If you’re still treating CTV like a bigger LinkedIn feed, you’re going to waste money in 2026.
I mean that.
I keep seeing B2B brands take the same corporate sizzle reel, the same safe explainer energy, and the same product-heavy script, then stretch it onto a television screen. Bigger screen. Same boring ad. That does nothing for brand perception. It just makes the boring easier to see.
I’m a filmmaker first, entrepreneur second. I’ve been that way since I was 14 and filming skateboard videos. So when I look at Connected TV, I don’t just see another channel. I see a living room. I see a captive screen. I see a chance to put a commercial in front of someone that actually feels worth watching.
If you’re a VP of Marketing, this matters a lot. You’re not only buying impressions anymore. You’re shaping how your brand feels when it shows up in somebody’s home. If your company is trying to shake a dry reputation, modernize a legacy brand, or compete with younger, louder startups, CTV can help. But the creative has to be built for that screen.
CTV Changed the Room
The Audience Already Moved
The audience is already there. Today, 91% of U.S. internet households subscribe to streaming. And by late 2025, 60% of U.S. TV viewing time was on streaming platforms. This is where attention lives now.
So for me, the conversation is not “Should B2B brands explore CTV?” That part is already obvious. The real conversation is, “What are you putting on that screen?” Because if the screen is premium and the ad feels cheap, your brand pays the price.
Video itself is already table stakes. Wyzowl reports that 91% of businesses use video, 93% say it matters to strategy, 85% say it helps generate leads, and 83% say it increases sales. So just “doing video” is not enough. Everyone is doing video. Differentiation is the whole fight now.
Attention on the Couch Is Different
The reason I’m so bullish on CTV is simple. People usually watch it.
On social media, your ad gets skipped in a second. Someone scrolls. Someone clicks away. Someone never even lets the first line land. On CTV, the environment is different. Someone is sitting on the couch. The ad break comes on. It’s 15 seconds. Maybe 30. Most people are not jumping up and leaving the room for that.
And the research lines up with that real-world behavior. Yahoo and Ogilvy found that CTV ads captured 9.7 seconds of active attention, far above mobile and desktop video. TVTechnology reported that TV and streaming were the most memorable ad format for 46% of consumers, and recall on streaming ran about 39% higher than other channels.
I’ve seen that stickiness in my own house. My wife and I watch Netflix on the basic plan, so we get ads. And nine times out of 10, we watch them. We don’t grab our phones. We don’t get up. We sit there and watch. Sometimes we even repeat the commercial’s joke to each other later. That’s the kind of recall brands want.
I’ve seen it with clients too. I’ve had one client come back for three separate CTV campaigns over two years. Same core creative idea. New scripts. And I’ve had another client tell me that a single sale from one of our CTV ads paid back the full video production budget. So yes, I think CTV is worth exploring if you’re already doing paid social. The opportunity is real.
Big Screens Make Boring Look Worse
Safe Creative Gets Exposed
A TV screen is brutally honest.
Flat lighting looks flatter. Generic copy sounds more generic. Weak acting feels weaker. A safe concept that already struggles on LinkedIn gets even more forgettable on a 65-inch screen.
This is why my whole philosophy is built around one rule: Always Be Cinematic.
I want a commercial that looks like a movie, like a CinemAd. I want strong lighting. Strong framing. Strong sound. Strong casting. I want something that feels like a little scene, not a piece of corporate furniture.
That matters even more for mature B2B brands. If you’re a large enterprise company, you already have gravity. You already have size. What you often need is freshness. You need the market to feel something again. You need the brand to look current and alive.
A lot of CTV ads I see right now still feel corporate, boring, and traditional. Honestly, that’s good news for brands willing to move first. There is still a huge opening to stand out.
Humor Helps People Remember
I’ve always believed humor is one of the best tools in B2B. People remember what makes them feel something. They remember a laugh. They remember a twist. They remember a weird little scene that catches them off guard.
And this isn’t just my opinion. Experimental B2B research found humor lifts attitudes toward both the ad and the brand. That makes sense to me. A funny ad lowers resistance. It opens the door.
That doesn’t mean every ad has to be goofy. I’m not trying to turn every enterprise brand into a sketch show. I’m trying to make the work memorable. Sometimes that means deadpan humor. Sometimes it means an absurd metaphor. Sometimes it means a character who keeps showing up and becomes part of the brand memory.
I love David Fincher’s visual style. It’s precise. It’s controlled. It feels cinematic. If I can bring even a little bit of that care into a 15-second B2B ad, the difference is huge. The audience feels it right away, even if they can’t explain why.
And the first few seconds matter. I’ve said before that the worst opening is a long shot with no audio and no clue what’s happening. The viewer needs to feel, right away, that this is for them. That can be direct. It can be through a metaphor. But it has to land fast.
Stop Explaining the Whole Platform
Brand Ads Need Memory First
One of the biggest mistakes I see in B2B is trying to cram the whole platform into one ad.
You’ve got 20 features. Five buyer types. Twelve use cases. The product team wants one thing. The CEO wants another. Then the ad turns into mush.
I don’t like doing that for top-of-funnel brand awareness. I would much rather show the problem and then land a good tagline at the end. That keeps the video clean. It keeps the joke intact. And it gives the audience an aha moment.
Traditional B2B loves the before-and-after. The problem. Then the screen recording. Then the happy dashboard. That can still have a place later in the funnel. If you need a 90-second explainer, fine. We do those too, and that usually takes a full day of filming because of all the angle changes and detail. But your CTV brand ad does not need to carry the whole burden of explanation.
Its job is memory.
Let the Audience Lean In
I actually like when the audience is a little curious at the start.
With Right-Hand Cybersecurity, we avoided mentioning cybersecurity until the end of the video. We opened with funny, everyday scenarios first. The viewer is thinking, “What is this?” Then the tagline lands, the brand appears, and the whole thing clicks. By that point, they’ve already watched.
That approach works because people are sick of ads. If you scream the brand name in the first second, it feels like a commercial right away. I’d rather let the scene do the work and reveal the brand at the payoff.
For a serious buyer, that’s often enough. They don’t need every detail in the first touch. They need a reason to remember you and click later.
Use Metaphors People Can Feel
This is where I spend a lot of my time creatively. We create funny videos out of complex products.
I don’t need to become a cybersecurity engineer or a contact center operator to help the brand. I need to understand the pain point, what makes the company different, and who the audience is. Once I have that, I can usually find a metaphor or a scenario that makes the product easier to feel.
For HockeyStack, the team told me sales and marketing are always fighting over credit. Because hockey is in the name, I pitched a hockey referee handing out penalties for “high dissing” to both sides. Now the audience gets the tension right away, and the product becomes easier to understand.
For Aligned, I helped take the client’s idea ‘bad sales behavior’ and move it into a dating scene. The guy asks about “next steps” on the date. He pulls out a PowerPoint about their future relationship. That’s a very B2B joke, but it lands because the scene is simple and human.
For Contact Point 360, I wanted to show how on-the-ball their support is. So the support rep is physically inside the customer’s house. Same idea with Schoox. Their rebrand personality was fun and magical, so I built a magician character around that.
And for Maze, where security teams get flooded with alerts and only a few really matter, I looked for metaphor and analogy to simplify that noise. That’s one of my favorite creative puzzles in B2B. You take something technical. You strip it down. Then you build a scene around the one thing the buyer actually cares about.
Creativity is infinite. If you sell AI, compliance software, apparel, or customer support services, there is still a way to make people care. You just need the right angle.
Build a World People Remember
Recurring Characters Make Recall Easier
If you want brand recall, recurring characters are powerful.
Lavender Joe is the clearest example from my work. He started as a bad salesman. Then over time he learned how to use Lavender and became better. That character gave us a whole world to play in. It gave the audience someone to recognize. It gave the brand a repeatable engine.
That campaign kept growing. We ended up producing over 300 video assets for Lavender across a year-long retainer for under $120,000 CAD. People called the ads Netflix quality. Some even said they looked like Super Bowl commercials. And the wild part was when the actor behind Lavender Joe got recognized in Italy. If a B2B brand character is getting recognized like that, you know the campaign stuck.
CTV is perfect for this kind of thinking. You don’t need one spot. You can build a mini-show.
PetMeds is another good example. We collaborated on the Harold and Dolores characters, and the client came back two more times for separate CTV campaigns. Same core creative energy. New scripts. That kind of repetition builds familiarity, and familiarity helps performance.
Distinct Identity Matters for Brand-Protective Teams
I know a lot of enterprise marketers are protective of the brand. They should be.
When I work with brands in the same category, I make a real effort to separate the campaigns. Different names. Different characters. Different locations. Different scenarios. If I shoot a very specific location for one cybersecurity brand, I’m not going to reuse that same creative world for another one. That matters.
You don’t want your company to look like a variation of somebody else’s ad. You want a distinct identity that can hold up on CTV, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, and anywhere else you place the asset.
Scale the Campaign Without Killing the Craft
Volume Only Works When Pre-Production Is Tight
When people hear that I can shoot around 10 short spots in a day, sometimes more depending on the setup, they think of a content mill.
That’s not how I see it.
The speed comes from pre-production. Scripts are tight. Storyboards are tight. Casting is approved. The location is chosen to support the full day. We usually stay in one location so we’re not wasting time tearing down and moving. That’s how you keep quality high and still get volume.
This model is useful for enterprise teams because you need options. You need assets for testing. You need multiple hooks. You need different cuts for different placements. And you need all of it without turning one campaign into a six-month headache.
For PetMeds, we produced 20 assets over two days and framed them for TV, square, and vertical. For AskNicely, we handled the whole thing end to end, including a host talking to real strangers in a park. On another shoot we worked with an animal wrangler. These are not simple productions. They still need to run smoothly.
One Partner Makes the Logistics Easier
This is one reason I like covering the whole pipeline with my team. Creative. Scripting. Casting. Production. Editing.
The client can review audition tapes with us. They can fly into Toronto and be on set. They can sign off on takes in real time. Then we handle the edit and deliver the assets.
That matters when you’re managing a big organization. You don’t want three different vendors passing responsibility around while your launch date gets closer.
It also matters for cost per asset. A typical CinemAds package is around $30,000 for 10 high-quality commercials. That gets the cost down to about $3,000 per video. For brands spending serious money on distribution, that’s a strong way to stretch the budget.
And if your internal champion still needs CEO or CFO approval, I’ll often write sample scripts first. I like giving leadership something concrete to react to. A real script gets budget approved faster than a vague creative promise.
Take Some Risk, but Do It on Purpose
My humor can be over the top and sometimes unhinged and even inappropriate. I know that. That’s part of why brands come to me.
But I’m not asking you to bet the whole campaign on one crazy idea.
What I like is balance. Give yourself some safer scripts. Then shoot one or two bolder ones and test them. If you’re already creating 10 or 15 assets, why not give yourself a real shot at standing out?
I still pitch a cybersecurity concept built around “practice safe tech.” One older investor didn’t like it. I still think it’s funny. I also helped Maple make a risky telehealth ad with a man who appears naked behind a laptop before the joke resolves. Those are bold choices. They’re memorable too.
Art is opinion, not fact. So test it.
Safe marketing is boring. And in crowded categories, the best marketing wins.
Human Nuance Still Wins on the Big Screen
I use AI. I use it to brainstorm. I use it to help write. I think it’s useful.
But for comedy, timing, and subtle performance, I still trust human actors and a human crew.
I remember a cybersecurity scene where two people were arguing on a couch like they were in therapy. In one take, the actor put his hand out and looked at the therapist with this tiny facial reaction that was perfect. It was fast. It was funny. And it felt human in a way that is hard to force.
Those little moments matter even more on CTV because the screen is larger and the audience is calmer. Nuance reads better there.
If AI eventually gets perfect at visual generation, I’ll still be directing. Marketers will still need someone who understands story, rhythm, framing, and comedic timing. The tools may change. The need for taste does not.
Final Thought
CTV is a huge opportunity for B2B brands in 2026. Premion found that 70% of advertisers planned to increase CTV and OTT budgets, and more than 80% believed streaming helps awareness, recall, and full-funnel performance. The money is moving there for a reason.
So if you’re going to show up on that screen, earn the attention.
Build a scene. Use humor. Keep the message clear. Give the audience a little payoff. Make the brand memorable. And please, don’t put a boring corporate explainer on a beautiful television and call it strategy.
I’ve believed this for a long time. Brands need funny, memorable, engaging, high-quality video ads.
Always be cinematic.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I convince a conservative C-suite to approve a humorous, differentiated brand campaign?
Don’t sell them ‘funny.’ Sell them performance. Show them the data. Experimental studies in B2B marketing prove humor significantly increases positive attitudes toward the ad and brand compared to safe assets. Pitch one bold, cinematic concept alongside safer options. Real scripts get budget approved faster than vague promises.
Does cinematic brand differentiation on CTV actually impact down-funnel B2B sales?
Absolutely. Brand memory creates sales velocity. When you stop looking like a boring corporate whitepaper, buyers lean in. Industry data shows 83% of marketers say video directly increases sales. Furthermore, over 80% of CTV advertisers agree streaming ads deliver full-funnel performance. Cinematic differentiation lowers resistance so sales can actually close.
How do we visually differentiate a completely commoditized enterprise product?
Stop filming the product. If your software dashboard or corporate service looks exactly like your competitor’s, you have to build a cinematic world around the buyer’s pain. Use absurd metaphors or recurring characters to visualize their daily headaches. You differentiate by making the audience feel understood, not by listing feature specs.
Should we shift our entire paid social budget into CTV to revitalize our legacy brand?
No, don’t abandon social. You need a multi-channel ecosystem. Roughly 80% of advertisers agree combining CTV with traditional channels drives the highest ROI. Use CTV to anchor your storytelling and capture 9.7 seconds of active attention, then retarget that primed audience with cut-down assets.
How do we manage the logistics of a massive cinematic rebrand without blowing our cost-per-asset?
The secret is ruthless pre-production. You don’t need a six-month headache across three separate agencies. By consolidating creative, scripting, and production under one roof, you can shoot 10 to 20 distinct cinematic assets in one location over two days. That drives your cost per video down while keeping quality premium.
