We’ve been making CTV commercials since the medium was still finding its footing… a whole 5 or 6 years ago! Back when most agencies were still figuring out what a streaming ad even was, we were already in it. We were there when CTV campaign pioneer tvScientific — now part of Pinterest — was just launching, working closely with their team to dig into attribution data and figure out what was actually moving the needle for the spots we created and their clients. In those early days, I couldn’t even say “CTV” without getting a blank stare — people thought it meant Canadian TV or closed-circuit TV. I had to say “commercials for connected television– streaming TV” just to get a conversation started. That kind of early access to real performance data, and honestly just being in the trenches while the industry figured out what to call itself, shaped how the Carpe Canum team thinks about creative to this day.
Five years in, something has shifted.
When we started, almost every engagement was a one-off. A brand needed a spot, we made the spot, done. That model still exists — and we’re still great at it. But the clients who are winning right now aren’t thinking in one-offs anymore. They’re thinking in systems.
Different offers for different markets. A/B tests running simultaneously across DMAs. Creative that updates with the season, the sport, the promotion. The brands that can move that fast are the ones pulling away from the competition. Understanding that hyper-targeting is CTV’s superpower, we built a production workflow that enables us to do this quickly and cost effectively — so the creative can keep up with the campaign, not the other way around.
And the data backs it up. A 2026 Comcast Advertising study found that TV drives 12.4x higher brand recall than search — and in a world where AI summaries are now crowding out brand messaging in search results, that gap is only going to grow. The brands building strong TV presence today are the ones that will break through tomorrow.
That shift became very real for us on a recent project we built for a national sports betting platform, brought to us through one of our agency partners.
They needed a commercial that could keep up with their product — a platform where the odds change, the sport featured in their commercial changes often, and the audience’s attention moves with the calendar. A traditional one-off spot would have been obsolete before the media buy was over.
So we built it differently.
The first version took about three weeks. Not because it was slow — but because we weren’t just making a commercial. We were building a system. A modular architecture where the opening scene, the product screens, and the sport-specific end card could each be updated independently. AI-generated visuals for the sports scenes. Motion graphics templates for the product screens. Everything designed to be swapped, not rebuilt.
Version two? Twelve to forty-eight hours, depending on whether we’re producing a new sport-specific end scene or just refreshing the screens.
We’re now in production on version three — built around the NBA Playoffs. And there are more to come.
Same brand. Same quality. A fraction of the time and cost of starting over.
I first learned about a similar commercial structure early in my career. In the ’80s I interned at a local agency affiliated with Young & Rubicam, and we used to call it a “doughnut” — a spot built with a fixed open and close, and a hole in the middle you could swap out every week. We put that structure to work on a regional supermarket campaign, updating it like clockwork. The tools were completely different, and production moved so slowly, but the principle was exactly the same.
That’s what makes this moment so interesting. The doughnut didn’t go away — it evolved. And in 2026, this is what modern CTV production looks like when it’s built right. Not a spot. A system. One that can localize, test, and update as fast as your campaigns demand.
Because in this industry right now, time moves fast. Your creative should too. The tools at our disposal are improving faster than most people realize — and in the end, it’s our clients who are winning.
Interested in building a commercial system that keeps up with your campaigns? Let’s talk: carpecanum.com/contact-us