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Streaming captured 47.5% of all U.S. TV viewing in December 2025, the highest share ever recorded, according to Nielsen, while broadcast and cable each fell to roughly 20%.
Yet many travel brands still weight their TV budgets toward linear, paying more each year to reach fewer of the travelers they want. CTV advertising for travel brands exists to close that gap. The question in 2026 isn't whether to move budget into connected TV. It's how to buy it well.
CTV advertising for travel brands is the delivery of video ads through streaming apps and internet-connected TVs, targeted to travelers based on real trip-planning signals rather than broad demographics. Unlike linear TV, which buys audiences by age and gender, CTV lets you reach the specific households actively searching, comparing, and pricing trips right now.
That distinction matters more in travel than in almost any other category. A traveler researching a two-week trip to Portugal looks demographically identical to their neighbor who has no intention of leaving the couch. Demographic targeting can't tell them apart. Intent data can.
CTV also keeps what made TV valuable in the first place. Ads run full screen, with sound on, inside long-form content on the biggest screen in the house. Travel is an emotional, visual purchase, and no other digital channel presents a destination, a cabin, or a lie-flat seat the way a television does.
The viewing shift is no longer a trend line. It's a completed migration. Streaming out-delivers broadcast and cable combined, and U.S. CTV ad spend will reach $37.95 billion in 2026, up 14.5% year over year, according to eMarketer.
The more telling signal sits inside the upfronts. For the first time, U.S. CTV upfront commitments of $17.73 billion will exceed primetime linear upfronts of $16.98 billion, says eMarketer. When the most conservative, committed TV dollars cross over, the industry has made its decision.
Travel media analysts see the same shift within the category. In 2026, CTV is becoming a core response channel for travel brands rather than a luxury line item, as the boundary between brand and performance budgets keeps dissolving. Travel brands that once split budgets cleanly between TV for awareness and digital for conversion are finding that CTV refuses to sit in either bucket. It does both.
CTV ads are bought and delivered programmatically. Instead of reserving a time slot on a network, you define an audience, and the ad is served to matching households across streaming apps, smart TV platforms, and ad-supported tiers wherever those households happen to be watching. The buy follows the traveler, not the program schedule.
Targeting happens at the household level. A media platform matches its audience data to the devices in a home, which means an airline's ad reaches households showing flight search activity rather than everyone watching a given show. Frequency can be capped across apps, so the same household isn't hit nine times on one platform and never on another.
Delivery is also flexible in ways linear never was. Campaigns can launch in days rather than around upfront calendars, creative can be swapped mid-flight, and budgets can shift toward the audiences, markets, or creative variants that are producing results. That flexibility is what separates connected TV advertising from a traditional television buy.
The workhorse formats are non-skippable 15- and 30-second spots that run before or during streaming content. Because viewers can't skip and are watching in a lean-back setting, completion rates far exceed other digital video.
Newer formats add a response layer that linear TV never had. Interactive ads, QR code overlays, and 360-degree video let a viewer move from inspiration to action without leaving the couch. A traveler who scans a QR code during a spot lands directly on a booking path while the intent is still warm. That response layer is turning CTV into the most accountable form of travel video advertising available today.
Here's the complication most travel brands hit in their first CTV flight. They port their linear buying logic onto streaming, target adults 25 to 54 in feeder markets, and get exactly what they paid for. Broad reach, respectable completion rates, and no idea whether a single booking followed.
The problem compounds because CTV inventory is fragmented across dozens of apps, platforms, and ad-supported tiers. Without a unifying data layer, frequency spirals on some households while incremental reach stalls everywhere else. Reach without intent doesn't convert. You're paying premium CTV rates for the same lack of relevance you'd get from an untargeted banner ad.
The measurement gap is the second half of the trap. Linear habits train teams to accept gross rating points as the finish line. CTV can connect ad exposure to site visits, searches, and bookings, but only if the campaign is built on data that ties a household's viewing to actual travel behavior. Buying the channel without that connection forfeits the entire reason to be there.
There's a third linear habit worth naming: buying by placement. Buyers often start by asking which shows and apps their ad will run on, because in linear TV, the program was the only proxy available for the audience. Premium placement was how you bought the right people in a quality environment. Intent data solves for the right people directly.
When a campaign is built on households showing real trip-planning behavior, reaching your audience no longer depends on guessing what they might watch. The buy follows them across whatever they're streaming. Environment still matters, and premium streaming inventory stays part of the toolkit when a brand wants it. But it becomes the second question rather than the first: start with who you need to reach, then decide which environments earn a premium.
This is the gap our approach to CTV advertising is built around. Most travel audiences available on CTV are demographic proxies, modeled lookalikes, or third-party segments built weeks before a campaign serves: definitions of who probably travels, not who is traveling.
The Sojern Traveler Ecosystem™, now combining the full data capabilities of Adara following the companies' merger, is built instead on observed behavior: real-time intent signals like searches and itinerary views, paired with deterministic booking data at global scale. Search signals show who is considering a trip. Confirmed bookings show who is actually taking one. Built on more than 500 million monthly traveler profiles, these audiences let you reach travelers comparing specific routes, researching a competitor's loyalty program, or holding a confirmed flight into a market where you want to win the rest of the trip.
CTV also works harder when it doesn't work alone. Pairing CTV with online video and display lets travel brands follow the same intent audience from the living room screen to the laptop where bookings actually happen, sequencing the message across the planning journey. That multichannel structure is what turns a completed view into an attributable booking rather than a hopeful impression.
CTV is priced on a CPM basis, meaning cost per thousand impressions, and rates vary with inventory quality, targeting depth, and how the buy is executed. On a raw CPM comparison, CTV typically costs more than other digital video and less than premium primetime linear. Stopping the analysis there is where most media plans go wrong.
The fair comparison is cost per in-market household, not cost per impression. A linear buy pays for every viewer in the demo, including the overwhelming majority with no trip in mind. A CTV buy targeted on intent pays only for households showing real travel-planning behavior, so a higher CPM can still produce a dramatically lower cost per traveler actually reached.
Run that math against your own linear plan before comparing rate cards. The percentage of a broad demo audience that is genuinely in-market for travel at any moment is small, and dividing your linear CPM by that fraction usually reveals an effective in-market CPM far above anything CTV charges.
Start with the audience definition, not the media plan. Define the traveler segments that matter to your revenue goals, such as high-value route pairs, first-time bookers, or loyalty lapsers, and confirm your partner can actually identify them through intent data rather than demographic proxies.
Then set measurement expectations before the first impression serves. Decide which downstream actions count, whether that's site visits, searches, or bookings, and instrument the campaign to track them. CTV rewards brands that treat it as an accountable channel from day one.
Finally, plan CTV as the top of a connected system rather than an isolated TV replacement. The brands winning on streaming in 2026 are the ones sequencing CTV, online video, and display against the same intent audience, then measuring the full path.
The travelers are already there, watching more streaming than broadcast and cable combined. The budgets are arriving. The advantage now belongs to the travel brands that show up with intent data instead of a demo target.
If you want to see what traveler intent signals look like in your markets, let's talk.
CTV advertising for travel brands is the delivery of video ads through streaming apps and internet-connected TVs, targeted to travelers based on trip-planning signals like searches and bookings rather than broad demographics. It combines television's full-screen, sound-on impact with digital targeting and measurement, letting enterprise travel brands reach households actively planning trips.
Linear TV sells broad audiences by age and gender, while CTV targets specific households using data such as travel intent signals. CTV also connects ad exposure to downstream actions like site visits and bookings, which linear can't measure. With streaming at 47.5% of US TV viewing (Nielsen, 2026), CTV now offers the larger audience as well.
Travel brands measure CTV through completion rates, incremental reach, and downstream travel actions such as site visits, searches, and bookings tied to exposed households. Intent-data platforms connect the household that saw an ad to subsequent planning behavior.
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How travel intent helps cruise marketers make every interaction more relevant across the traveler journey.
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Publishing content is easy. Getting travelers to actually see it is the hard part.
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Nine channels, one framework, and the data layer that connects them.
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