At some point in every campaign review featuring a streaming buy, someone asks the inevitable: nice reach numbers, but did it actually move the needle? For a long time, the honest answer was: we think so. Today, though, we are getting a clearer picture of the types of results that advertisers can expect to drive on streaming platforms.
The shift towards measurable performance outcomes on streaming platforms has lagged other channels. Streaming scaled as a major channel at the same moment that sweeping privacy regulation caused brands to pull back from sharing data directly with publishers. Measurement solutions built in a click-dominant world were recency-biased by design, undervaluing upstream and view-based channels by default. Streaming got slotted into the reach bucket not because it couldn't drive outcomes, but because CTV inherited linear TV's measurement playbook, and nobody stopped to ask whether that playbook fit.
"Advertisers and publishers are both motivated to move from reach to more meaningful brand and business outcomes," said Cierra Prince, VP of Ad Measurement at Tubi. "When budgets are finite and video inventory seemingly infinite, the ability to drive measurable, behavioral impact is increasingly critical."
What the results actually show
Performance benchmark studies, analyzed across brand and outcome-based data from campaigns running on Tubi, show consistent lower-funnel impact across categories that historically kept streaming in the awareness column.
In the QSR category, Tubi campaigns drove a 26% lift in store visits and a 37% lift in incremental sales.¹ Retail posted a 21% lift in store visits and 27% in incremental sales.² Within automotive – a category where the purchase cycle is long and attribution chains have always been hard to close – brands experienced a 25% lift in vehicle purchases.³ In CPG, incremental sales lifted 13% with an incremental ROAS of almost 4-to-1.⁴
"The biggest concern buyers have about streaming publishers is that our value starts and stops in the upper funnel," Prince said. "The new reality is that streaming video is truly full-funnel – Tubi has proven we can build brand awareness and consideration, but we can equally influence conversion, sales and loyalty outcomes."
A layer of case studies sharpens the picture further. A retailer who employed Tubi Moments – a targeted rotational buy that guarantees an advertiser's ad runs right after a relevant moment, based on metadata tags of visual cues, tone, sentiment and mood. – as opposed to standard targeting drove an 8.4% lift in incremental sales.⁵ An auto brand that embraced the carousel format experienced a 33% lift in auto sales, well above Polk benchmarks.⁶ Within the studios category, film launch campaigns that ran on Tubi saw a 14% lift in associated movie ticket purchases.⁷
When the power of ads receptivity meets an equally powerful measurement infrastructure
The streaming model matters. Unlike other platforms, Tubi is 100% built around free content funded by advertising – an open value exchange that creates a different kind of receptivity to ads than subscription services. But receptivity alone doesn't explain the consistency of these lower funnel outcomes.
That's where Tubi's approach to measurement does the work. Tubi operates as a measurement orchestrator, aligning advertiser goals, third-party partners and media execution into a closed loop that links exposure directly to outcomes. The stack is interoperable by design, working with the measurement providers brands already use: Kantar and Upwave for brand lift, InMarket and Foursquare for foot traffic, Circana and Polk for sales, Innovid for attribution.
"We meet advertisers where they are in terms of the KPIs they care about and the partners they know and trust," Prince said. "After we prove our ability to drive outcomes in the same solutions they use to evaluate legacy partners, we can work with them to scale through test-and-learn frameworks."
The goal is a continuous loop of measuring, learning and optimizing, where insights from one flight directly inform the next. In a crowded marketplace where every publisher can sell reach, closing the loop from exposure to sale is the differentiation that is turning streaming from a reach play into a performance channel.
References
- Aggregate Sales Lift, InMarket, Q1'25-Q1'26.
- Aggregate Sales Lift, InMarket, Q4'25-Q1'26.
- Aggregate Auto Sales Lift average, Polk S&P Global, Q4’25-Q1’26, Directional results.
- Aggregate Sales Lift, InMarket Q4'25-Q1'2.
- Tubi + inMarket , December 2025; reflects Tubi Moments performance only.
- Polk S&P Global; Q4 2025.
- Kochava, January 2026.
