CTV is having a moment. Brands are shifting budgets, streaming audiences are growing, and the big screen is genuinely compelling real estate. The catch? Not all CTV ad placements are created equal — and the format you choose matters as much as the inventory you’re buying.
The good news: better creative doesn’t have to mean a bigger production budget. Here’s a breakdown of CTV ad formats worth knowing, along with what the data actually says about what works.
1. CTV Spots (Standard In-Stream Video)
The baseline. Standard 15- or 30-second video ads delivered in-stream across premium CTV supply. When paired with curated, brand-safe environments and audience targeting, CTV Spots are the reach engine that anchors a full-funnel strategy.
The real uplift comes when they don’t run alone — more on that below.
2. Enhanced CTV Spots
Same placement as a standard spot, meaningfully different ad experience. Enhanced Spots wrap existing creative in interactive, designed formats that feel more like content than commercial breaks.
The results bear that out: 3.6x higher brand awareness for enhanced spots versus industry standard, and a +30% increase in purchase intent versus non-enhanced CTV spots. If brand recall is the KPI, Enhanced Spots are where the work happens.
3. Pause Ads
Here’s the format most planners aren’t talking about enough. Pause Ads appear when a viewer presses pause — a non-intrusive, 100% viewable placement that catches people in a genuinely attentive moment.
The numbers: +24% higher brand lift versus CTV pre-roll, with an average pause length of 3+ minutes and 6 million total pause moments per day. TripleLift builds these from existing assets, no new production required, with mocks delivered in hours.
Available across DIRECTV, Philo, Plex, FutureToday, FloSports, and Hearst, among others.
4. Social to CTV
Your best-performing social creative probably deserves a bigger screen. Social to CTV transforms existing vertical video — a :15 or :30 from TikTok or Instagram — into an interactive CTV experience, delivered programmatically as a VAST tag.
3.6x higher brand awareness for enhanced spots (including Social to CTV) versus industry standard. It’s one of the more practical answers to the “our clients don’t have TV production budgets” problem.
5. Product Spotlight Ads
Product Spotlight formats layer product imagery and messaging alongside in-stream content, creating a more immersive brand moment without requiring a full video overhaul.
These formats drive a +33% rise in unaided brand recall when used alongside non-enhanced placements — a meaningful lift for brands trying to make a new product or campaign message stick.
6. QR Spots
For brands that need CTV to do more than build awareness, QR Spots close the loop. A scannable QR code within the ad unit creates a direct path from big screen to conversion — and they’ve shown a +30% increase in purchase intent versus non-enhanced CTV spots.
For DTC brands and regional retailers especially, this is a format worth testing.
7. CTV Spots + Enhanced CTV: The Combination Effect
This one isn’t a single format — it’s the strategy that multiplies everything above.
Running CTV Spots and Enhanced CTV formats together produces outcomes that neither achieves alone: 8x more brand awareness and 6x higher consideration when combining in-break CTV Spots and in-show enhanced ads. Across full-funnel tactics, campaigns have seen +157% better ROAS.
The implication is straightforward: reach is table stakes. The formats that earn attention and drive recall are the ones that make the media budget defensible.
What This Means for Your CTV Strategy
The CTV ecosystem has opened up meaningful opportunities for brands that don’t want to wait for the upfronts. TripleLift’s supply network spans 5,000+ direct publisher relationships — Roku, Samsung, DIRECTV, Tubi, Warner Bros. Discovery, FOX, and more — with creative formats built from existing assets, audience targeting, and measurement all available in one place.
A Forrester study put the three-year ROI of the TripleLift platform at 272%. That’s not just ad recall. That’s budget defense.
Ready to build your CTV strategy? Talk to a TripleLift rep to identify your first test campaign and the right format mix to get started.
