What happens when you blend two major adtech trends — CTV transparency and agentic AI? You get DoubleVerify’s announcement today at CES.
Today, the company announced the launch of DV Authentic Streaming TV, a new offering designed to give CTV and streaming advertisers more transparency and control over how they buy streaming media, using IMDb and DoubleVerify data. DV’s verification signals and IMDb’s media database are being comingled to help advertisers apply richer, more holistic signals to their campaigns.
At launch, the capability is enabled through an AI agent that allows advertisers to input a brief or specify criteria they want applied to campaigns — for example, targeting holiday movies (Die Hard!) after a certain release window or time period.
Over time, DV plans to make IMDb data available within its optimization tool, DV Scibids, enabling campaign optimization, on top of planning and measurement.
Why This Matters:
CTV transparency is shaping up to be a major focus area heading into 2026. While CTV spend continues to grow, the ecosystem remains fragmented and opaque. Advertisers still struggle to understand where impressions are running, whether those placements are high quality, and whether ads are contextually aligned with the right programs, shows, or content environments.
According to DV, more than $1 billion in ad spend is misplaced each quarter, and nearly 70% of marketers say they can’t justify their streaming TV investments without better transparency.
That’s the backdrop for today’s launch — and it follows a growing wave of CTV transparency efforts from players like Samsung Ads, Amazon, Pinterest, and tvScientific.
Experts React:
Mark Zagorski, DV’s CEO, had this to say in the company’s press release:
“For the first time, by incorporating richer program-level signals, such as genre, maturity ratings, premiere dates, content trends and viewer-approval scores, along with deeper app-level intelligence, including attention insights and power-state awareness, we are transforming how advertisers evaluate and verify CTV quality. This breakthrough heightens transparency, strengthens performance and brings true accountability to streaming TV.”
He went on to say that DV is “throwing down the gauntlet” and “challenging the industry to deliver on the quality and performance promise of CTV.”
Our Take:
Our bet: the first half of CES will be dominated by agentic announcements, with CTV transparency and streaming effectiveness taking center stage in the back half of the week. In many ways, it’s shaping up to be the inverse of Cannes Lions 2025.
AdTechRadar is owned by Chris Harihar, who leads PR at Mod Op. DoubleVerify is a Mod Op client.
