Smart TVs have moved well beyond streaming video. Cloud gaming and casual game platforms now put games directly on the television. Ad-supported models such as PHYND and Blacknut’s ZAP! use advertising to offer access without a paid subscription. That raises a new business question for gaming. If brands already buy space around streaming shows and movies, what changes when games become part of the same device?
That’s the question behind a recent Advertising Week column from PHYND founder and CEO André Swanston. He argues that advertising on connected TV, or CTV, has an ad-load problem as more money competes for space around the same programming. Swanston sees Smart TV gaming as another place for brands to reach people. Independent measurements suggest a different emphasis. Omdia estimates that ad-supported CTV used 65% of its commercial advertising capacity in 2025 across eight markets, including the U.S. and Canada. That suggests CTV hasn’t exhausted its commercial advertising capacity.
Innovid’s 2025 CTV benchmark offers a clearer measure of that pressure. The average campaign reached 19.64% of Innovid’s footprint of more than 95 million U.S. households and recorded an average frequency of 7.09 exposures. Campaigns above 200 million impressions averaged more than 10 exposures. A 2026 Journal of Advertising Research study also found that repeated exposure was associated with a faster decline in attention on CTV than on linear television. Smart TV gaming’s opportunity may therefore have less to do with finding room for more commercials and more to do with opening different ways for advertisers to reach people on the same screen.
CTV Has Capacity but Repetition Is a Different Problem
Ad load and frequency answer different questions. Ad load is the amount of commercial time around a stream. Frequency is how often the same household sees the same campaign. Omdia’s commercial-capacity estimate says there’s room for more paid placements across ad-supported CTV. It doesn’t say viewers want more commercials, and it doesn’t tell us how evenly campaigns are distributed.
The problem becomes clearer when campaign reach and frequency are separated. Innovid’s average campaign reached less than one-fifth of households in its measured footprint, yet households inside that reach saw the campaign just over seven times on average. Larger campaigns went beyond 10 exposures. Available inventory can exist at the same time that a campaign circulates too often among households it has already reached.
Repetition also has a measurable downside. In the Journal of Advertising Research study, attention declined faster on CTV as the same advertising was repeated, and shorter gaps between exposures increased that decline. More commercial capacity doesn’t fix that by itself. Distribution, unique household reach, and frequency control all become important if brands want to avoid serving the same ad to the same people over and over.
Smart TVs Already Have the Reach
Smart TVs aren’t a niche destination. Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2026 estimates that 81% of the U.S. population age 12 and older owns a Smart TV, equal to about 233 million people. That’s up from 75% in 2025.
Parks Associates looks at the television from another direction. Its research across 8,000 U.S. internet households found that 61% use a Smart TV as their primary device for streaming video. The surveys measure different groups, so the percentages aren’t directly comparable. Smart TVs are common, and for many households they’re already the main way online video reaches the television.
Looper Insights surveyed 1,100 U.S. consumers and found that 64.7% said they would be likely to try gaming through a Smart TV or streaming device. That included 32% who were very likely to try a console-style experience without buying another device and 32.7% who were somewhat likely to try easily accessible casual games.
Interest isn’t the same as usage. The survey doesn’t tell us how many people currently play on Smart TVs or how often they return. For advertisers, that leaves an important gap between knowing that the television is widely available and knowing how much incremental reach Smart TV gaming can actually provide.
Gaming Is Bringing New Ad Formats to Smart TVs
The difference becomes clearer when you look at what brands can actually buy around Smart TV games. PHYND uses Magnite’s SpringServe ad server and programmatic capabilities to support advertising across its subscription-free cloud gaming catalogue. Advertising is part of how PHYND funds access without a subscription.
Blacknut’s ZAP!, short for Zero-Cost Ad-Powered Play, takes a similar ad-funded route. Blacknut says ZAP! lets people start games for free without registration or an account, with ads placed at natural points during play. The company introduced the model after its ad-funded Asphalt Legends Unite launch on compatible LG Smart TVs.
Play.Works and Super League are selling playable advertising and rewarded-video placements across connected-TV games. Samsung’s GameBreaks takes a different approach by turning part of a Samsung TV Plus commercial break into a mini-game controlled with the TV remote.
None of these models depends only on adding more standard video ads to an existing break. PHYND and ZAP! use advertising to support free access. Play.Works sells playable and rewarded-video ads inside its game network, and Samsung can make part of the commercial break interactive. Smart TV gaming doesn’t have to solve a shortage of CTV ad space to be useful to advertisers. The commercial appeal comes from those different formats, not from adding more ad minutes.
Advertisers Still Need Independent Reach Data
Play.Works and Super League report more than 19 minutes of average play per user and more than 150 million monthly ad impressions across the network. Those figures describe activity on the network, but they don’t tell us how many unique households one campaign reached, how often one household saw the same campaign, or how much of that reach was new compared with conventional CTV advertising.
That’s the part independent measurement still needs to establish. Independent measurement needs to track how many unique households see the ads, how often they see them, and how much of that audience is new compared with conventional CTV campaigns. It also needs to measure whether attention holds up once the same campaign appears repeatedly inside games.
Smart TV gaming already has a credible advertising role. Advertising can fund subscription-free access, support interactive formats, and appear around game discovery and play. What independent measurement hasn’t yet established is whether those formats reach households conventional CTV campaigns are missing or reduce repeat exposure once brands scale up.
Swanston is right that Smart TV gaming is opening new advertising opportunities on the television. The independent data, however, suggests that repetition is the more clearly documented CTV problem than a lack of commercial capacity. Smart TV gaming brings different ad products to a screen that is already common across the U.S. The next proof point is independent data on reach, frequency, and attention. Without it, Smart TV gaming is a new advertising option, not a proven fix for CTV repetition.
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