The $141 Billion Overlap: Why Audience Deduplication Is Linear’s Next Big Unlock

According to new analysis from Samsung Ads, U.S. advertisers are collectively missing out on $141 billion in potential ROI because of duplicated audiences across linear and CTV campaigns.

Drawing from 18 cross-platform campaigns in categories like automotive, telecommunications, retail, finance, and pharmaceuticals, Samsung found that 41% of impressions overlapped between the two media types. In some cases, duplication hit 34% between NBC and YouTube. Telecom campaigns were the biggest offenders (58%), followed by retail (54%), while financial services showed the least overlap at 22%.

That overlap equals about $9.3 billion in wasted ad spend—money that could have generated billions more incremental revenue if re-allocated to unique reach.

What’s Really Happening

The problem isn’t a lack of data; it’s a lack of coordination. Most vendors see only one side of the screen, CTV or linear, and optimize accordingly. Without a shared framework, the same households are reached twice, inflating reported reach and suppressing ROI.

Samsung’s solution, Optimal Reach, aims to harmonize measurement and targeting across screens. It’s a good signal that the industry is waking up to the duplication issue—but it also underscores what very few partners can actually execute today: true audience deduplication in flight.

Continuum’s Approach: Finding the True Reach

Because Continuum operates a true linear TV exchange—and delivers campaigns end-to-end as a Managed Service Exchange (MSE)—we can help advertisers find their real incremental reach across linear and CTV.

We do it in two practical ways:

1. CTV suppression for hybrid campaigns: When clients run CTV alongside linear, we suppress the known cable audience from the digital buy. These audience segments exist, but most platforms ignore them because they only traffic in one medium. Continuum connects both sides, ensuring the digital plan complements the linear one, and does not duplicate audience.

2. Log-level suppression for extended digital flights: Continuum has access to ACR and log-level data to identify households already reached via linear and suppress those exposures in CTV. This reduces waste, increases unique reach, and makes cross-platform media genuinely additive.

Why It Matters

Cross-screen duplication isn’t just a measurement quirk; it’s a profitability leak. By managing both sides of the plan in one ecosystem, advertisers can:

• Eliminate redundant impressions

• Redeploy spend toward incremental viewers

• Raise effective ROI without raising budgets

The Continuum Take

The industry is finally quantifying what every planner already suspects: too much frequency, not enough reach. But fixing that gap requires a partner that actually operates in both worlds.

Continuum’s exchange-based platform and Managed Service Exchange (MSE) model make that possible by automating linear, integrating CTV data, and helping advertisers uncover the true reach their budgets deserve.

Want to see where your cross-screen dollars are overlapping and how much incremental reach you could unlock? Let’s talk.

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