The modern media landscape presents a significant challenge for advertisers who rely on mass communication. Audience fragmentation has accelerated rapidly as viewers move across traditional broadcast channels, cable, and numerous streaming services. To effectively reach high-value consumers, media professionals must evolve past siloed planning and embrace strategies that bridge these disparate viewing habits.

Becoming a savvy, modern media planner requires balancing the expansive reach of legacy formats with the surgical precision of digital channels. The solution lies in an Integrated Media Planning strategy, a comprehensive approach designed to leverage the broad brand-building power of Linear TV alongside the precise targeting capabilities of Connected TV (CTV). Keep reading to learn more about how to master this integrated approach.

Understanding the New Television Ecosystem: Linear vs. Connected TV

A successful integration strategy starts with a clear understanding of the inventory and the fundamental role of each major distribution channel. While both Linear TV and Connected TV deliver video advertising to large screens, their operational mechanics and audience access methods differ.

Linear TV: The Foundational Power of Mass Reach and Value

Linear TV, encompassing traditional broadcast and cable programming, remains the gold standard for achieving massive, simultaneous reach and building immediate brand awareness. There are still nearly as many linear TV viewers today, around 228 million, as there are social media users. This continued scale grants Linear TV significant power and credibility for national campaigns.

However, Linear TV planning has inherent limitations, primarily due to constrained targeting capabilities that focus mainly on broad demographics, age, and geography. Advertisers can often acquire high-value remnant inventory, which consists of unsold ad spots in premium time slots, at deep discounts. This remnant inventory is decreasing in availability due to market shifts. However, the unique market position and inventory clearinghouse status of The Remnant Agency ensure continued, large-scale access to this high-value, deeply discounted ad space.

Connected TV (CTV): The Engine of Precision and Incremental Reach

Connected TV refers to content streamed through internet-connected devices, such as Smart TVs, gaming consoles, Roku, and Apple TV. This channel directly addresses the shift away from traditional viewing, as nearly half of all U.S. households, about 46%, have canceled traditional cable or satellite subscriptions as of 2025. This cord-cutting trend makes CTV essential for accessing light TV viewers and those who are otherwise unreachable via traditional methods.

The key advantage of CTV is its precise targeting, including detailed demographics, interests, purchase behaviors, and retargeting options. CTV also offers real-time measurement and optimized delivery, allowing advertisers to adjust campaigns quickly. While CTV CPMs generally range from $35 to $65, significantly higher than the $10 to $15 CPM median for remnant broadcast or cable Linear TV spots, the ability to minimize waste by targeting only specific audiences makes CTV highly cost-efficient in terms of results.

Streaming services now command an undeniable share of the market, which advertisers can’t ignore. In May 2025, streaming represented 44.8% of total TV viewership, marking the first time it exceeded the combined share of broadcast and cable television, which stood at 44.2%. Even niche formats, such as Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) services, are growing quickly, accounting for 5.7% of total TV viewing, which is larger than any individual broadcast network.

Clarifying the Overlap: CTV, OTT, and Addressable TV

The terminology surrounding digital TV advertising can often be confusing, making it important to clarify the definitions. Connected TV (CTV) is the specific device category, the hardware, used to access streaming content, such as a smart TV or a connected streaming stick.

Over-The-Top (OTT) refers to a delivery method in which content is delivered via the internet that bypasses traditional cable or satellite providers. Essentially, CTV is the primary large-screen device consumers use to watch OTT content. Addressable TV is a capability where different households watching the same program simultaneously can be served different advertisements based on household data. This technology is maximized by the digital infrastructure of CTV environments, enabling advanced household-level personalization that Linear TV cannot offer.

Building a Unified Media Strategy: The Integrated CTV/Linear Blueprint

Effective integration moves beyond simply running campaigns on both channels. The goal is to create a synergistic campaign where each channel enhances, rather than cannibalizes, the performance of the other. This unified approach maximizes the media budget’s overall efficiency by focusing each channel on its unique strengths.

Phase One: Aligning Objectives and Audience Segmentation

An integrated strategy must begin with clearly defined, non-overlapping objectives for each channel. Linear TV is perfectly suited for handling the top of the funnel by establishing broad brand awareness, which is necessary for market saturation. In contrast, CTV is optimized for middle and bottom-of-the-funnel activities, such as driving engagement, retargeting website visitors, and pushing conversions.

It’s important to segment the audience by viewing habits to ensure efficiency. This segmentation might divide consumers into heavy Linear viewers, light Linear viewers, and dedicated cord-cutters. The strategic plan must be designed to hit each specific group efficiently, avoiding wasted impressions and unnecessary overlap.

Phase Two: The Reach-to-Retarget Strategy

The core strategic flow of an integrated campaign is the “Reach-to-Retarget Strategy” methodology. This involves using the broad, cost-efficient reach of Linear TV, especially deep-discount remnant spots, to establish initial widespread brand awareness and signal strength. This large-scale exposure acts as the foundation of the campaign.

Consider a DTC furniture brand aiming for national expansion, for instance. They’d utilize highly affordable remnant Linear ads to generate massive awareness across millions of households. This establishes brand legitimacy and sets the stage for the next phase of conversion-focused advertising.

After initial Linear exposure, the subsequent step utilizes hyper-targeted CTV ads to reinforce the brand message and increase the frequency for the most valuable consumer segments. This process drives direct response from viewers who have already been exposed to the brand’s broad Linear campaign, often referred to as the halo effect. By coordinating Linear for awareness and CTV for action, advertisers ensure they’re speaking to the right viewer at the right moment in their purchasing journey.

Phase Three: Coordinated Creative and Frequency Capping

Creative consistency is incredibly important for maintaining a cohesive and reliable brand experience across both traditional and digital channels. The messaging, look, and feel of the ads must be seamless, regardless of whether they’re viewed during a live broadcast or on a streaming service. This coordination prevents consumer confusion and strengthens overall brand recognition.

A key pitfall of poorly managed campaigns is ad fatigue, which is particularly common in high-frequency CTV environments. A unified approach allows for deduplicated reach and frequency capping across both Linear and CTV households. We can reduce ad fatigue through smart frequency management.

Deduplication is complex because Linear and CTV use different identifiers, often leading to siloed data. A sophisticated solution leverages identity resolution providers to match household IP addresses and device IDs across platforms. This technical coordination prevents overexposure, optimizes the overall budget, and ensures a more positive viewing experience for the consumer. Research shows that people who saw the same ad six times were 48% more likely to find the ad annoying, resulting in a 16% drop in purchase intent.

Driving Massive ROI: Integrating Remnant Media Buying

The integrated CTV/Linear Blueprint is designed to maximize efficiency, but the mechanism for truly massive budget leverage is the incorporation of deep discount media. The true potential for maximizing Return on Investment (ROI) in an integrated strategy lies in marrying precision targeting with cost-efficient media buying. Directly incorporating the strategy of Remnant Media Buying creates an unfair advantage, significantly reducing acquisition costs while maintaining high-quality placements.

The Remnant Media Foundation for Scale

Leveraging deeply discounted remnant Linear TV inventory provides a massive, high-quality, and cost-effective base for achieving national reach. These foundational lower-cost scale buys are paramount to overall budget health. They deliver the necessary volume of brand impressions to the general market at a fraction of the standard rate.

This foundational efficiency is what frees up substantial budget dollars. That saved capital can then be strategically allocated to the higher-precision, higher-cost-per-impression CTV layer. This allows the advertiser to maximize the broad awareness layer affordably while investing more heavily in surgical strikes against specific high-value audience segments through streaming.

Optimizing Budget Allocation for Performance

The philosophy behind budget allocation in an integrated strategy isn’t a simple 50/50 split. Instead, it involves maximizing the cost-efficiency of Linear TV remnant buys for expansive reach, and then using the remaining budget for CTV’s surgical strikes. The goal is always to deliver the most efficient impression for every dollar spent.

This combined buying power, leveraging Linear remnant for cost-effective scale and CTV for performance precision, is the key mechanism for achieving scale while maintaining a low Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). By building a highly affordable foundation, the overall average campaign cost remains significantly lower than if the advertiser were relying solely on standard-rate, non-remnant inventory for both channels.

The Remnant CTV Advantage

While Linear TV is the traditional home of remnant inventory, savvy media buyers can also incorporate remnant CTV inventory into their plans. Remnant CTV consists of unsold ad units on streaming platforms that are available at significant discounts, often referred to as unsold CTV ad space.

Accessing this deeply discounted inventory requires proprietary connections, often through programmatic direct deals or private marketplaces (PMPs) negotiated directly with major streaming providers. A sophisticated media buyer uses this B2B guide to buying unsold CTV ad space to secure premium placements. This dual-remnant approach solidifies the campaign’s cost-efficiency from the foundational reach layer all the way through to the highly targeted digital layer, allowing for significant cost-per-acquisition reduction in broadcast media.

Advanced Cross-Platform Measurement and Attribution for Integrated Campaigns

One of the biggest obstacles in integrated media planning is the challenge of siloed measurement, where separate teams track TV and digital channels independently. Successfully integrating Linear and CTV requires moving past these traditional silos and adopting advanced, cross-platform tools.

Cross-Channel Attribution Models

Traditional Linear TV relies on top-down measurement techniques, such as market-level lift studies, daypart analysis, and call-to-action responses. Conversely, CTV uses precise digital-style attribution methods, relying on IP address matching and device IDs to track individual consumer actions.

To unify these data streams, advertisers need a holistic attribution partner that can effectively match Linear exposure to digital outcomes. This process links a household exposed to a Linear ad to a later website visit or purchase made on a CTV-connected device. Mastering cross-device tracking is key to success.

The platform must also deduplicate reach across both channels to accurately measure the incremental impact of CTV and provide an accurate total reach figure. This is particularly challenging since only 32% of global marketers report measuring their media spending holistically across both digital and traditional channels. The ability to unify this data is crucial for assessing true campaign performance.

Key Metrics for Integrated Success

An integrated strategy requires a shift away from siloed metrics, like Linear Gross Rating Points (GRPs) or simple CTV impression counts. The focus must transition to unified performance indicators that reflect the total health of the campaign across the entire ecosystem.

Key unified metrics include De-duplicated Reach, which tells the true number of unique households reached by both channels combined, and Total Frequency, which measures how many times the average consumer saw the ad across all platforms. Most importantly, the performance should be tracked using the integrated model’s Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). These metrics are the ultimate measure of efficiency and profitability for the entire blended campaign.

Deliver Massive Impressions With Our Remnant Media Expertise

An integrated Linear and CTV advertising strategy is now essential for navigating audience fragmentation, ensuring you capture every segment of your target market efficiently. By combining the broad, low-cost reach of Linear TV with the precise, performance-driven nature of CTV, you establish a model designed to deliver a far higher return on investment (ROI). This dual-remnant methodology is the ultimate strategy for reducing cost per acquisition in broadcast media.

We specialize in securing top-tier remnant inventory across both traditional broadcast and high-quality streaming platforms at deep discounts. This core expertise allows us to dramatically increase the number of impressions you receive for your existing budget, giving your brand maximum visibility while significantly reducing your overall Cost Per Acquisition. Our expertise delivers deep discount TV advertising at scale.

Contact us today to stop wasting budget on standard-rate media. Let our knowledgeable team develop a sophisticated dual-remnant advertising strategy that maximizes your reach, optimizes frequency, and ensures every dollar of your media spend works harder for you, delivering massive ROI.