How 3 media leads would invest a $2 million ad budget right now

As AI-generated content floods YouTube and social media and podcast hosts surpass influencer and celebrity-backed product endorsements, an old maxim takes on renewed importance: not all ad impressions are created equal.

So in today’s shifting and fragmenting media landscape, where do marketers' budgets drive the best return?

Earlier this year, we looked into how experts would invest a $500,000 ad budget. Now, we’ve asked three media investment leads across top agencies in the U.S. how to spend a $2 million media budget for the best return on investment (ROI).

The strategies change as the stakes get higher, but the goal remains the same: to drive measurable outcomes aligned with business goals, not just marketing metrics.

Their answers point to connected TV (CTV) as the core around which impactful advertising is built, especially as brands balance short-term gains and long-term strategies. Of course, they also sprinkled in some AI tools. Read on for what they had to say, as told to Global Editor Zac Wang:

Tommy McQuillan, Director of Video and Programmatic Media, Ovative Group

Go for holistic video — but don’t overlook streaming audio

The plan: The most effective way to invest a $2 million budget is to balance channels that drive immediate incremental sales with those that build a stronger customer file for the future.

For long-term impact, holistic video continues to be a standout. Premium CTV, online video, YouTube and TikTok excel at reaching and converting high-value first-time shoppers — especially when paired with strong creator partnerships.

And don’t overlook streaming audio. It was the top driver of new customers across our portfolio last holiday, and listening behavior is only accelerating.

The delivery: We lean into platform partners and their AI capabilities to power smarter, faster execution. Tools like The Trade Desk’s omnichannel optimization show how AI can surface patterns across channels that traditionally operate in silos. When we combine our team’s data-driven planning with platform-led optimization, we consistently see meaningful gains in reach, frequency management and return on ad spend (ROAS).

Where possible, layering in first-party shopping signals from your own sales data or from retail media partners helps focus that intent on higher-quality audiences, reducing waste and improving return.

The landscape: This approach ladders up to two major industry shifts that can feel at odds at first glance. On one hand, marketing investment is consolidating into platforms that offer closed-loop measurement, resilient identity solutions and increasingly native shopping behaviors. On the other, consumer discovery is rapidly fragmenting across audio and video, making omnichannel buying essential for capturing early intent and shaping demand. But while product discovery happens across all channels, not all channels are measurable.

The brands that win will be those that combine stronger data signals with platforms built for omnichannel execution. Those that don’t will struggle to keep pace as the gap widens between how customers discover products and where performance is measured.

An alternative: Despite the popular belief that attention spans are collapsing, long-form content is gaining real momentum. Binge-viewing on CTV remains massive. And we’re seeing explosive growth in long-form podcasting, including video podcasting, as well as multi-hour gaming stream sessions on platforms like Twitch. These environments create space for richer, more immersive creative opportunities: shoppable product placements, creator-driven ad reads, custom show segments and even AI-inserted brand messages that can be tailored to the moment.

Doug Paladino, Senior Director of Programmatic, PMG

Forget the mix — put it all on CTV

The plan: Because the streaming landscape has become so tactically diverse, I’d invest the entire $2 million budget into CTV. Few channels offer the same combination of premium sponsorships, advanced audience precision, contextual intelligence and efficient reach.

By committing fully, the plan capitalizes on the format’s versatility, providing high-impact, brand-safe environments supported by performance-level targeting and measurement.

The delivery: I’d start with a Netflix single-title sponsorship. Netflix delivers a combination of both prestige and scale that’s increasingly rare in today’s fragmented streaming world. Selecting the right title would depend on audience alignment and release timing, but as the sole pre-roll spot ahead of premium content (and protected by strict frequency caps), the brand message would cut through clutter and land with impact.

Next comes YouTube, which we consistently find is the most undervalued buy in streaming. At comparatively low CPMs, YouTube offers virtually unlimited reach, audience intelligence informed by Google Search data and best-in-class optimization. It’s the ideal complement to Netflix’s high-impact placements to further support both reach and efficiency.

To deepen precision, I’d employ audience targeting anchored in retail media and other second-party data from sources with a direct customer relationship. From there, I’d expand outside of predetermined audiences with AI-powered lookalike modeling, letting machine learning find the hidden prospects that perform.

Capturing attention is everything in streaming, so creative positioning matters. I’d use CTV home screen takeovers to ensure the brand is the first thing viewers see when they turn on their TV. I’d leverage the leaned-in energy of live sports, using pod-position targeting on ESPN via virtual MVPDs to secure prime in-game inventory. With IRIS.TV, I’d align the creative’s emotional tone with the sentiment of the content — or more importantly, avoid jarring mismatches.

Finally, I’d maximize efficient reach across original equipment manufacturer (OEM) environments, using AI-based persona modeling to understand what my prospects are watching and target those programs specifically.

The landscape: CTV has finally married the high-impact storytelling of linear television with the precision and accountability of digital. While the channel offers the best of both worlds, marketers need to focus on measuring it effectively.

The challenge remains attribution. Walled gardens, inconsistent log-level data access and the decline of IP address reliability have fragmented the ecosystem. That’s why developing a “source of truth” measurement framework is paramount. Whether through clean rooms, modeled attribution or third-party verification, brands must maintain directional insight to steer optimizations mid-flight.

An alternative: If CTV feels too transient, consider an entirely different kind of visibility: buying the naming rights to a stadium.

Few investments deliver the same cultural permanence. Aligning your brand with a professional or college sports team creates deep regional resonance and year-round visibility across broadcasts, signage and social content. While professional naming rights average $7.4 million in the U.S., college stadiums can often be secured for significantly less — offering a more attainable route for regional advertisers whose targets overlap with local fan bases.

It’s a bold move, but in an era of fleeting digital impressions, it’s also a reminder that sometimes the best way to stand out is to own the stage itself.

Matt Larson, Vice President of Media and Connections Strategy, Collective Measures

Omnichannel 60/40

The plan: Overfunding performance programs lands us in a perpetual pay-to-play cycle, while lofty brand plans often drive insufficient short-term returns to secure ongoing funding.

My strategy would invest 60% in long-term equity-building, while 40% would focus on driving immediate return. Video, when done right, is king; leveraging video as the cornerstone of long-term brand-building programs builds awareness and connection. Plans that generate short-term impact differ by vertical but typically contain a mix of search, social, display and retail media.

The delivery: To build long-term brand equity, choosing inventory based on viewing context (program and platform) and environment (CTV or mobile) ensures we are maxing reach and balancing efficiency with effectiveness. With the precision of programmatic CTV and online video, plus walled garden social platforms, we can drive effective reach with our best prospects, maximizing the budget by limiting spill.

For immediate returns, success hinges on first-party data integration and allowing budget fluidity, achieved by setting ROAS targets based on business realities (like cost of goods) and normalizing disparate attribution systems, ensuring every tactic is evaluated by the same scorecard.

Leverage modern marketing mix modeling (MMM). With the correct modeling in place, we often observe that brand-building efforts do, in fact, drive short-term ROI in addition to their long-term contribution to base margin. Modern MMM doesn’t over-credit the performance of walled gardens, which we often see in our last-touch attribution models.

The landscape: This plan is built on modern marketing fundamentals: a consumer-centric plan that uses popular channels and fully maximizes impact through an omnichannel, continuously optimized approach.

Leave things like last-touch attribution and clickthrough rates for your traders and platform ops team. Rally around business metrics that finance cares about to ensure we are moving numbers that matter.

An alternative: When the stars align between a media vehicle and an audience, we may opt for an “all-in” strategy. While omnichannel strategies will generate the best ROI at the greatest consistency, there are occasions where we have an audience that is well-aligned with a certain media environment — a publisher, podcast, program or network. That is where we maximize share of voice within a chosen partner — betting on that medium’s audience alignment to our brand.

Think Dave Portnoy’s Barstool and High Noon as an example where a brand has gone “all in” with a partner and generated great results.

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.