Built for the Web, Broken on TV: Rethinking Interactive Ads for the CTV Era

By Rob Aksman, President, Chief Strategy Officer, Co-Founder,  BrightLine

Interactive advertising on Connected TV (CTV) is entering a new era. As more brands look to bridge the gap between passive viewing and active engagement, CTV has become a prime testing ground for formats that invite viewers to do more – click, browse, shop, vote, explore.

Interactive ad formats are gaining momentum, and for good reason: the living room screen delivers unparalleled attention and presence. Yet translating those formats to CTV introduces a host of overlooked technical and user experience hurdles.

Too often, marketers and even tech partners treat CTV like it’s just another digital touchpoint, similar to web or mobile. But that mindset overlooks the unique constraints of the CTV ecosystem. Unlike browsers or phones, CTV devices are typically underpowered, fragmented across platforms, and navigated by remote controls rather than fingers. The operating environments are tightly controlled by app stores and publishers, leaving little room for error or improvisation.

In this context, building interactive ads isn’t just about creative execution – it’s about engineering for precision. A poorly built interactive ad on CTV doesn’t just underperform; it can actively disrupt the user experience or even crash an app, putting publisher relationships and viewer trust at risk.

There’s strong demand for innovation—43% of advertisers now cite interactive CTV as a top priority for the year ahead (Advertiser Perceptions, 2025)—but enthusiasm doesn’t always translate to execution. Only 28% of agencies say they feel “very confident” in their ability to build stable, scalable interactive experiences on CTV platforms (Digiday+, Q1 2025). And when things go wrong, the consequences are real: 1 in 5 viewers who encounter a broken or laggy interactive ad say it negatively impacts their perception of the brand (Kantar, 2024).

There are three essential truths that marketers and media professionals must embrace to succeed in this space:

• CTV is not the web or mobile – the rules are different. Devices vary widely in performance capabilities, app environments are more restricted, and interactivity must be designed around the limitations of remote navigation. Features that feel intuitive on a touchscreen may be frustrating—or downright impossible—to replicate on a television interface.
• Stability is non-negotiable. Interactive elements must be built from the ground up with platform-specific requirements in mind. Bolting on interactivity after the fact or relying on web-based components often leads to lag, inconsistent behavior, or critical failures. Brands can’t afford to have their message associated with broken functionality—especially in high-value environments like CTV.
• User experience is everything. Even the most ambitious interactive concept will fall flat if it disrupts the viewing flow. For interactivity to succeed, it must feel seamless—intuitive, fast, and fully integrated into the content environment. That means minimizing load times, avoiding intrusive overlays, and steering clear of awkward transitions that jolt viewers out of the experience.

As interest in interactive CTV grows, success will depend on shedding outdated assumptions and building with the medium’s unique constraints in mind. CTV is not just an extension of web or mobile—it’s a distinct ecosystem that demands early collaboration across creative, engineering, and platform teams.

Solutions must be engineered for stability, tailored to device limitations, and tested rigorously to ensure consistent, crash-free performance. That also means working closely with publishers from the outset and designing experiences that enhance, rather than interrupt, the living room viewing environment.

Interactivity on CTV won’t scale on ambition alone. It requires thoughtful design, resilient infrastructure, and a relentless focus on the viewer. CTV offers a powerful canvas for storytelling and engagement—but only if the execution rises to meet the complexity of the platform. It’s time for the industry to match creativity with technical precision and treat CTV interactivity not as a novelty, but as a serious driver of performance and brand impact.