When you turn on your TV in 2025, the very first thing you engage with isn’t an app like Netflix or YouTube, it’s an operating system. Think Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, LG webOS, or Samsung Tizen. These platforms decide which shows and apps get prime placement, who appears in autoplay rails, which icons sit on dedicated remote buttons, and, critically, who processes the payments. Today’s “carriage agreement” is the OS home screen.
Consider this,
Connected TV (CTV) now reaches more than 90% of US households, with over 117 million homes streaming via these devices. YouTube on the TV set alone serves upward of 100 million American households, and Nielsen reports streaming took 44% of all U.S. TV time in 2025. Meanwhile, CTV ad spending just crossed $33 billion and is set for continued double-digit growth.
But here’s the central truth,
YouTube’s surge isn’t about better programming or a creative renaissance. The real catalyst is CTV platforms making it the path of least resistance, one-tap access, autoplay, and top billing on the interface. The interface, not the content, shapes who wins the living room. Distribution has fundamentally changed, but most people still think it’s about the shows. Every content provider, studios, streamers, even YouTube, now negotiates with platform landlords.
The real estate that matters is the home screen. Remote control buttons, deep links that bypass app menus, and hero tiles are now more valuable than any content deal. Roku claims 37% of the US market for CTV ad impressions, with Fire TV at 17%. OEMs and OS companies are selling these digital corridors like high-traffic shopping centers, and success increasingly depends on owning or renting that front door.
It’s no surprise Meta and TikTok are racing to the big screen, vying for their own piece of the home screen map, before those spots become impossible to unseat.
Linear TV’s share of global ad dollars has dropped to 12%, with CTV quickly heading toward a projected 40% by 2030. The platforms that shape access now shape audience flow, advertising revenue, and content discovery.
So while headlines declare a “streaming war” between Netflix and YouTube, the real battle for control has shifted. OS makers and TV manufacturers, they’re the true winners in today’s entertainment landscape. They own the entryway, the data, and the viewer relationship.
In the era of CTV, the lesson is clear, Content remains essential. But distribution rules the kingdom, and today, the platform is king. If you’re not focused on how you’ll reach the viewer through the OS, you’re playing someone else’s game and paying rent in a digital estate run by new landlords.
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Insights based on report from Jeff Clanagan
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One angle: YouTube is dominating because CTV manufacturers HAVE to have it in their OS offering because people are looking for their favorite podcast or creator on YouTube and it better be three remote clicks away or it’s the last time they buy that brand of TV
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Seems like a good opportunity for a smart distributor / Hero slot players to offer free remotes to subscribers - and that is a universal remote with THEIR buttons on it.
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Randall Scott White I don't believe CTV actually does reach 90% of households yet. Is that an independent stat or an industry stat? On our FilmPod & DBO we've had to analyze the tech closely and CTV just isn't capable of what it claims to do, so far as tracking viewership, etc. The reasons are many and sometimes technical as well as legal and contractual, not to mention the designs of corporations like YouTube, Amazon et al to obfuscate delivery numbers on both ends of the distribution pipeline. Honestly, IMO YouTube is dominating, as it has before CTV became a thing, because it has the best platform and now Google is a defacto monopoly on search results... among other things. This is not to say that CTV isn't important. But it isn't all that, really.
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Truth. Everything is connected. My Samsung and Roku TVs have cable like an app. Everything syncs with Google, if you want to use voice and other features (I don't) but I hook up to Google via YouTube. It's opened the door for more choice, thanks to the free apps like Tubi. It's a bit more complicated for people who are not technically savvy, but they get savvier as they learn more about their TV. I love it.