You know the pressure.
The budget is real. The screen is huge. The CEO wants something safe. The product team wants the dashboard in the first shot. The CFO wants proof before the media buy even starts. That is how a lot of TV ads end up clean, polite, and forgettable.
I don’t really care for safe videos. I care about memorable ones. I care about the kind of ad that makes someone look up from the couch and stay with it for 15 or 30 seconds. I care about the kind of spot that makes your brand feel bigger, sharper, and more established than the boring competitor beside you.
I’ve been around TV for a long time. Before I focused on B2B SaaS and AI, I spent four to five years filming a fishing show that aired on TV. I’m a filmmaker first, entrepreneur second. So when I talk about broadcast TV commercials, I’m thinking about the whole living-room screen now. Broadcast. Cable. CTV. The creative rules travel across all of it.
The Big Screen Still Matters
Some teams talk about TV like it’s old news. I don’t buy that.
Nielsen found 74.2% of all U.S. TV viewing was ad-supported in Q4 2025. The audience is still there. A lot more of that attention is just addressable now.
The money is moving there too. U.S. CTV ad spend reached $23.6 billion in 2024. Digital video was projected to capture nearly 60% of U.S. TV/video ad spend in 2025. So if you lead marketing at a mature brand, this channel is part of the main stage.
What I like most about CTV is the mood. Social media is overwhelming now. Ads everywhere. Noise everywhere. The couch is calmer. People are relaxed. They are watching a show or a movie. If we’re going to interrupt them while they’re watching a movie, why not interrupt them with an ad that looks like a movie?
That is where CTV gets really interesting. You get TV level attention with digital style targeting. You can reach the right job titles, company sizes, industries, and intent audiences on a premium screen. If you’re trying to shake off an old-guard reputation, that matters a lot.
The attention numbers back that up. TVision found premium CTV apps averaged 56.1% ad attention, which was above the 54.5% linear TV norm in the same report. First-in-pod ads earned 53.6% attention. Pods under a minute averaged 55.4% attention.
So yes, placement matters. Your media team should fight for strong spots. But placement does not rescue weak creative.
A Marketing Science study using about 4 million TV ad exposures found 30% of TV ads play to empty rooms, and that attention helps predict brand search lift. The room doesn’t owe you anything. You still have to earn it.
Give the Commercial One Job
This is where a lot of enterprise teams get into trouble.
They ask one 30-second TV ad to do everything. Explain the platform. Show the UI. Calm down leadership. Prove ROI. Book demos tomorrow. That is too much weight for one piece of creative.
B2B buyers do not give you much time anyway. Gartner says they spend only 17% of their buying time meeting with potential suppliers. If they are comparing three vendors, each supplier gets around 5% of the buyer’s total time. Another Gartner survey found 61% prefer a rep-free buying experience, and 73% avoid irrelevant outreach.
So your TV commercial needs a simpler job first. Create memory. Create trust. Make the buyer feel they have seen your brand before sales ever reaches out.
That lines up with the way I like to use TV. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and IPA recommend a 46/54 split between brand building and sales activation. That feels right to me. Let TV build the memory and the premium perception. Then retarget that engaged audience with explainers, demos, product tours, and lower-funnel content on LinkedIn, YouTube, display, or email.
The same report tied 10 extra share-of-voice points to about 0.7 points of market share growth in B2B. So if you want more share of voice, you need more than impressions. You need an ad people can actually remember. It’s the best marketing that wins.
Stop Opening with the Dashboard
I understand why teams want the UI in the first five seconds.
It feels responsible. It feels safe. It feels like proof. Most of the time, it also kills curiosity.
The classic before-and-after product demo has been around forever. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just think it feels very traditional. On a big screen, it can feel like a corporate explainer stretched across the living room. Boring as hell.
I prefer to show the problem and do it with a metaphor. That gives you room for story. Room for humor. Room for an aha moment at the end. The viewer leans in because they want to understand what they are watching. Then the tagline lands and the commercial clicks.
I want the viewer asking, what’s going on here? I want them to stay long enough for the message to hit. People remember funny. People remember an emotion. Whether it’s a mental laugh or an outside laugh, like an LOL, that memory does work for the brand.
If leadership insists on showing product, fine. I’m flexible. I’ll often place a quick UI shot or a short “after” moment at the back end. Sometimes I’ll deliver both versions so the team can test them. For now, we’re just trying to create a laugh and grab attention. Then the rest of the funnel can do the heavier explaining.
Humor helps, but it is not magic by itself. A meta-analysis on humor in advertising found humor improves attention and ad attitude. I agree with that. You still need the brand to land clearly by the end.
Win the First Three Seconds
Your first frame matters. A lot.
The first three seconds matter too. I want some gag or shock value image where people say, what the heck is going on here? Or I want beautiful cinematography that makes someone actually want to watch because it looks so nice to the eye.
Sometimes I open with an absurd visual. I’ve used a character literally playing tug-of-war with a rope coming out of a computer screen. That kind of image buys you curiosity fast. Other times I go the other way and open on a dimly lit, moody setup that feels more like a thriller than a commercial. Either one can work.
A hook does not need dialogue. Sometimes the hook is the frame itself. Sometimes it is a facial expression. Sometimes it is a strange scenario that the right audience instantly understands. If I’m targeting salespeople, one painfully familiar line can stop them cold. If I’m targeting security leaders, an alert metaphor can do the job before the logo ever appears.
What I never want is a slow, empty opening where nothing is happening. A long office shot with no audio is a fast way to lose people. If your ad opens like background noise, it will stay background noise.
On TV and CTV, I’m trying to create that little moment where the audience thinks, wait, am I still watching the show? That second of confusion is useful. It keeps them in the ad long enough for the brand to land.
Make the Product Easy to Feel
This is the practical part of the work.
Before I write anything, I want the problem in plain English. Tell me what your product does like I’m 10. Give me a metaphor for how your product works. Once I get that, the ideas start moving.
I’ve worked across software, AI, customer experience, learning systems, pet care, cybersecurity, and even corporate apparel. Creativity is limitless. It’s infinite. I just need time to digest the problem, the audience, and what makes the brand different.
Then I start looking for real-world scenarios people can feel right away. I’ve used dating scenes to explain sales software. I’ve used household emergencies to explain security alerts. I’ve used absurd workplace scenarios to explain customer experience and AI. Those ideas work because the viewer feels the pain before they understand the product.
You still have to speak the audience’s language. I always try to get the right lingo into the script so the ICP feels seen. But I do not want jargon everywhere. Too much jargon makes the ad stiff. The metaphor should do most of the heavy lifting.
When brands come to me with feature bloat, this is usually the unlock. Your platform might do 25 things. Fine. A TV commercial should still give the audience one clear feeling and one clear takeaway.
Make It Cinematic or Don’t Bother Buying TV
This is where a lot of brands miss the point.
They spend for a premium screen, then run creative that feels cheap. Why spend for TV if the ad looks like a webinar clip?
Creative craft is not some nice extra. It is part of performance. NCSolutions found creative drove 49% of short-term incremental sales lift across nearly 450 campaigns. A 2020 Journal of Marketing meta-analysis also found advertising creativity improves attention, recall, brand attitude, and purchase intent.
So yes, your lighting matters. Your framing matters. Your casting matters. Your sound matters. Your pacing matters. Everything matters.
On a big screen, every flaw gets bigger. Weak acting gets exposed. Bad sound gets exposed. Flat lighting gets exposed. Plain white walls look dead. I want textured locations. I want practical lamps, depth, shape, and mood. I want the ad to feel like something from a real film world, not a boardroom demo.
I love the precision of David Fincher when it fits. Moody frames. Controlled lighting. Strong composition. When you bring that level of care into B2B, the brand instantly feels more serious and more premium. A funny or cinematic ad hits much harder on a 65-inch screen than in a tiny LinkedIn feed.
This is also why I’m still high on human production. I use AI for brainstorming and writing help. I’m open to new tools. But there’s that human nuance that AI doesn’t have. A little hand gesture. A look to camera. A pause. A better read of a line. On a TV screen, those details matter.
A founder talking into an iPhone can get attention online. Fine. If you’re buying TV to reposition a mature brand, you need more craft than that. The viewer feels the quality before they hear the line.
Build a Campaign, Not One Hero Spot
Ad fatigue is real. I strongly dislike seeing the same commercial over and over. Your audience does too.
So when a brand comes to me asking for one ad, I usually try to push them toward a bigger batch. A single filming day can usually hold much more than one commercial if the campaign is structured properly.
I can de-risk a video campaign by shooting 10 to 15 ads in one day. I do that by keeping the production in one location, locking the scripts in ahead of time, storyboarding the day, and moving quickly with a crew that knows the pace. If I’m in a house, I’ll use the kitchen, the living room, the office, and keep the whole system tight. I don’t want to waste hours driving between locations.
That lets you diversify the scripts from safe to bold to unhinged. You do not have to bet the entire TV budget on one wild idea. Shoot a safer concept. Shoot a bolder one. Shoot one or two that really push. Then see what the audience responds to when the campaign goes live.
This also gives you media efficiency. I shoot natively in 16:9 because I’m a filmmaker and the big screen wants horizontal. Then in post, I cut square and vertical versions too. So when we deliver 15 videos, the client can end up with 45 assets across formats. One script gets five outputs. Now your TV idea can feed CTV, LinkedIn, YouTube, paid social, retargeting, and even sales follow-up.
That matters if you run a large organization with lots of channels to fill. It helps on cost too. My whole model at CinemAds is built around bringing down the budget by 50% or more and adding 10x the content compared with a traditional agency build.
Get Internal Buy-in Before the Shoot
Broadcast campaigns can get political inside a company. I know that.
You might love the idea and still need a CEO, CFO, or founder to feel good about it before anyone signs the PO. So I build for that reality.
Before I write scripts, I ask clients to fill out a content doc. I want the single-minded message. I want to know how you would describe the brand as a person. I want to know what brands feel tonally aligned. That gives me a much better shot at writing ideas leadership can approve quickly.
I’ll also write sample scripts and revise them until the whole team is comfortable. Sometimes I do that for free so the internal champion has something concrete to take up the chain. Once the scripts are approved, my writing job is done and my directing job begins.
I also like having clients involved in casting and on set. They can review auditions, pick the actors with me, and approve takes in real time. That removes a lot of anxiety. Art is opinion, not fact. Collaboration matters.
One more thing. I love bold comedy. I love over-the-top ideas. I still keep a hard line. I do not want humor that punches down or makes fun of specific people. You can be bold without being lazy.
What This Looks Like in the Real World
For Replicant, I built a Connected TV campaign around a rainy diner scene inspired by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. We shot it at night. The power flickered. The whole thing felt tense and cinematic. The product message still came through, but it came through with story, mood, and a strong visual world.
Replicant ended up recouping the full production investment from a single CTV sale within six months and came back for another campaign. That is a strong signal. The creative gave the brand premium perception and helped the business justify doing more.
For Schoox, the challenge was different. Learning and development software can feel dry very fast. Their rebrand described the brand personality as fun and magical, so I built a magician-led campaign around that and delivered both the brand awareness spots and a 90-second explainer in a tight two-day window.
Same lesson. Dry category, lively creative. Mature brand, fresher perception.
I’ve also seen some of my brand awareness videos outperform traditional direct-response ads for certain clients. That happens. I still don’t promise results every time because nobody honest should. My job is to make the best video possible, get the message across in a memorable way, and give your team a strong asset to run. Then the media strategy and the sales process have to do their part too.
Final Thought
Before you approve your next B2B TV spot, ask yourself a few hard questions.
Does the first frame earn attention? Does the script show a real problem the audience will feel? Did you hold back the dashboard until it actually helps? Does the ad look premium enough for a premium screen? And do you have enough versions to avoid burning out the audience after two weeks?
If you can say yes to those questions, you’re in a much better place. If you can’t, keep working the idea.
The big screen is too expensive to waste on bland creative. Buyers are not waiting around for another stiff explainer. They want clarity fast. They want a reason to care. And on a living-room screen, they want something that feels worth their time.
We like to make ads that don’t look like ads. If we’re going to interrupt someone while they’re watching a movie or a show, let’s interrupt them with a commercial that looks like a movie. That’s how I think about mastering B2B broadcast TV commercials. A commercial that looks like a movie, like a CinemAd.
Frequently Asked Questions
How should we measure the success of a CTV campaign if we aren’t driving immediate demo requests?
Direct response isn’t the goal here. Memory is. A Marketing Science study shows viewer attention predicts brand search lift. Look at Share of Voice, direct traffic spikes, and search volume. If you build the memory on the big screen, lower-funnel channels will see the lift.
Does it matter where our commercial airs during a CTV ad break?
Absolutely. Placement matters just as much as the creative craft. According to TVision, first-in-pod ads earn 53.6% attention, outperforming mid and last-pod slots. Tell your media buyers to fight aggressively for that first slot, and keep the total pod under one minute to keep eyes locked.
Should mature enterprise brands still invest in linear broadcast, or move entirely to CTV?
The audience is split, so your buy should be too. Ad-supported viewing is 45.6% streaming, 29.6% broadcast, and 24.8% cable. CTV gives you surgical targeting for specific enterprise job titles, but linear broadcast still provides massive, undeniable scale. I recommend a hybrid approach.
How do we execute complex shoots with animals or massive casts without blowing our budget?
You contain the chaos. If you need specialized casting or animal wranglers, you don’t move locations. You build a tight, single-location system and cycle the complexity through it. We storyboard every minute so we can still shoot a high volume of distinct assets efficiently.
How do we pivot a boring compliance or BPO brand without alienating our Fortune 500 base?
You don’t abandon the core problem. You just change the wrapper. We use high-end cinematic metaphors to make abstract systems feel human. You aren’t losing professionalism by being bold. You are just proving your massive enterprise platform is actually built for human beings.
