Connected TV is one of the most crowded beats in trade press right now, and most CTV companies pitch the same funding-round, same-partnership-announcement story every other adtech vendor is pitching. We build comms around the actual news cycle this industry runs on: NewFronts, upfronts, measurement standardization fights, and the walled-garden data debate, so your exec is the one reporters call instead of the one sending releases into a queue.
The Problem
Every funding and partnership announcement reads like the last one
AdExchanger, Digiday, and Adweek cover a dozen CTV funding rounds and platform partnerships a month, and most get a single paragraph in a roundup because the pitch is just the press release. When your Series B or your SSP integration announcement has no angle beyond the news itself, reporters skip the interview and run the wire version, and your competitor's name ends up in the headline instead of your executive's quote.
No plan for the measurement fraud and walled-garden questions
Any CTV company doing measurement, attribution, or ad delivery eventually gets a reporter's question about made-for-advertising inventory, ACR data accuracy, or why Netflix, Amazon, and Roku won't open their data to third-party verification. Companies without a prepared position either go silent, which reads as evasive, or improvise on the record, which produces a quote that follows them for months.
NewFronts and upfronts season compresses the entire year into six weeks
A large share of the earned media opportunity for CTV and streaming ad companies lands between April NewFronts presentations and May upfront negotiations, when every publisher, platform, and measurement vendor is fighting for the same reporter attention. Companies that start building a pitch angle in March are already behind outlets that locked their editorial calendars in January, and a missed cycle means waiting a full year for the next one.
Competitors are setting the category language before you do
CTV moves fast enough that the terms buyers use to describe a problem, like shoppable CTV, currency alignment, or server-side ad insertion at scale, often get defined by whichever company gets there first in trade press, not whichever company built the better product. If a competitor's founder is the one quoted explaining what a new category means, your sales team spends the next year selling against a definition someone else wrote.
How We Help
We start with an audit, not a pitch deck. We pull every mention your company has gotten in CTV and adtech trade press over the past 12 months, map which reporters at AdExchanger, Digiday, Adweek, and Ad Age actually cover your corner of the stack, and compare your share of voice against the two or three competitors buyers already mention alongside you. Most companies are surprised how thin that list gets once wire pickups and self-published announcements are stripped out.
From there we build a narrative calendar tied to the industry's clock instead of your product roadmap: NewFronts week, upfront negotiations, CES, and major measurement-currency disclosures, mapped against your launch timeline so your news lands when reporters have space. We also build a standing position on measurement accuracy, walled-garden data access, and MFA inventory before your executive gets asked about them cold, because a prepared, specific answer is what separates a quote that builds a reputation from one that follows an executive around.
Execution is where most agencies hand you a template and disappear. We draft the pitch, not just the release, tailored to the reporter's beat and recent coverage, and prep your executive with the actual questions that reporter has asked other CTV companies recently, not generic media training. When a placed story needs a supporting chart or an exec headshot on short notice, that runs through our /services/creative/ pipeline instead of a scramble, and when a comms position needs real numbers instead of a talking point, it comes from our /services/measurement/ work.
This stays tied to your underlying company story rather than running as a separate workstream. A press narrative that contradicts the positioning built in /services/strategy/ gets caught fast by reporters who cover this space closely, so the two get built together. We track share of voice against named competitors, how often your executive is quoted directly versus paraphrased, and whether your category language shows up in how reporters describe the market months later.
In CTV trade press, the company that explains the measurement fight in its own words gets quoted every time the topic comes up again. The company that stays quiet gets described by whoever did talk.
Our Methodology
We run comms on a 90-day sprint tied to the CTV industry calendar, not a generic PR retainer clock. The first 30 days are audit and positioning: mapping current press footprint, identifying the reporters who shape coverage of your category, and building the message house and reactive statement bank before you need either. Days 30 to 60 build the pipeline, drafting pitches tied to your next real news and prepping your executive for the specific questions those reporters ask.
Days 60 to 90 are execution and placement, actively pitching and getting your executive into interviews, panels, and contributed pieces that build a track record instead of a single hit. This differs from a traditional retainer because we are not billing for volume of releases sent, we are building toward placements in outlets your buyers and investors read and toward your executive becoming a source reporters call unprompted. After the first 90 days, most CTV clients move to an ongoing cadence tied to the recurring moments in the calendar: NewFronts prep in Q1, upfronts follow-through in Q2, and fall product and partnership season.
How We Work
The first 30 days are the audit and message house: press footprint, competitor share of voice, reporter mapping across the outlets specific to your part of the stack, and a first draft of your standing positions on measurement and data access. Days 30 to 60 build the narrative calendar against the real CTV news cycle and get first pitches into reporters' inboxes with your executive prepped for the follow-up call. By day 90 you should have at least one substantive placement in motion and a reactive plan ready for the next industry controversy, whichever lands first.
On the team side, you get a comms lead who owns reporter relationships and pitch strategy, working alongside whoever on your team handles legal and investor sign-off on public statements. We don't need a dedicated internal comms hire to make this work, but we do need fast access to your executive for interview prep and fast turnaround on approvals when a reporter is on deadline.
Cadence is a weekly working session for the first 90 days, tightening to biweekly once the pipeline is running, plus a standing channel for anything time-sensitive, usually a reporter on a controversy or a competitor's news changing your timing. Most engagements run an initial 3 to 6 month sprint tied to your next major news moment or the NewFronts and upfronts window, with an option to extend into an ongoing retainer once reporter relationships and the reactive playbook are established. If your CTV company needs a comms function that understands the difference between a wire-service funding blurb and an executive reporters actually call, we should talk.
If your ctv / connected tv company needs pr / comms leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a PR and comms engagement cost for a CTV company?
Most CTV comms engagements run $8K-$18K per month depending on how many reporter relationships need building from scratch and whether reactive controversy capacity is included. That's typically less than a senior in-house comms hire once salary, benefits, and reporter-relationship ramp time are factored in. Cost moves up entering a NewFronts or upfronts cycle on a compressed timeline, and down for a narrower scope.
How long before we see press results from a comms engagement?
First placements typically land in the 60 to 90 day range, once reporter relationships are built and the pitch is tied to real news rather than a capabilities story. Executive visibility as a go-to source builds over two or three news cycles, not one, because reporters need to see a useful, specific answer more than once before calling proactively. Reactive capability is in place from day one.
How does the comms team integrate with our existing marketing and legal staff?
We work directly with whoever owns your public statements internally, typically a marketing lead and legal or investor relations for sign-off on anything material. We draft pitches, talking points, and reactive statements, and your team retains final approval before anything goes to a reporter. Weekly sessions keep everyone aligned, with a fast-approval path built for time-sensitive reactive moments.
What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional PR agency for CTV companies?
Most agencies covering adtech treat CTV like any other tech vertical and pitch generic startup-news templates to a broad press list. We build pitches around the specific cycle CTV runs on, NewFronts, upfronts, and the measurement and data-access debates, and prep executives for the actual questions reporters in this beat ask. We're an operator team, not a retainer-and-report shop, so comms stays connected to the real product and positioning story.
How do you measure ROI from a PR and comms engagement?
We track share of voice against your named competitive set in the outlets your buyers actually read, not total impressions or wire pickups. We track how often your executive is quoted directly versus paraphrased or omitted, and whether the category language you're pushing shows up in how reporters and analysts describe the market months later.
What type of CTV company is the right fit for this service?
This works best for Series A through growth-stage CTV, streaming ad, or measurement companies in the $5M-$100M ARR range with a named executive willing to go on the record regularly. If real news is coming, a funding round, a partnership, or a launch tied to an upcoming NewFronts or upfronts cycle, that's the starting point. The first step is the audit: mapping current press footprint against named competitors.
