For the first time, brands are spending the biggest chunk of their budgets on YouTube’s connected TV ads

At YouTube‘s Brandcast presentation earlier this month, it reminded the world yet again that it wants to dominate TV screens. And, well, it is dominating. According to Nielsen, it’s been the #1 streaming service in the U.S. for two years straight, and new data presented at Brandcast showed YouTube now generates more watch time than any linear or broadcast TV network. It’s also the device U.S. viewers use the most, having recently beaten out mobile phones.

All that TV watch time means lots of slots for marketers to run TV-specific ads. We knew that, and also knew YouTube has been introducing new ad formats like pause-vertising and longer unskippables, both of which are exclusively for TVs.

What we didn‘t know is how readily brands were spending on TV ads.

Turns out, pretty readily. According to data from marketing firm Tinuiti, which manages ~$4 billion in annual digital ad spend, brands are–for the very first time–now spending more on YouTube’s connected TV ads than ads on mobile.

The margin is very slim: Tinuiti found that during Q1 2025, brands spent 43% of their YouTube ad campaign dollars on TV screens. Mobile? 42%.

One percent difference might not be a lot, but it’s the overall trend this figure indicates that’s the real interesting part. Tinuiti’s data shows that TV viewers and marketers are aligned on both sides of the screen; as people’s watch habits shift more toward TV, advertisers are spending accordingly to reach them.

Another interesting data point: In Q1 2024, brands were spending 24% of their campaign dollars on YouTube’s TV ads. This means their spending has nearly doubled in just a year.

Is that hard evidence that brands are spending more on YouTube overall? Not necessarily. Some brands, at least, are almost certainly reallocating their spend from one type of YouTube ad to another. TV ads’ rise over the last year was counterbalanced by a drop in mobile phone ads. This time last year, brands were spending 51% of their YouTube campaign dollars to reach people watching content on mobile phones. Now it’s down to the aforementioned 42%.

Other formats are also dropping. Desktop ad spend dropped year-over-year from 19% to 10%, and tablet-specific spend dwindled from 7% to 5%.

Obviously TV and mobile are the big dogs here overall. In terms of the 42% of campaign dollars brands are spending on mobile ads, one-fifth of that is going straight to Shorts. We don’t have data on that year-over-year, so can’t see how much Shorts spending has grown, but we do know YouTube is pushing Shorts ads hard.

We here at Tubefilter suspect brands will continue upping their spend on YouTube’s TV ads–especially if the marketers at Brandcast were impressed.