OTT and CTV are not “TV advertising for small budgets.” They are a targeting tool: the value is not the screen, it is the ability to show your spot to the households in your service area instead of paying for a metro-wide blast, and then to be the firm that answers when one of them searches and calls.
A homeowner does not watch a plumbing ad and call a plumber that night. They file you away, and weeks later, when the water heater fails, they search “plumber near me,” read your reviews, and call. So the job of a home-services streaming spot is not to drive an instant lead; it is to make sure that when the search happens, your name is the one that feels familiar and the one they can verify online. That is a demand-and-recall play, not a direct-response auction, and it only pays off if the rest of the funnel is in place.
That is why a generic “run some streaming ads” approach wastes money for home services. The audience has moved to streaming, but a careless buy still reaches renters, out-of-area viewers, and people who will never need your trade. We point the spend at addressable households inside your footprint, keep the creative honest and trade-specific, and tie it to the searches, reviews, and fast callbacks that turn awareness into a booked job. Every number on this page carries a real source, listed at the bottom.
The case for doing this differently is not our opinion. It is what the data says, every figure sourced below.
Linear TV now misses most of the people you are paying to reach.
The case for streaming is not a trend line anymore, it is the majority. In May 2025 streaming captured 44.8% of all US TV viewing, edging past broadcast (20.1%) and cable (24.1%) combined for the first time. By December 2025 streaming hit a record 47.5% while cable fell to 20.2% and broadcast to 21.4%. A metro-wide cable buy that once blanketed your market now reaches a shrinking slice of it.
The cord keeps getting cut, too. An estimated 77.2 million US households had cut the cord by 2025, up from 37.3 million in 2018. For a home-services firm, that is the part of your market a linear buy can no longer touch at any price. Streaming is where the homeowners are, and OTT and CTV are how you reach them on the same screen without paying for the audience that has left.
Streaming passed broadcast and cable combined in 2025. A metro-wide linear buy now misses most of your market.
Streaming overtook broadcast and cable combined
The value is the household you can target, not the screen.
This is the whole reason OTT and CTV matter for a local trade. A cable spot pays to reach an entire DMA, most of which is outside your service area or will never need your work. A connected-TV buy can target down to the ZIP code or neighborhood, so your spot reaches homes inside your footprint and skips the rest. Connected TV in internet-enabled US homes reached 96.4 million households in 2025, the base a campaign can target and segment against.
The addressable inventory is broad enough to make that targeting practical. Comscore’s analysis found that through Display & Video 360, marketers can reach 80% of all CTV households in the US and 92% of ad-supported CTV households. So the question stops being “can I afford to reach everyone” and becomes “which households should I reach,” which is exactly the right question for a business that can only serve so many miles from its truck.
Reach the homes you can serve, skip the rest
And 96.4 million US homes had connected TV in 2025, the base a campaign can target by ZIP or neighborhood.
Source: Comscore, via Google Marketing PlatformUnskippable beats a billboard nobody finishes.
Awareness only works if the message lands, and this is where connected TV has a structural edge over most digital advertising. CTV ads run inside premium streaming content where they cannot be skipped or scrolled past, and they post completion rates above 95%, with the Innovid 2024 global benchmark at 95.80%. Your fifteen or thirty seconds gets watched to the end, not abandoned after two.
That matters more for a trade than for an impulse purchase. Home-services recall has to survive weeks of waiting, from the night a homeowner sees your spot to the morning the furnace dies. A full-length, full-attention view of a clear message (who you are, what you fix, why you are trusted) builds the kind of memory that surfaces at the moment of need. A half-watched ad does not.
The spot is watched in full
You pay a premium per view, but you stop paying for the metro.
On a pure CPM basis, connected TV is not the cheapest screen. Average CTV CPMs run roughly $20 to $40 (about $25), against $10 to $15 for linear broadcast and cable. Read alone, that looks like a reason to stay on cable. It is not, for two reasons. First, linear requires far higher minimum commitments, which prices most local home-services budgets out of a focused buy in the first place. Second, you are not buying the same thing: the linear CPM covers a metro, most of it wasted on your business, while the CTV CPM buys only the households you can serve.
The right comparison is cost per useful impression, not cost per impression. A $25 CPM aimed at homeowners in your service area can be cheaper, per home you could realistically win, than a $12 CPM sprayed across a DMA that is mostly out of range. The accessible minimums also let you start at a local budget and scale on what works, rather than committing to a metro-wide flight up front. We model the buy on the audience you can serve, then tie it to tracked outcomes so the spend is judged on booked jobs, not gross reach.
A premium per view, with far lower minimums
Streaming builds the recall, but search and speed close the job.
A streaming spot rarely produces an instant call. It produces a primed homeowner who searches later, runs a “plumber near me” or “ac repair near me” query, scans the local map pack, and picks from the firms that show up with strong reviews. The connected-TV impression you paid for either converts at that moment or it evaporates, and which one happens is decided by your search presence and your review profile, not by the spot itself.
So OTT and CTV are only worth running if your search, profile, and reviews are ready to catch the demand. The home-services market behind that demand is large and still growing: total homeowner remodeling spending is projected to reach $524 billion in early 2026, a record high, which is the pool of work a primed-then-searching homeowner is drawn from. The streaming buy makes your name familiar; the search result and the review profile make it the one they call. We run the two together so the recall you build on TV has somewhere to convert, instead of handing a primed customer to whichever competitor shows up first.
The demand the recall feeds into is large and growing
Projected record-high US homeowner remodeling spending in early 2026, the pool of work a primed, searching homeowner draws from.
Source: Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (LIRA), via DWMThe spot, the search, the call, and then the clock starts.
Once the primed homeowner does call, the campaign is decided by how fast you answer. The MIT lead-response study, built on more than 15,000 leads and over 100,000 call attempts across six companies over three years, found that contacting a web lead within five minutes rather than thirty makes it 21 times more likely to qualify and 100 times more likely to be reached. The expensive streaming impression and the search click both lead here, to a phone that either gets picked up fast or does not.
This is the most common place a home-services awareness budget quietly leaks. You can build perfect recall and win the search, then lose the job because the lead sat in a voicemail for an hour while a competitor called back in five minutes. We do not hand off a media plan and walk away from the catch. The streaming buy, the search presence, and a tracked, fast intake are one system, because the customer you paid a premium CPM to reach is the cheapest job you will ever book, if you answer.
The lead you paid to create is perishable
From a study of 15,000+ leads and 100,000+ call attempts: speed, not budget, decides whether the lead converts.
Source: MIT (Oldroyd) / InsideSales Lead Response Management StudyComscore’s analysis found that, with Display & Video 360, marketers can now reach 80 percent of all CTV households in the US and 92 percent of ad-supported CTV households.
Comscore (via Google Marketing Platform), on CTV household addressability
Streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025, its largest share of viewing to date, while broadcast (20.1%) and cable (24.1%) combined to represent 44.2% of TV.
Nielsen, on streaming overtaking broadcast and cable combined
Total homeowner remodeling spending is expected to reach $524 billion in early 2026, a new record high.
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (LIRA), on the home improvement market
Want a streaming buy that reaches your service area, not the whole metro?
Tell us your trade, your service radius, and what you are spending now, and we will map the addressable households inside your footprint and show you how we would reach them, then connect that exposure to the search, reviews, and fast intake that turn recall into booked jobs. Senior people, transparent pricing, and reporting on outcomes, not gross reach.
Frequently asked
Is OTT or CTV advertising worth it for a local home-services business?
What is the difference between OTT and CTV?
How is streaming TV different from a cable TV ad for my service area?
Why is CTV more expensive per view than cable TV?
Will streaming ads bring me leads right away?
What do I need in place before running OTT or CTV ads?
Every figure on this page comes from a primary platform, an independent study, or a named industry source. No competing-agency stats, no made-up numbers.
- Nielsen The Gauge: streaming overtakes broadcast and cable combined (May 2025)
- Nielsen The Gauge: streaming hits 47.5% of TV viewing (December 2025)
- AdWave, citing eMarketer: US cord-cutting households (Q4 2025)
- Comscore via Google Marketing Platform: addressable CTV households (DV360)
- Comscore 2025 State of Streaming Report: 96.4M CTV households
- AdWave, citing Innovid 2024 Global Benchmarks: CTV ad completion rate
- AdWave: average CTV CPM vs linear (Q4 2025)
- Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (LIRA), via DWM: $524B remodeling forecast
- MIT (Oldroyd) / InsideSales Lead Response Management Study
