The Agency's Guide to white-label CTV Advertising (Connected TV Made Simple)

Your clients are asking about connected TV advertising. They're seeing reports that CTV rebounded with 16% year-over-year growth in 2024, and they know 68% of marketers now consider it a "must buy" channel. They're asking you what your agency can do for them in connected TV.

Here's the problem: you don't have a CTV team. You don't have relationships with streaming platforms. You haven't built the technical infrastructure to execute programmatic campaigns. Building these capabilities in-house would take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars before you could run your first campaign.

This is where white-label CTV becomes your competitive advantage. Rather than turning away seven-figure opportunities or hiring specialists you can't yet afford, white-label CTV lets you offer sophisticated connected TV advertising under your agency brand. Your clients get television-quality advertising with digital targeting precision. You get substantial margin on the fastest-growing ad channel without the overhead, risk, or time investment of building in-house.

The opportunity is massive and urgently time-sensitive. Digital video is set to capture nearly 60% of all TV and video ad spend in 2025, representing a fundamental shift in how advertising budgets get allocated. While enterprise agencies scramble to build CTV capabilities in-house (a process taking 12-18 months), smaller and mid-sized agencies using white-label partnerships are capturing market share and revenue today.

This comprehensive guide shows you exactly how white-label CTV works, why it's the fastest path to offering CTV services, what to look for in partnerships, how to price and position services, and how to avoid the pitfalls that trip up agencies new to the channel.

The Connected TV Advertising Opportunity (And Why It's Bigger Than You Think)

The raw numbers are staggering, but they only tell part of the story. Total U.S. CTV ad spend is projected to reach $26.6 billion in 2025, up 13% from 2024. But context matters. Just five years ago, CTV represented a fraction of what it does today. This isn't incremental growth. It's a structural shift in how television advertising works.

36% of marketers increasing CTV spend are pulling budget from linear TV, and another 36% are reallocating from social media. This means your clients are already shifting budgets toward CTV whether you're positioned to capture that spend or not. When clients reallocate $50,000 per month from social to CTV and you can't execute that work, they're going to agencies that can.

Consumer viewing behavior is driving the irreversible shift. Connected TV now accounts for roughly 46% of total TV viewing time, surpassing cable and broadcast combined as streaming adoption continues accelerating. This isn't a temporary trend. Cord-cutting continues its relentless march forward.

The engagement metrics justify premium pricing. CTV delivers 98% completion rates (viewers watching the entire ad) and 51.5% attention rates (viewers actively paying attention), significantly outperforming other digital channels. Compare that to social media where users scroll past ads in seconds or display advertising where viewability itself is often questionable.

Ad-supported streaming has hit critical mass. 86% of consumers now choose ad-supported tiers when streaming services offer them. Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, and others have launched or expanded ad-supported options. This creates premium inventory at scale. Five years ago, CTV inventory was limited. Today, every major streaming platform offers substantial ad inventory.

Small and mid-sized businesses are entering the market. This is crucial for agencies. CTV used to require massive budgets accessible only to enterprise advertisers. CTV advertising can cost as low as 4 cents per spot, making it accessible for businesses with $5,000-$10,000 monthly advertising budgets. This democratization means your SMB clients can now afford television advertising.

What white-label CTV Actually Means (And Why It's Different from Other Partnerships)

white-label CTV is a partnership model where a specialized provider executes connected TV campaigns under your agency's brand. You maintain the client relationship, campaign strategy, and margin. The white-label partner handles technical platform access, media buying and trafficking, campaign optimization and pacing, performance monitoring, and reporting infrastructure.

The distinction from traditional media buying partnerships matters enormously. You're not just placing orders through a partner who handles fulfillment. white-label advertising platforms offer complete rebranding of dashboards, reports, and client-facing materials with your agency logo and identity. When clients log in to review campaigns or receive reports, they see your brand throughout the entire experience.

This is fundamentally different from being a reseller. Resellers carry someone else's brand. white-label partners carry your brand. Clients don't know (and don't need to know) that execution happens through a partnership. From their perspective, your agency provides comprehensive CTV services.

Programmatic infrastructure powers virtually all white-label CTV. Programmatic video ad spending is projected to surpass $110 billion in 2025, with video accounting for nearly 75% of new programmatic ad dollars from 2024 through 2026. Roughly 75% of all CTV transactions happen programmatically, representing a fundamental shift from traditional television's relationship-based buying to data-driven, automated purchasing.

Understanding programmatic is crucial for selling CTV services. Programmatic doesn't mean "low quality" or "remnant inventory." It means automated, data-driven buying that happens in real-time through demand-side platforms (DSPs) connected to supply-side platforms (SSPs) and ad exchanges. Premium inventory from Hulu, Netflix, Disney+ all trades programmatically alongside long-tail inventory.

The targeting sophistication is what sets CTV apart from linear TV. white-label CTV platforms offer household-level targeting (reaching specific households based on various data), demographic segmentation (age, income, household composition), behavioral targeting based on online activity, geographic precision (down to zip codes or designated market areas), and first-party audience activation (using client customer lists).

This targeting precision transforms television advertising from a reach medium into an addressable medium. Linear TV buys audiences in broad demographic buckets. CTV targets specific households based on dozens of data attributes.

Access to premium inventory is included in white-label partnerships. Quality white-label CTV providers maintain direct relationships and private marketplace deals with major streaming platforms including Hulu, Netflix (ad-supported tier), Disney+, ESPN, Roku, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, YouTube TV, Tubi, Pluto TV, and hundreds of others.

Your small agency gets the same inventory access as holding companies. The white-label provider's scale enables them to negotiate premium placements and pricing that individual agencies couldn't access directly.

Why Agencies Choose white-label Over Building In-House CTV Capabilities

The cost structure is the obvious starting point, but it's not the complete picture. Building in-house CTV capabilities requires hiring specialists (media buyers with CTV experience earn $70,000-$120,000+ annually), purchasing or licensing DSP technology ($50,000-$200,000+ annually depending on platform), establishing direct relationships with streaming platforms and ad exchanges, developing reporting and attribution systems, and managing ongoing campaign optimization and troubleshooting.

For most agencies, this represents $300,000-$500,000 in annual fixed costs before executing a single campaign. You need consistent CTV revenue exceeding $1 million annually to justify this infrastructure investment. Most agencies aren't there yet.

white-label CTV converts those enormous fixed costs into variable costs that scale proportionally with revenue. You pay for campaigns as you sell them. No idle capacity eating margin during slow months. No overhead when business is soft. Programmatic advertising in the U.S. is expected to account for over 85% of all digital ad spending in 2025, with total expenditures surpassing $270 billion. white-label partnerships let you capture your share of that opportunity without the capital investment.

Speed to market matters more than most agencies realize. Building CTV capabilities in-house realistically takes 9-12 months. You need to recruit and hire talent (3-4 months), evaluate and implement platform technology (2-3 months), establish vendor relationships and negotiate contracts (2-3 months), develop campaign workflows and processes (1-2 months), and create client education and sales materials (1-2 months).

By the time you're operational, competitors using white-label have already captured 12 months of revenue and established themselves in clients' minds as the CTV experts. Market timing matters. Being able to launch CTV services in weeks rather than months can be the difference between capturing a wave or missing it entirely.

Expertise and optimization separate successful CTV campaigns from mediocre ones. white-label partners bring specialized knowledge that takes years to develop across platform-specific nuances (how inventory performs differently across Roku vs. Hulu vs. YouTube TV), optimal ad formats and lengths for different content types and platforms, frequency capping strategies that maximize reach without over-saturating audiences, creative testing methodologies that systematically improve performance, attribution modeling that connects CTV exposure to conversion events.

This expertise gets applied across hundreds of campaigns. Your in-house team would be learning on your clients' budgets, making expensive mistakes, and taking months to develop proficiency. white-label partners have already made those mistakes, learned those lessons, and systematized what works.

Technology and data access is massively underestimated. Quality white-label CTV platforms provide access to third-party audience data (demographic, behavioral, and intent data from major providers), brand safety and fraud prevention tools (ensuring ads appear in appropriate content), advanced attribution modeling (connecting household exposure to website visits, purchases, store visits), real-time optimization algorithms (adjusting bids and targeting to maximize performance), cross-device tracking and retargeting (following users from TV to mobile to desktop).

Building or licensing this technology stack independently would cost six figures annually minimum. Accessing it through white-label partnerships costs nothing beyond the campaign fees you're already paying.

Risk mitigation is rarely discussed but critically important. Launching a new service line involves risk. What if clients don't buy? What if campaigns underperform? What if the channel doesn't work for your client base? In-house builds commit you to substantial costs regardless of whether CTV succeeds for your agency. white-label partnerships let you test and validate CTV as a service offering with minimal upfront risk.

Run pilots with a few clients. Learn what works in your niche. Develop case studies. Refine your positioning. Only after you've validated CTV market demand should you consider moving capabilities in-house (if ever).

How white-label CTV Partnerships Work (The Complete Workflow)

Understanding the workflow helps you set proper expectations internally and with clients. The process starts long before campaign launch and continues through to post-campaign analysis.

Onboarding and discovery set the foundation. The best white-label partnerships begin with substantive discovery where you and your partner align on service offerings (which platforms, targeting capabilities, creative requirements), pricing models (CPM-based, markup percentage, revenue share), reporting frequency and format, client communication protocols, and success metrics for the partnership.

This discovery phase matters enormously. Agencies that skip thorough onboarding often experience friction later when expectations don't align. Invest time upfront defining workflows, communication cadences, escalation procedures, and decision-making authority.

Platform customization transforms generic technology into your branded solution. Your white-label partner rebrands the DSP interface with your agency logo in the header and throughout the platform, your color scheme and design elements consistently applied, your domain (e.g., clients log in via clients.youragency.com instead of the provider's domain), custom client reporting templates that match your existing report designs and branding.

When clients interact with the CTV platform, they should see only your agency brand. This complete white-labeling is what separates true white-label partnerships from reseller relationships.

Campaign workflow establishes clear responsibilities. In a well-structured partnership, your team handles strategic planning (campaign goals, target audience definition, key messages), creative direction (concept, messaging, call-to-action), budget allocation across tactics, and client communication (strategy presentations, status updates, result reviews).

The white-label partner handles technical execution: translating strategy into technical targeting parameters, selecting appropriate platforms and inventory for your audience, trafficking creative assets and ensuring specs meet platform requirements, setting up campaigns in the DSP with proper tracking, launching campaigns and monitoring initial performance, and optimizing throughout the flight (bid adjustments, targeting refinements, budget pacing).

This division of labor lets you focus on strategic value-add while the partner handles technical execution. You don't need to become a programmatic expert. You need to understand strategy, positioning, and client relationship management.

Optimization runs continuously throughout the campaign lifespan. Quality white-label partners actively monitor performance multiple times daily, adjusting bids to maintain pacing while hitting target CPM or CPV goals, refining targeting based on what's performing (eliminating underperforming segments, expanding top performers), testing creative variations systematically, managing frequency caps to avoid oversaturation, shifting budget toward top-performing inventory sources and platforms.

This active management is crucial. Programmatic campaigns don't run themselves. The difference between good and great CTV performance often comes down to optimization quality.

Reporting and attribution close the loop. white-label platforms typically track comprehensive metrics including impressions delivered across all platforms, video completion rate (percentage watching the full ad), reach and frequency (unique households reached, average exposures per household), cost per completed view (CPCV) compared to benchmarks, website visits attributed to CTV exposure, and conversion events (purchases, form fills, calls) when attribution is implemented.

Reports get white-labeled with your agency branding before client delivery. Many agencies enhance these with strategic narrative, competitive context, and recommendations for optimization. The data comes from the white-label partner. The insight and interpretation come from you.

Evaluating white-label CTV Partners (What Actually Matters)

Not all white-label CTV partnerships are created equal. These factors separate excellent partners from mediocre ones:

Inventory access and relationships determine campaign success. Ask potential partners which streaming platforms they have direct access to (not just access, but high-quality programmatic relationships). Do they have private marketplace deals with premium publishers? Can they show recent insertion orders or screenshots demonstrating active campaigns on major platforms?

Beware partners who claim universal access without proof. Access to every streaming platform doesn't mean quality access or competitive pricing on any of them.

Platform technology and user experience matter for client satisfaction. Request demos of the actual platform clients will use. Is the interface intuitive or cluttered? Can you generate client-ready reports in minutes or does it require hours of manual work? Does the platform provide real-time data or 24-48 hour delays? How customizable are reports?

Poor platform UX creates friction with clients. If generating campaign updates requires contacting the partner and waiting for reports, client communication suffers.

Attribution and measurement capabilities separate sophisticated partners from basic ones. How do they handle CTV attribution? Can they track website visits from exposed households? Do they integrate with your client's CRM or analytics platform? Can they measure foot traffic for retail clients? What's their methodology for proving incremental lift?

Attribution remains CTV's biggest challenge. Partners with advanced attribution capabilities (household-level tracking, conversion pixels, integration with major analytics platforms) deliver significantly more value.

Pricing transparency and flexibility affect your margins. Understand exactly what you're paying for. Is it pure CPM-based (you pay X per thousand impressions)? Cost-plus (platform fees plus markup)? Revenue share (partner takes percentage of campaign budget)? Hybrid models combining elements?

Hidden fees destroy margins. Ensure you understand total costs including platform access fees, data costs (audience segments often carry surcharges), verification and fraud prevention fees, and any creative hosting or trafficking costs.

Support and partnership quality determine day-to-day experience. Do you have a dedicated account manager or general support queue? How quickly do they respond to issues? Can you reach someone outside business hours if campaigns have problems? Do they provide strategic guidance or just technical execution?

The best white-label partnerships feel collaborative. Mediocre ones feel transactional. You want partners who proactively surface opportunities, share competitive intelligence, and invest in your success because your growth drives their growth.

Pricing white-label CTV Services (Capturing Appropriate Margin Without Overpricing)

Pricing white-label CTV requires balancing competitive market rates, the value you provide, and margins that justify the effort. Most agencies make one of two mistakes: overpricing because "TV advertising is expensive" or underpricing because they're uncomfortable with margin.

Understand your cost structure completely before setting client prices. If your white-label partner charges $15 CPM for inventory and you add zero value beyond order-taking, charging $20 CPM ($5 markup) is fair. But you're not just order-taking. You provide strategic planning and audience development, creative concepting and direction, campaign monitoring and client communication, performance analysis and optimization recommendations, and competitive positioning and industry expertise.

These services have value separate from media execution. Price accordingly.

CPM-based pricing is most common for CTV services. CPMs vary by platform, targeting specificity, and campaign objectives. Reasonable ranges: Non-targeted remnant inventory ($12-$16 CPM), demographic-targeted campaigns ($16-$26 CPM), behavioral or intent-targeted campaigns ($24-$30 CPM), and highly specific audience targeting with premium placement ($30-$50+ CPM).

Position yourself in the middle to upper range based on the additional services you provide. If you're offering premium strategy, creative support, and sophisticated targeting, $25-$35 CPM for quality targeted campaigns is defensible.

Minimum campaign spend establishes viability thresholds. CTV campaigns under $3,000-$5,000 monthly don't generate enough data for meaningful optimization or results analysis. Set minimums that ensure campaigns can actually succeed. Many agencies set $5,000 monthly minimums for CTV, though this varies by market and client type.

Communicate why minimums exist. Clients understand when you explain that smaller budgets get spread too thin across targeting parameters to generate actionable insights.

Consider package pricing for strategic value. Rather than pure media pricing, consider packages that bundle strategy, creative, execution, and reporting. Example: "$8,000/month includes full-funnel CTV strategy, up to $6,000 in media spend, creative concepting and direction, weekly optimization, and monthly performance reports with strategic recommendations."

This positions CTV as a comprehensive service rather than just media buying, justifies higher margins, and sets clearer expectations about deliverables.

Management fees separate strategic value from media costs. Some agencies prefer charging percentage-of-spend management fees (15-20% is common). On a $10,000 monthly media buy, you might charge $1,500-$2,000 management fee plus pass through the $10,000 media cost.

This model transparently separates what goes to media from what compensates your strategic and management work. Clients who understand agency economics often prefer this clarity.

Getting Started with white-label CTV (Your 90-Day Launch Plan)

Launching white-label CTV services systematically maximizes success probability and minimizes friction.

Days 1-14: Research and partner selection. Shortlist 3-5 potential white-label CTV partners based on inventory access, technology platform, pricing model, and support quality. Schedule demos with each finalist. Ask detailed questions about attribution capabilities, onboarding process, typical performance benchmarks in your client industries, and how they handle campaign issues. Check references from other agencies using their white-label services.

Select your partner based on technology, support quality, pricing transparency, and cultural fit (partnerships work better when values and communication styles align).

Days 15-30: Onboarding and team training. Complete the formal onboarding process with your chosen partner including platform access setup, branding customization, reporting template development, and workflow documentation. Train your team on platform functionality (even if they won't execute campaigns, they need to understand capabilities). Develop your agency's internal CTV documentation covering when to recommend CTV, typical campaign structures, how to set client expectations, and pricing guidelines.

Create client-facing educational materials including one-pager explaining CTV advertising, case study template you'll populate as you generate results, and sample campaign proposal template.

Days 31-60: Pilot campaigns with early adopter clients. Identify 1-2 clients who are ideal candidates for pilot campaigns: reasonable budgets ($5,000-$10,000/month), willingness to be early adopters, understanding that you're learning, and business models that should respond well to CTV (local services, retail with physical locations, B2C with clear target demographics).

Propose pilot campaigns with clear expectations about learning and optimization. Price pilots aggressively to secure participation (breaking even or small margin is fine during proof-of-concept phase).

Document everything: targeting strategies, creative approaches, optimization tactics, results (even if underwhelming), and lessons learned. This documentation becomes the foundation for scaling the service.

Days 61-90: Results analysis and service refinement. Analyze pilot campaign performance honestly. What worked? What didn't? Where did results exceed or miss expectations? Which tactics should you keep, modify, or abandon?

Develop case studies from successful pilots. Even partial success generates useful case studies. "We helped [client] reach 45,000 households in their target market for 30% less than linear TV would have cost" is a compelling story.

Refine your service offering based on learnings. Adjust pricing if your initial estimates didn't align with reality. Update your positioning and messaging based on what resonated with pilot clients.

Beyond 90 days: Scale and systematize. With pilots complete and learnings incorporated, you're ready to market CTV services broadly. Add CTV to your capabilities on your website. Include it in new business pitches. Present it to existing clients as an expansion opportunity.

Systematize campaign workflows so CTV becomes a repeatable, profitable service rather than custom one-offs requiring excessive manual work.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Agencies new to white-label CTV make predictable mistakes. Avoid these:

Overselling capabilities before understanding execution realities. Enthusiasm is good. Overpromising is dangerous. Be honest about what you can and can't control. CTV attribution isn't as precise as search or social. Brand awareness lift takes time to materialize. Completion rates vary by creative quality. Set realistic expectations upfront. Clients appreciate honesty more than inflated promises.

Underpricing white-label CTV because you're uncomfortable with margin. This mistake kills profitability. Remember you're providing strategic value, creative services, and client management beyond just media execution. Price for the complete service package, not just the technology access. If you're uncomfortable with margin, your pricing is too low.

Neglecting creative optimization leaves performance on the table. CTV ad effectiveness depends heavily on creative quality. Poor creative undermines even perfect targeting and media buying. Work with clients on compelling video creative specifically optimized for television viewing experiences. Test creative variations systematically. Many campaigns that "don't work" actually have targeting and media buying dialed in but creative that doesn't resonate.

Failing to educate clients about measurement limitations creates disappointment. CTV attribution is improving rapidly but isn't pixel-perfect. Be upfront about what you can and can't measure. Focus on completion rates (were ads watched?), reach and frequency (how many unique households saw ads and how often?), brand lift studies (did awareness or consideration improve?), and directional attribution (increased website traffic, conversion lift during flight periods).

Don't promise ROI tracking as precise as paid search unless you have sophisticated attribution infrastructure that can actually deliver it.

Treating CTV as standalone instead of part of integrated strategies limits results. CTV works best when integrated with other tactics. Retarget CTV-exposed households with display or social ads. Use CTV for awareness and consideration, then capture demand with search. Coordinate messaging across channels.

Clients get better results and you capture more wallet share when CTV is part of comprehensive strategies rather than isolated campaigns.

Choosing white-label partners based solely on price destroys long-term value. The cheapest partner often cuts corners on support, technology, or inventory quality. Partner selection should weigh pricing, technology and UX, support quality and responsiveness, and inventory access and relationships. Medium-priced partners who excel on non-price factors usually deliver better results and client satisfaction.

The Competitive Advantage Is Real and Time-Limited

The numbers don't lie. 56% of global marketers are increasing CTV and OTT advertising spend in 2025, up from 53% in 2024. Your clients are either asking you about CTV now or will be within six months. The question isn't whether to offer it. The question is whether you'll build capabilities fast enough to capture the opportunity.

white-label CTV removes the biggest barriers to entry: massive capital investment (hundreds of thousands in annual fixed costs eliminated), specialized expertise (access to decade+ of collective CTV experience), technology infrastructure (enterprise-grade platforms without licensing costs), and inventory relationships (premium platform access without direct negotiations).

You get enterprise-level capabilities with startup-level flexibility and risk. Your clients get sophisticated television advertising without enterprise budgets.

The agencies succeeding with white-label CTV share common characteristics. They partnered early while competition was lower. They invested in client education and case study development (treating the first year as market development, not just revenue generation). They integrated CTV into broader omnichannel strategies rather than treating it as standalone. They systematized workflows so CTV became repeatable and profitable rather than one-off custom projects.

Most importantly, they recognized that CTV isn't replacing other channels. It's expanding the addressable market for video advertising. Clients who could never afford traditional TV campaigns can now run targeted connected TV at accessible price points. That's net new revenue, not just budget reallocation.

The window won't stay open forever. As programmatic advertising is expected to account for over 85% of all digital ad spending in 2025, competition for white-label partnerships will intensify. The best providers will become increasingly selective about which agencies they partner with, favoring those with demonstrated commitment, appropriate client portfolios, and revenue potential.

Your competitive positioning strengthens with every month of CTV experience. Three months from now, you'll have case studies. Six months from now, you'll have systematic workflows. Twelve months from now, you'll have proven expertise and client testimonials. Your competitors trying to catch up will face the exact challenges you'll have already solved.

The market is moving regardless of whether you're ready. CTV ad spend will reach $26.6 billion in 2025, representing a massive revenue opportunity. Some agencies will capture that opportunity through white-label partnerships that let them move quickly, learn efficiently, and scale profitably. Other agencies will watch from the sidelines, either paralyzed by the complexity of building in-house or unaware of how accessible white-label makes this channel.

Your move is straightforward: evaluate 3-5 white-label CTV partners in the next two weeks. Run demos, ask tough questions, check references. Select the partner that best aligns with your agency positioning, client base, and service philosophy. Complete onboarding and launch pilot campaigns within 30 days.

The agencies that move now will capture market share while it's still available. The agencies that wait will eventually enter a more crowded, competitive market where easy wins are gone and client expectations are higher. The opportunity is real, substantial, and available right now to agencies willing to take action.

white-label CTV ensures you're positioned to capture that opportunity rather than watching competitors take revenue that should be yours.