comes to advertising, they expect relevance, respect, and above all, safety.
Ads as Part of the Content Journey
This shift in viewer sentiment is challenging the CTV ecosystem to rethink how ads are delivered, evaluated, and optimized. It's not enough for an ad to just "run"—it needs to fit.
“Across CTV, an ad doesn’t just reach one person, it commands the whole room. One offensive, low-quality, or jarring ad hijacks the moment, breaks immersion, and leaves a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons. The ad doesn’t interrupt the experience. It becomes the experience.” – Tali Bakshi, CCO, GeoEdge
And when it doesn’t? The damage isn’t minor. It fractures trust, hurts engagement, and leads to revenue leakage.
"Ads play such a big role in the viewer's content journey. When they’re irrelevant, disruptive, or feel out of place, they don’t just frustrate the viewer, they also break trust with the platform delivering them.” – Samantha Giaver, Head of Sales US, Relevant Digital
Outdated Operations, Modern Expectations
Despite these high stakes, ad quality operations remain clunky. Many publishers still rely on manual reviews and subjective calls, making it nearly impossible to scale ad safety and user experience efficiently. These inefficiencies dominate a process that should be seamless and smart.
Poor contextual alignment. Jarring autoplay. Incompatible formats. These aren't minor annoyances, they're serious failures that erode platform loyalty and degrade inventory value.
“For years, ad ops teams have thrown people at the problem — building internal teams, outsourcing QA, anything to keep up with creative volume. But now that AI is finally ready for prime time, we can rethink that model completely. Technology improves the viewer experience, and finally brings real scale to a process that’s long been stuck in the past.” – Lauren Farber, Founder of LFG Solutions | Formerly at Netflix, Roku, Hulu & Disney
Playing It Right on CTV
Yet when ad breaks do work when they’re relevant, well-placed, and non-intrusive—they become part of the entertainment flow, offering value rather than distraction.
What we’ve seen play out on the web and in-app has taught us a valuable lesson: once trust is broken, it’s hard to rebuild. Web publishers learned this the hard way, losing users over auto-redirect scams, malicious code, and NSFW creative sneaking past review. In-app platforms have fought the same battle, working to restore player loyalty after ad crashes, audio spikes, and disruptive interstitials led to churn.
CTV can’t afford to follow the same playbook.
To build it right from the start, ad experiences on CTV must be engineered for quality, not just scale. This means learning from other channels and baking in real-time detection, creative integrity checks, and UX safeguards as defaults—not afterthoughts.
There’s more to cover. If you’re all about making CTV ad ops smoother and securing the viewer experience, stay in the conversation with us.
Drop a note: Alisha.rosen@geoedge.com