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What addressable TV is, how it works on cable and streaming, how it compares with CTV and regular TV, and what it takes for a small business to start.
Addressable TV advertising is TV advertising that shows different ads to different households watching the same program, based on who lives in each home. Instead of paying to reach everyone tuned in to a specific program or channel, an advertiser chooses the households it wants, and only those homes see the ad, whether they watch through a cable box or a streaming app.
The term shows up in media plans, agency proposals and platform sales pitches, usually with little explanation. This guide covers what addressable TV is, how it works on cable and streaming, how it differs from regular TV and connected TV (CTV), and what it takes for a small business to get started.
In advertising, addressable means an ad can be sent to a specific, identifiable address or user instead of an audience comprised of unidentifiable users grouped together in segments.
Direct mail is the easiest comparison. A postcard goes to the homes on your mailing list, not to every house in town. Addressable advertising applies the same idea to screens: you decide which homes should see your message, and it is delivered only to them.
Outside TV, the same approach is often called household targeting or addressable programmatic advertising. For how it works across streaming TV, online video and display together, see our guide to household-targeted advertising.
Behind the scenes there is a lot of technology, but for an advertiser, targeted TV advertising comes down to four steps:
Addressable TV comes in two main forms, and they work quite differently.
Addressable linear TV runs on traditional cable. Cable and pay-TV providers insert different ads into the same program through the set-top box in each home. It can only reach that provider’s subscribers with compatible boxes, and only a small share of cable ad time is set up to be addressable. It is usually bought through the provider’s advertising sales team.
Addressable streaming TV runs on connected TVs and streaming apps. Every streaming ad is delivered to a specific device over the internet, so choosing which household sees it is built into how the ad is served. These ads are usually bought programmatically, meaning software buys each ad placement automatically, household by household, in the moment. It also reaches the growing number of households that no longer have a cable box, and it is increasingly available on self-serve platforms.
Linear TV is scheduled programming on broadcast and cable, the way TV has worked for decades. In a traditional linear TV buy, you pay for a program or time slot in a market, and everyone watching sees the same commercial.
Addressable TV allows you to pick the audience first, and the program or channel matters less. Addressable linear is only available in some households (it requires a certain type of set-top box), and so the possible audience size is narrower.
Picture a roofing company buying a spot during the local evening news. It pays to reach every household watching across the whole market, including renters and homes far outside its service area. With addressable linear TV, the same company can show its ad only to homeowners in the ZIP codes it serves, and stop paying for the rest.
Not quite. OTT/CTV (over-the-top or connected TV) describes the device: a television connected to the internet, like a smart TV, and OTT refers to devices like an Apple TV, Roku, or Fire TV Stick. For a full breakdown of the terms, see what CTV advertising is. Streaming cable refers to a cable subscription that is streamed over the internet using a connected TV or an over-the-top (OTT) device logged into your cable subscription.
Addressable just describes how the ad is targeted. An OTT/CTV ad can be addressable, when it is sent to households you chose, or not addressable, when it is bought against a show or an app for everyone watching. Addressable TV can also run on cable boxes that are not CTV at all. OTT/CTV refers to the device and Addressable refers to the targeting method.
In practice, most household-targeted TV advertising now runs on OTT/CTV devices rather than set-top boxes because even cable companies are discovering they don’t need to ship a separate set-top box to their customers when they could just give them an Apple TV or a streaming stick they can use to log into their cable subscription. This saves them on hardware and shipping costs, and lets their customers use devices they’re probably already using.
No, but they often work together. Programmatic TV advertising is about how the ad is bought: agencies use software to place bids in a live auction for ad placements instead of a person negotiating a deal with a network. Addressable is about who sees the ad. Most addressable streaming TV is bought programmatically, which is what makes household targeting possible at scale.
Addressable TV audiences are usually built from one or more of these:
Reporting is typically shown in aggregate, so you see how many households were reached rather than who watched what.
Yes. OTT/CTV retargeting means showing TV ads to people who visited your website on a different device like their tablet, phone, or computer. This is one benefit of OTT/CTV over addressable linear TV — an advertiser can use a pixel placed on their website to gather a programmatic-ready audience for display, online video, and OTT/CTV.
You can also use lists of people who already know your company, such as past customers, leads who went quiet, or people on your email list, to target OTT/CTV ads. This is a great way of getting back in front of people who already know who you are while they are on the biggest screen in the home. See how to retarget lapsed customers with first-party data.
For many local and small businesses, yes. Addressable TV removes the biggest problem with traditional TV for a small budget: paying to reach people who will never become customers.
It tends to work well when:
A few things to plan for: you need a short video ad (15 or 30 seconds is standard), enough budget to show it to each household several times, and a clear idea of who you want to reach.
Addressable TV is usually priced per 1,000 impressions (CPM), and prices vary by provider, audience and where the ad runs. Buying through a cable provider usually means a negotiated package, while self-serve streaming platforms let you set a daily budget and start small. For a full breakdown with example budgets, see how much streaming TV ads cost.
Addressable TV used to mean working with a cable provider’s sales team. AdLever is a self-serve streaming TV advertising platform built so a business without a media team can do it on its own.
You upload the customer or mailing list you already have, or build an audience from 600+ household attributes. AdLever matches your records to real households at a 90%+ average match rate, then shows your ads to those homes across streaming TV, OTT/CTV, online video and display channels. See how AdLever targeting works.
Campaigns start at 1,000 matched households, about $26 a day on OTT/CTV and streaming TV, with no platform fee on the core tier and no long-term contract. Full details are on the pricing page.
Addressable TV advertising lets you choose the households that see your TV ad instead of paying for everyone watching a show. It started on cable boxes, but today it mostly runs on internet-connected OTT/CTV devices that stream content from the internet, where it is easier to buy, more precise, reaches cord-cutters, and works at budgets a small business can manage.
If you know who your customers are, you already have the most important ingredient.
Ready to put your ad in front of the households you choose? Create your free AdLever account and build your first audience.
Build an audience from your own contacts or verified household data, and reach those households on the devices they actually use.