A couple sitting on a couch with watching TV. The TV has the DirecTV user interface showing a live baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Toronto Blue Jays as well as various app icons. — (Image courtesy of DirecTV)

As TV viewing has shifted to streaming, connected TV platforms have become more attractive to advertisers. That’s forced legacy linear TV companies to change or face the consequences. For some, it’s working out better than for others.

Founded over 30 years ago as a satellite TV company, DirecTV began to disrupt the cable industry, successfully grabbing millions of pay TV subscribers as it took on cable. But like cable TV, satellite has suffered from cord cutting, and marketers have been following the audiences and moving their ad dollars to connected TV where enhanced addressability and data-driven targeting are promising more efficient, more effective and better performing campaigns.

Last year DirecTV decided another disruption was needed, shedding its legacy satellite-only identity—to “set TV free” as they call it—by driving awareness to paid streaming while also launching skinny bundles and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels. In January, the company brought together its satellite and streaming advertising inventory and made it available to buyers using programmatic technology.

How has that worked out? Matt Van Houten, senior VP, Product and Partnerships, DirecTV Advertising, tells TVREV that DirecTV Advertising is having one of its best years. “We’re knocking the socks off if it, largely because of our new linear programmatic capabilities. That has paid enormous dividends for us.” While programmatic buying does not yet represent a majority of DirecTV advertising demand, “as you can imagine, it is significant,” Van Houten said.

It is also paying dividends for DirecTV advertisers. According to internal data, DirecTV says programmatic campaigns across its expanded footprint are seeing increases of as much as 50% in response rates.

Matt Van Houten (Photo courtesey of DirecTV)

“We are a digital first company,” Van Houten said. “We've invested across these various video delivery platforms to make sure that we can drive better business outcomes for our clients. We need to change the industry mindset. We’re not your father’s Oldsmobile. We are the new, dynamic DirecTV.”

According to a report from the IAB, two thirds of advertisers now consider CTV a must buy and spending on CTV is expected to grow 13% to $27 billion in 2025.

DirecTV Advertising sells everything from national advertising to hyper-local advertising, but a bigger share of its business is now programmatic. Some of that is open market with biddable inventory, but in many cases, the DirecTV ad sales team sells converged packages of satellite and streaming inventory that can be managed in a private marketplace or through programmatic guarantees.

Even as a satellite company, DirecTV was a pioneer in addressable advertising, turning its set-top boxes into digital devices that enable advertisers to reach target audiences on a household by household basis. And now other media companies are scrambling to follow and build up their addressable inventory.

With more than 11 years of experience doing addressable ads, “we’ve seen the benefits of when you use data and technology to drive value to brands,” Van Houten said. “It's like the dog has caught the bus. We’re pleased that the industry has shifted in this direction.”

DirecTV has always had a valuable high-income consumer base. And 68% of DirecTV viewers are watching nearly every day, compared to viewers who subscribe to a streaming service, only 27% watch something on demand every day.

That makes DirecTV an essential platform to programmatic buyers. “The bridge for us between digital, programmatic and addressable is a kind of natural and organic coming together of the business,” he said.

Programmatic campaigns run through DirecTV can reach addressable audiences on both the traditional linear and streaming, an omnichannel approach DirecTV tries to push with clients and viewers alike.

Pause Ads Drive Recall

Last week, DirecTV added to its programmatic arsenal. Through a deal with TripleLift, its pause ads can now be bought programmatically. According to DirecTV’s internal metrics, on average, pause ads drove 34% higher unaided ad recall compared to traditional addressable advertising and 6% more incremental reach when paired with addressable.

Most streaming services now offer pause ads, where messages appear on the screen when the viewer puts a show on pause. DirecTV was sitting on that couch early, earning a patent on its pause TV ads in 2011 and winning an Emmy for the non-disruptive format in 2024.

Leaning In

Making pause ads available programmatically should make them more popular with a wider range of advertisers, said Chelsea Glincman, senior director, CTV business development at TripleLift.

“DirecTV has been really, really smart in leaning into pause ads and ad innovation in a way that gives them a lot of good control over viewer experience across their service,” Glincman said.

Interactive ad formats, such as pause ads, split screen, overlays and home-screen ads, aren’t all that new, but they haven’t been widely adopted by advertisers because they’re hard to buy, and the technology is different from platform to platform, making campaigns expensive.

“It's been untouchable,” she said. “DirecTV does a very good job of making sure that the supply is transparent and targetable. And I think that's where DirecTV was again really, really smart.”

Being available programmatically makes buying them possible for a whole range of companies, ranging from mom-and-pop stores to digital-driven outfits that depend on direct-to-consumer marketing.

Advertisers come to TripleLift to turn creative assets into ads that work and look good as DirecTV pause ads. Programmatic advertisers also go to TripleLIft to transact on scalable, non-standard format ads.

“I think that the industry is getting behind the format. Pushing to make this more standardized will be net good for everyone,” said Glincman.

The notion of making pause ads more easily available has DirecTV’s salespeople’s phones ringing off the hook, Van Houten said. He added that the IAB is working on creating industry-wide standards for interactive ad formats, including pause ads.

Cutting Through

Van Houten called pause ads a polite, non-disruptive ad format that cuts through advertising noise. The proof is in the numbers.

An EV automaker combined addressable advertising with out-of-stream pause ads to promote their electric vehicle and surround consumers with messaging. The campaign reached an incremental 15% increase in viewers compared to addressable alone, and a QR code in the pause ad drove viewers to learn more about the vehicle.
For a subscription VOD service, DirecTV mounted a campaign using addressable advertising plus pause ads. The result was a 38% lift in sign-ups.

“It's just getting started. I think this will become a billion-plus dollar marketplace very soon,” he said.

Getting Out of the House

Direct TV is also taking Dynamic Ad Insertion out of the living room and into DirecTV For Business’s national footprint of commercial venues with a new OOH venture they call DirecTV Remote.

Commercial and private airlines were first to get DAI. Ads are targeted to flyers, promoting destinations and events. Earlier this year, that gave advertisers a chance to boost their marketing with out-of-home campaigns around CES, the Super Bowl and The Masters.

DirecTV Remote now plans to expand to hotels, Van Houten said. Travelers are often more relaxed and less distracted on planes and in hotels than when at home, giving advertisers a better chance at making an impression, he noted.

DirecTV Remote can enable advertisers who might not have been able to access the scarce traditional inventory in a major destination event like the Masters an opportunity to reach golf fans in their hotel rooms, in local restaurants and in the air, even in private jets, he said.

Are You Talking to Me

Another recent development at DirecTV is a renewed focus on custom-curated content. In a timely deal with the Tribeca Film Festival, DirecTV created a content hub for Tribeca materials and a new Tribeca Festival+ FAST channel on MyFree DirecTV including Tribeca Talks featuring interviews with luminaries like Robert DeNiro and other leading filmmakers, short films and a selection of the independent movies shown at the festival.

DirecTV then used its own ad tech and innovative ad formats to promote the Festival content.

“Everybody’s got all these fast channels. To me, they get lost in the shuffle,” Van Houten said. “We know what our customers watch and we programmed Tribeca exclusively for them and made sure they could find it. We’ve seen monster engagement on that. And we’re working on a new curated channel with Lionsgate as well.”

A still of DirecTV's user interface, featuring a the sitcom The Neighborhood and other television shows. — Courtesy of DirecTV

That other channel is The Lionsgate Collection, which will be available to all DirecTV customers across satellite and streaming. The channel will feature TV series including Weeds and Nurse Jackie plus movies such as Now You See Me and The Expendables.

The channel will be optimized for DirecTV viewers and provide a premium environment for advertisers. MyFree DirecTV now features more than 125 FAST channels over all.

Tech Stack

All of this wizardry is made possible by DirecTV Axis, the company’s tech stack.

It has enabled DirecTV to sell both satellite and streaming programmatically, and made it easy for advertisers to access all of DirecTV’s customers, content, platforms and capabilities.

There are many advertisers that only buy programmatically, so being able to service those clients has given DirecTV a boost.

“When you’ve built this large programmatic machine, it makes it a lot easier for brands and agencies to bring unique data to the table,” said Van Houten. Beyond its own robust first-party data, DirecTV works with more than 30 data vendors and an array of clean rooms, bunkers and safe havens.

The sophisticated tech also gives DirecTV an opportunity to get more programmatic dollars when the price is right.

“With the flip of a switch through our internal ad tech, we can determine if we can make more money by selling this ad as a Nielsen-rated linear unit or can we make more money selling it programmatically in a programmatic guaranteed (PG) marketplace,” he said. “And now we're making really strategic decisions at the individual break level.”

The tech stack also lets DirecTV’s programming partners participate in more addressable and programmatic campaigns.

“An unbelievable amount of my time is now spent with programmers requesting access to our ad tech stack and our data fidelity, and that has become a pretty significant business for us, helping others with their digital transformation on our platform,” Van Houten said.

Better Than Anticipated

The jump into programmatic in particular and converged selling in general has powered higher volume at a time when many in the ad business are concerned about the general economy.

“We anticipated high demand, but we didn’t know how much demand existed,” Van Houten said. “On tariffs, obviously we’re watching it closely like everyone else, but we’re not feeling those effects. So far this year, we’re going gangbusters. It's been great.”

Programmatic Strategy Paying Off For DirecTV After Focus Shifts To Streaming