YouTube is close to reaching a tipping point in TV advertising.
Google has been coveting lucrative TV ad budgets for more than a decade. But despite stats showing that an increasing amount of YouTube viewing takes place on TV sets in the living room, its ad sellers faced a hurdle. Many advertisers and agencies classified YouTube as “online video” or “social media,” treating it as a separate part of the media plan from TV.
With TV ad spending expected to reach $167.4 billion globally in 2026, per ad giant WPP Media, these budget classifications were holding YouTube back from capturing a crucial segment of the ad market.
Two new research studies released this month suggest those barriers are coming down.
A survey of 288 media agency professionals in the US and UK, conducted by the video ad platform Pixability, found that 62% of US agencies and 85% of UK agencies plan to include YouTube in their connected-TV ad buys this year.
In the same survey, 69% of US agencies and 80% of UK agencies predicted they would use YouTube for more connected-TV, or CTV, campaigns this year than last.
A separate study, based on actual ad spending data from clients of the marketing firm Tinuiti, found that 67% of the US YouTube campaigns purchased on its platform in the fourth quarter of 2025 were attributed to TV screens.
“We’re very close to a tipping point where more traditional TV budgets start flowing to YouTube,” Brian Binder, senior innovation and growth director at Tinuiti, told Business Insider.
Live and kicking
While YouTube has been the top streamer for over two years, brands are paying more attention to how the platform has evolved from primarily on-demand viewing to a live TV destination, Binder said.
Take the September Chiefs vs. Chargers football game in São Paulo, which reached an average-minute audience of 19.7 million viewers across 230 countries, according to YouTube. That figure — a measure of how many people were watching the broadcast at any given minute — included 18.5 million viewers in the US, per the TV ratings firm Nielsen. YouTube said ad inventory for the game sold out within the first two weeks of opening sales to brands. Advertisers included Verizon, Inspire Brands, and the electric vehicle maker Lucid.
And further down the line, YouTube has agreed to stream the Oscars, starting in 2029.
“In this era of entertainment, YouTube is a brand’s best bet for staying relevant,” Google’s president of Americas and global partners, Sean Downey, said in a statement to Business Insider. “YouTube has original content viewers love, the trusted creators who are driving culture forward, and the innovative ad solutions that deliver results advertisers can’t find elsewhere.”
Digital ad platforms like Google, Amazon, and Meta covet TV advertising budgets because they represent prestige brand spending and cultural impact. TV ads are priced at a premium to traditional digital display ads because they offer full-screen real estate that is often watched to the end rather than skipped.
Major events like the Super Bowl attract millions of dollars for just 30 seconds of airtime because they are one of the few mass-reach destinations where millions of people are watching at the same time, and there are only a finite number of spots available.
The legacy structure of the ad buying market means advertisers often commit to TV ad buys upfront, which gives media companies greater revenue certainty, pricing power, and leverage in content and financial planning.
Why YouTube’s TV pitch still has cracks
The YouTube-TV comparison isn’t entirely apples-to-apples.
Kate Scott-Dawkins, global head of business intelligence at WPP Media, said that while it’s been common in the US and UK for advertisers to look at YouTube alongside CTV for some time, in other markets “traditional silos remain intact.”
And while YouTube is increasingly watched on the TV set, much of the user-generated content uploaded to the platform isn’t made-for-TV quality.
Lindsey Clay, CEO of the UK TV marketing body Thinkbox, told Business Insider that while YouTube wants TV’s reputation — and many TV companies put their content on YouTube — the two media are “worlds apart” in important ways for advertisers.
“TV is fully regulated, all content is pre-vetted by humans to ensure quality and safety for viewers and advertisers,” Clay said. Plus, she added, “There are no scam ads on TV.”
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