Connected TV (CTV) advertising is no longer a niche channel. In 2026, US CTV ad spend is estimated to be over $29 billion. With that much budget in play, choosing the right platform matters, but comparing them isn’t straightforward.
The term “CTV advertising platform” can mean very different things, from demand-side platforms (DSPs), where you actually buy media, to more specialized curation platforms that package and optimize inventory before it reaches a DSP.
Both play an important role depending on what you need and where you are in your CTV advertising journey, but it’s hard to evaluate your options when you don’t know what separates them.
That’s why this review covers what each type of platform does, what to look for, and how to choose the right one for your needs, with each platform below clearly labeled by type so you can cleanly compare them on consistent criteria.
Here is a quick summary of the platforms in this review:
CTV Advertising Platform | Type | Best For |
Splash Bay Media | Curation / Supply-Path Optimization Platform | Agencies and brands that want a hands-on curation partner with direct publisher access and vertical-specific packages for sports and political advertising. |
Keynes | DSP / Ad-Buying Platform | Mid-size and growth brands that want a full-service CTV partner with a strategic point of view, rather than a self-serve platform alone. |
MNTN | DSP / Ad-Buying Platform | DTC and performance-driven brands that want a self-serve entry point into CTV without needing existing TV creative or programmatic experience. |
Marketing Architects | DSP / Managed TV & CTV Ad-Buying Platform | Brands that want a single agency partner to buy and measure both linear TV and CTV together, rather than piecing together separate self-serve tools for each. |
Roku Ads Manager (Roku OneView) | DSP Platform | Advertisers who want strong, direct access to Roku's own inventory and audience data alongside broader cross-channel programmatic buying. |
Audigent | Curation Platform | Brands and agencies that need cookieless, identity-based targeting at scale across a broad publisher network. |
Simulmedia | DSP / Ad-Buying Platform | Advertisers who want a hybrid of managed service and self-serve buying across both linear and CTV, particularly for reaching audiences harder to find on traditional TV alone. |
Multilocal | Curation Platform | Agencies and brands running programmatic campaigns across multiple countries who want one partner instead of several regional ones. |
Jamloop | DSP / Ad-Buying Platform | Agencies and multi-location brands (franchises, local and regional businesses) that need ZIP-code-level local precision and flexible self-serve, managed, or white-label buying options. |
SWYM | Curation Platform | Brands and agencies that want real-time, algorithmic inventory filtering layered on top of their existing DSP rather than a static curated deal. |
Tatari | DSP / Ad-Buying Platform | Brands and agencies that want unified planning and measurement across linear TV and CTV, not just CTV alone. |
tvScientific | DSP / Ad-Buying Platform | Performance marketers who want to buy CTV strictly on a cost-per-outcome basis and treat TV as a measurable, ROI-driven channel rather than a brand-awareness buy. |
Scroll down for the full reviews, including key features, pros and cons, pricing models and more!
A CTV advertising platform helps advertisers buy, manage, optimize, or curate ad inventory on connected TV. These platforms generally split into two types:
In short, DSPs are where you buy and manage media. Curation platforms help determine which inventory is worth buying.
This video by AdRoll gives a neat overview of CTV and CTV advertising:
The right criteria depend on whether you’re evaluating a DSP or a curation platform, though both overlap on inventory quality and targeting.
For DSPs, look for:
For curation platforms, look for:
For this round-up, we intentionally included a mix of platforms, from full-service DSPs to smaller, curation-focused specialists.
Splash Bay Media is a Los Angeles based CTV curation partner for agencies running programmatic ad buying, working directly with major CTV publishers, FAST channels, and AVOD platforms to skip the usual chain of resellers.
Its AI layer, Brunson, unifies agents, SSPs, publishers, and data partners into one interface for planning and optimizing campaigns.
It also pulls near real-time shopper intent data from 4,000+ websites and roughly 48-50 million monthly visitors, plus dedicated packages for live sports and political campaigns.
Type: Curation / Supply-Path Optimization Platform
Best For: Agencies and brands that want a hands-on curation partner with direct publisher access and vertical-specific packages for sports and political advertising.
One case study credits Splash Bay Media with a 63% revenue increase after adopting Nexxen’s Curated Marketplace, driven by faster access to premium CTV inventory. Read the case study. A client quote on Splash Bay’s own site also credits the team with understanding supply-side inefficiencies before making changes.
Splash Bay Media negotiates custom PMP deals directly with each client, typically priced through bid floors and curation fees layered onto the underlying media cost rather than a flat platform fee.
Website: Splash Bay Media
Keynes Digital is a full-service, tech-as-a-service CTV partner built for mid-size to enterprise brands that want more than a self-serve dashboard.
Its patented AI ingests over 160 billion signals daily to score more than 300 million users, refreshing lookalike audiences in real time and bidding at the impression level to cut waste and lower CPMs.
The company pairs that technology with a hands-on services layer and third-party measurement partners, aiming to bring the transparency and accountability of performance marketing to CTV.
Type: DSP / Full Service Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Mid-size and growth brands that want a full-service CTV partner with a strategic point of view, rather than a self-serve platform alone.
In a case study with apparel brand Faherty, Keynes built a customized targeting and market-holdout strategy that delivered a 3.3:1 ROAS, independently verified through the incrementality platform Measured. Read the case study. A client testimonial from NEST New York credits the switch from a self-service platform to Keynes with access to more data integrations and a stronger strategic point of view than self-service allowed.
Keynes Digital operates as a full-service, tech-as-a-service partner, so pricing is scoped around media spend plus managed service rather than a flat platform fee, and requires a conversation with their team.
Website: Keynes Digital
MNTN is a self-serve CTV platform built to make TV advertising function like a performance channel, comparable to running search or social.
It gives advertisers real-time optimization across 50+ variables daily, plus Verified Visits attribution that filters out conversions not directly tied to CTV exposure.
Its creative arm, QuickFrame, now includes QuickFrame AI 3.0, generating studio-quality commercials in minutes so you don’t need existing TV-ready creative to launch.
Type: DSP / Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: DTC and performance-driven brands that want a self-serve entry point into CTV without needing existing TV creative or programmatic experience.
Pros:
Cons:
MNTN uses a dynamic CPM (dCPM) model: you pay for the ads placed on publisher networks, and MNTN keeps a percentage of that spend as its service fee, with no separate platform license fee.
Feedback from MNTN users points to a platform that strips out much of the overhead of traditional agency-run TV buying, with self-service tools and responsive account support making it easy to track conversions day to day. Read reviews on G2.
Website: MNTN
Marketing Architects is a Minneapolis based, full-service TV advertising agency that treats linear TV and CTV as two forms of the same channel rather than separate buys.
Its proprietary AI media-buying platform, Annika, was built in-house over the past six years specifically to solve TV’s pricing, measurement, and scale challenges, and its newer Annika Audience tool recommends the optimal mix of linear and CTV for each advertiser’s goals.
Because Annika comes with an agency attached, clients get the platform’s pricing efficiency plus hands-on strategy, creative, and measurement expertise, rather than a self-serve tool alone.
Type: DSP / Managed TV & CTV Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Brands that want a single agency partner to buy and measure both linear TV and CTV together, rather than piecing together separate self-serve tools for each.
Marketing Architects’ own results page cites a 5x average ROAS, an 85% average lift in brand awareness, and a 34% average increase in direct traffic across client campaigns. Its CTO has also described Annika as built specifically to challenge default DSP assumptions, like frequency waste and narrow sourcing, rather than running on borrowed infrastructure.
As an agency, Marketing Architects prices campaigns around media spend plus its bundled strategy, creative, and measurement services rather than a separate platform fee, so exact costs require a conversation with the team.
Website: Marketing Architects
Roku Ads Manager, built on the OneView platform (formerly Dataxu, acquired by Roku in 2019), gives advertisers access to Roku’s owned-and-operated inventory alongside a broader demand-side platform for cross-channel buying across CTV, display, mobile, and video.
It leans on Roku’s first-party viewing data from millions of connected devices and claims reach into four in five American homes.
Type: DSP / Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Advertisers who want strong, direct access to Roku’s own inventory and audience data alongside broader cross-channel programmatic buying.
Pros:
Cons:
Roku’s self-serve model, with no long-term contract, lets you set your own campaign budget. Roku bills you based on actual ad spend rather than a separate subscription or platform fee.
Customer feedback consistently highlights ease of use and support quality as strengths, with specific praise for how well the platform handles OTT/CTV buying. Read reviews on G2.
Website: Roku Ads Manager
Audigent is one of the more established names in curation, built around its Hadron ID identity system and a set of PMP products (SmartPMP, ContextualPMP, and CognitivePMP) that package first-party and contextual data with premium inventory.
It supports over 100,000 campaigns a month and counts publishers like Condé Nast, TransUnion, and Warner Music Group among its partners. Where Audigent stands out is scale and cookieless identity resolution. It’s also a curation partner inside Google Ad Manager, which gives it reach that smaller, newer curators haven’t built out yet.
Type: Curation Platform
Best For: Brands and agencies that need cookieless, identity-based targeting at scale across a broad publisher network.
Pros:
Cons:
Audigent’s SmartPMP products are priced through bid floors plus curation fees rather than a subscription or platform fee, which removes the bid-shading and unfavorable auction dynamics that come with layered intermediaries.
Audigent’s case studies point to concrete, named-client results across both retail and CTV campaigns, including how Havas credited Audigent’s SmartPMP approach with outperforming every other partner on Swarovski’s media plan, reaching hard-to-target audience segments at scale while beating the campaign’s click-through benchmark by roughly 4x.
Website: Audigent
Simulmedia is a cross-channel TV advertising platform built around its TV+ product, which uses machine learning to unify planning, buying, and measurement across linear and CTV in one workflow.
Its Cross-Channel Insights feature shows how much of a target audience sits on linear TV, ad-supported CTV, or both, and its Reach Optimizer forecasts reach across budget scenarios. It also extends into gaming audiences through PlayerWON, its monetization platform for free-to-play PC and console games.
Type: DSP / Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Advertisers who want a hybrid of managed service and self-serve buying across both linear and CTV, particularly for reaching audiences harder to find on traditional TV alone.
Pros:
Cons:
Simulmedia operates on a managed-campaign model with a minimum spend threshold. Contact them for a demo and exact pricing.
Independent feedback is currently limited, but the one available review highlights strong communication from account reps, quick to catch and correct campaign errors before they became bigger problems. Read the review on G2.
Website: Simulmedia
Multilocal offers a single point of contact for programmatic digital advertising across markets, removing the geographic complexity that comes with running campaigns through multiple regional partners.
It’s one of the named partners using Nexxen’s Curated Marketplace to package and monetize data-driven deals, alongside Audigent.
Multilocal delivers billions of digital ads annually and maintains partnerships with leading SSPs to support that volume.
Its differentiator is less about a proprietary AI layer and more about simplifying the operational side of running curated deals across multiple countries and supply paths at once.
Type: Curation Platform
Best For: Agencies and brands running programmatic campaigns across multiple countries who want one partner instead of juggling several regional supply relationships.
Pros:
Cons:
As a curation partner operating across multiple regional SSPs, Multilocal’s pricing is negotiated per deal and per market, similar to Audigent and Splash Bay Media.
Multilocal’s own case studies point to real, named campaign results, including how Coca-Cola used Multilocal’s curation service to lift click-through rates by 700% in smaller markets, with the client noting the result exceeded their expectations. American Express used curation to improve conversion and engagement performance in Australia, with the client describing the collaboration as smooth and crediting curation with a meaningful shift in results.
Website: Multilocal
Jamloop is a demand-side platform built specifically for local and multi-location CTV advertising, connecting exposure to real-world outcomes like store visits, calls, and sales rather than stopping at impressions.
It buys direct from 300+ national networks and 800+ local publishers using its own proprietary bidder, analytics engine, and attribution stack, rather than white-labeling third-party technology.
Advertisers can run campaigns self-serve, hand them to Jamloop’s managed team, or white-label the platform entirely, with no minimum spend or long-term contract required.
Type: DSP / Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Agencies and multi-location brands (franchises, local and regional businesses) that need ZIP-code-level local precision and flexible self-serve, managed, or white-label buying options.
In one case study, a national financial services advertiser saw a 145% lift in website traffic over a single month, attributed to its CTV campaign alone and measured through a LeadsRx integration. Read the case study. Jamloop holds a 5.0 rating on G2, though from a single review, a small sample size worth noting, and users there specifically highlight straightforward campaign management and transparent reporting, alongside a steeper learning curve for more advanced targeting features. Read reviews on G2.
No public pricing tiers, and no minimum spend or long-term contract required, which is unusual for this category. Exact rates depend on the buying model chosen (self-serve, managed, or white-label).
Website: Jamloop
SWYM (short for “Stop Wasting Your Money”) takes a different approach than the other curators here. Instead of packaging static PMP deals, it’s an AI-native decisioning layer that sits in the transaction itself, filtering out poor-performing and fraudulent inventory before a bid ever goes out.
It runs like a standard PMP inside your existing DSP, so it doesn’t require rebuilding your workflow. SWYM has cross-SSP containerized access across major supply partners including Index Exchange, Magnite, and PubMatic, with more integrations in process.
Type: Curation Platform
Best For: Brands and agencies that want real-time, algorithmic inventory filtering layered on top of their existing DSP rather than a static curated deal.
Pros:
Cons:
Since SWYM runs as a standard PMP inside your existing DSP rather than as a separate buying platform, its pricing is presumably structured through a fee or margin on the media it optimizes, similar to other curation-layer tools, but SWYM doesn’t publicly document its pricing or the specific mechanism, so you need to contact them for a demo and pricing.
Case studies point to a meaningful drop in cost per acquisition after adopting SWYM’s real-time decisioning layer, without any change to the underlying audience targeting, and a separate industry awards case study cites a notable lift in return on ad spend from the same approach.
Website: SWYM
Tatari is a convergent TV platform for brands and agencies that want to plan, buy, and measure campaigns across linear TV, streaming CTV, and online video from a single dashboard.
It works through direct publisher relationships with networks like NBCU, Disney, and Netflix rather than relying purely on open programmatic supply, and its AI planning engine draws on close to a decade of data to generate plans with predicted outcomes.
Tatari holds 18 patented attribution technologies built for TV measurement, and its clients include Calm, Chime, and Rocket Money.
Type: DSP / Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Brands and agencies that want unified planning and measurement across linear TV and CTV, not just CTV alone.
Pros:
Cons:
Tatari’s core platform is priced around the media you buy through its direct publisher relationships, with an optional fee for dedicated strategy and media-buying services if you’d rather not run campaigns self-serve. Agencies can also license the platform for white-label use.
Tatari’s client case studies describe the platform making it easy to track and compare performance metrics like CAC and CPA side by side, crediting that visibility with helping teams understand what’s actually working across TV as a channel. Read Tatari’s case studies.
Website: Tatari
tvScientific is built around performance-based CTV buying, letting advertisers purchase inventory on a cost-per-outcome basis rather than paying for impressions alone, with every dollar tied to a result like ROAS, impressions, or purchases.
It combines patented AI optimization with deterministic ID technology, adjusting campaigns automatically as performance data comes in.
Type: DSP / Ad-Buying Platform
Best For: Performance marketers who want to buy CTV strictly on a cost-per-outcome basis and treat TV as a measurable, ROI-driven channel rather than a brand-awareness buy.
Pros:
Cons:
tvScientific operates on a cost-per-outcome (CPO) model, meaning what you pay is tied to results like ROAS, impressions, or purchases rather than a flat CPM. Contact tvScientific for detailed pricing.
Independent commentary describes user sentiment as mixed overall, calling out audience targeting specifically as a strength while suggesting other areas could improve, without detailing exactly what those areas are. Read the comparison.
Website: tvScientific
The choice usually comes down to a few honest questions about your own situation.
Start with your objective. For brand awareness and reach, Simulmedia’s linear-TV crossover or Roku Ads Manager’s owned inventory can help. For performance-focused campaigns, tvScientific and MNTN offer stronger conversion-oriented measurement.
Next, weigh your budget and buying model. Self-serve platforms like MNTN and Roku Ads Manager suit smaller test budgets, while managed-service platforms like Tatari and Simulmedia suit larger campaigns that benefit from hands-on support.
Check each platform’s type. If you already buy through a DSP but want better inventory or supply efficiency, a curation platform like Audigent or SWYM can complement your setup. If you don’t have a DSP relationship yet, start there.
Finally, confirm how conversions are attributed and how reporting compares with your own analytics, then pilot with a modest campaign before committing more budget.
CTV advertising platforms aren’t one-size-fits-all, and the right pick depends on whether you need somewhere to spend your budget, a partner to make that spend go further, or both.
Use the Type label on each entry above to match a platform to the actual job you need done, and don’t be afraid to pilot before committing real budget.
A DSP is where you actually spend your media budget, buying and managing campaigns directly. A curation platform doesn’t spend your budget, it packages premium, data-enriched inventory into deals that you then buy through your DSP, making your existing spend more efficient rather than replacing it.
Self-serve platforms with low minimums and built-in creative tools, like MNTN or Roku Ads Manager, tend to be the easiest entry point, since they don’t require an existing agency relationship, TV-ready creative, or a large managed-service budget commitment.
Not necessarily, but many established advertisers eventually use both. You need a DSP to spend at all. A curation partner is an optional add-on once you’re already spending and want to improve the quality and efficiency of the inventory you’re buying.
CTV refers to the device, any internet-connected television. OTT (over-the-top) refers to the content delivery method, streaming video sent over the internet rather than through traditional broadcast or cable. In practice, OTT content is usually what you’re watching on a CTV device.
IAB: U.S. Digital Video Ad Spend to Surpass $80B in 2026
Adwave: CTV Advertising Market Size Q2 2026
eMarketer: Video Completion Rate (VCR) Industry KPI
IAB UK: Demand-Side Platform (DSP) Jargon Buster
IAB Europe: Guide to Supply Path Optimisation (SPO)
AppsFlyer: Private Marketplace (PMP) Glossary
Wurl: What Is Marketing Attribution?
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