TV Ads Work — But Only If You Know How to Measure Them

For years, marketers have wrestled with the same question: Is our TV spend actually doing anything?

Not because TV isn’t effective—it typically is. But because most marketing teams are stuck trying to measure a 2025 media environment with 2010 attribution tools. And when your measurement doesn’t match how customers behave, your budget decisions start going sideways.

If you’re investing in TV (linear or streaming) and leaning solely on direct traffic spikes, pixeled conversions, or modeled reach curves, you’re leaving huge gaps in your visibility. That often means great campaigns get cut —just because they happen to fit the measurement mold.

In this post, we’ll break down:

• Why TV performance is often invisible in standard reporting

• How that gap is quietly draining your marketing ROI

• What smart teams are doing to connect the dots

• A simple way to make your TV spend measurable

Why your TV ads aren’t showing up in your attribution reports

TV is a high-reach, high-impact channel. It’s visual, emotional, and memorable. But it doesn’t follow a clean, clickable path to conversion. Bottoms up attribution is typically not an option.

When someone sees your ad during an NBA playoff game, they don’t pull out their phone and buy immediately. They might google you a few days later. Or spot your name on a Reddit thread. Or remember your tagline when they’re shopping in-store.

That delayed, multi-touch journey means TV rarely gets credit in click-based attribution models. So the campaign gets thrown into the limited brand budget, not the growth channel that has endless spend if performance is positive and measurable.

How TV buying differs across formats

Not all TV is bought—or measured—the same way. Understanding the differences helps you build smarter strategies:

• Linear TV: Traditional broadcast and cable. Bought in advance, often on a national or regional basis. Hard to target, but great for reach.

• Programmatic CTV: Automated, data-driven buying of ads on streaming platforms via DSPs like The Trade Desk. Offers more targeting, but attribution remains tricky.

• Streaming Direct Buys: Deals directly with platforms like Hulu or Roku. Often includes creative control and unique placements (e.g., pause ads, branded slates).

• Influencer and Branded Content: Integration into shows or segments on platforms like YouTube TV or creator-led streaming content. Blurs the line between content and ad.

Each format has different strengths, costs, and attribution headaches. The right measurement approach helps unify the impact across all of them.

But didn’t Streaming and CTV make everything better?

It’s 2025. Marketers want measurable outcomes. CTV’s promise is personalized, programmatic ad buying with measurement! The holy grail. Yet with more opportunity comes more complexity. 

Today, your campaign might appear across:

• Hulu, YouTube TV, and Peacock

• Programmatic CTV buys through platforms like Tatari, MNTN, or Universal Ads

• Influencer product placements inside binge-worthy series

• Shoppable video ads and QR codes on streaming (OTT) platforms

Great exposure. But terrible attribution.

While there's no universal ID that connects viewers across all devices and platforms, most leading TV platforms now rely on IP address matching to bridge the gap. Platforms like Tatari, MNTN, and others compare the IP address of the household exposed to a CTV or streaming ad with the IP of visitors to your website.

It’s a big step forward—but it’s still not perfect. It captures some attribution signal, especially at the household level, but it misses shared devices, some incognito browsing, and delayed conversions. So while you might see partial performance in your dashboard, a significant chunk of real-world awareness and influence can still slip through the cracks.

Promo codes and QR codes give you some data—not the full picture

You’ve probably tested QR overlays or promo codes. And yes, they’re helpful. But they only tell part of the story.

Most viewers ignore QR codes. Or they forget the promo code. Or they get distracted and search for your brand later—without using the tools you set up to track them.

So while redemptions and scans offer bottom-funnel signal, they miss the majority of TV-driven demand. Relying on them alone is like measuring a billboard by who pulls over and walks into the store that minute. It gives you some feedback—but not the real story.

What smart teams are doing: ask the customer, then connect the dots

Instead of forcing TV into a click-based box, top marketers today are measuring intent at its source: by asking the customer directly.

One post-purchase question—“How did you hear about us?”—can uncover what no attribution model can: the actual moment of brand discovery.

When paired with the right tech, this response becomes structured, categorized, and connected to the rest of your marketing data. It reveals:

• Which campaigns or placements actually drove awareness

• Whether viewers came from live TV, streaming, or branded content

• The percentage of your customers who cite TV as their first brand exposure

Now you’re not guessing. You’re measuring what customers actually tell you. Join this data with your other tracking methods, you’ll quickly understand the gaps in your measurement. What was once an unprofitable channel, can become a high performer.

Attribution surveys only work if they’re built for chaos

Collecting open-ended answers is easy. Turning them into structured, clean data? That’s the hard part.

If you want attribution surveys to drive TV insights, you need:

• Auto-suggest prompts to catch variations like “Hulu ad” vs “Hulu during Shark Tank”

• Cross-channel taxonomy management, so “ESPN app ad” and “Cable ESPN” roll up cleanly

• Integrated reporting, so your media team actually uses the data

With the right platform, this happens behind the scenes. The result? Insights that feed strategy—not just spreadsheets.

When you can measure memory, you can plan with confidence

Once you know what’s actually working, you make better calls:

• Keep spending on campaigns that influence—even if they don’t convert on the spot

• Justify brand budgets with hard data

• Align TV creative with the formats that customers remember

• Build full-funnel measurement that reflects reality, not assumptions

And most importantly—you stop treating TV like an untrackable wildcard. You treat it like the strategic growth lever it is.

TL;DR: How to finally measure TV advertising in 2025

If you’re serious about understanding TV’s real impact:

• Stop expecting TV to look like a digital channel

• Ask your customers how they heard of you

• Use attribution surveys that normalize and integrate that data

• Layer it with search trends, code redemptions, and site traffic

• Let that triangulated view drive your media planning

This is how modern brands are finally making TV measurable—and getting full credit for what moves the needle.

Ready to connect your TV spend to real outcomes?

📆 Book a demo to see how attribution surveys can surface the hidden value of your campaigns.