In late 2025, Meta quietly launched Reels TV, bringing Instagram content to the living room screen. Many people wrote it as a novelty. Reports have since surfaced of Meta’s platforms involving providers and TV hardware makers (including Magnetite and Comcast’s FreeWheel) in discussions about how it could connect to streaming innovation at scale.
Before proceeding, there is a clarification to be made: this is not Facebook or Instagram on your TV. When I first heard about it, my instinct was to take a picture of the social feed on the big screen, and that wasn’t going to work. What Meta explores is actually close to CTV’s Audience Network model, connecting its demand and targeting to a list of third-party broadcasters through supply-side platforms (SSPs) and TV producers, using CTV as another touchpoint in its loop to create a complete funnel.
It’s a more interesting proposition than it first sounds. And I think it’s important for two reasons which are two sides of the same story.
An opportunity no one is really talking about
Traditional TV advertising has always had a restrictive environment. You needed tens of thousands of pounds just to get into the room, before production, before agency fees, before anything. The result is that TV has always been a channel for brands with big budgets and dedicated media teams.
CTV has already started appearing at that time. Self-service platforms such as Hulu and Roku now offer entry points from £500. But the interaction and technology required still keep many small marketers on the sidelines.
Meta’s self-service model is different. It’s the platform that taught millions of small business owners to run their own advertising, without an agency or media planner, without spending a fortune. If Meta can extend this same simplicity to CTV, local business owners who are already running Meta campaigns can find themselves on TV, in the same campaign, promoting the same result, using the same interface they already know.
That’s something structurally different from anything CTV has offered to date. Big corporate brands won’t immediately migrate their direct TV revenue to Meta; it’s not a prize here. The most interesting opportunity is a large group of advertisers who have never been able to touch TV at all.
A difficult question
Here’s where it gets tricky, and where I think the conversation hasn’t gone far enough yet.
This is not Meta’s first attempt to own video inventory. Its 2014 purchase of LiveRail, a video SSP, eventually had to be written off. The level of inefficiency and fraud make the business unviable. The current partnership-led model appears to be a direct response to that practice. But it creates a different kind of problem.
Google built YouTube CTV into its full funnel stack because it owns YouTube. It controlled the price, meaning the CPMs were competitive enough for the algorithm to learn and scale naturally. Meta access lists third-party broadcasts, and CPV CPMs typically run three to ten times higher than their public placements. Adwave Q4 2025 data puts average CPMs at $20-$40, compared to Meta’s $6-$9.
The question is whether the Meta algorithm will naturally find a performance signal in the inventory at that price point, or whether some level of cost guidance will be required to give it enough data to work with. It’s not a straightforward problem. And it’s important for marketers to understand, because feedback shapes how much confidence we should place in early performance claims.
We have seen in our Integrated CTV work at Brainlabs that if you manage the audience completely across all publishers, frequency-capping across YouTube and Netflix for example, the performance increase is significant: 51% over-delivery to the target, 342% lift to product search. The basic principle of integrating CTV into a comprehensive operating system is working. How Meta implements that system with inventory it doesn’t control is a story worth following.
What we are watching
The wider context makes this more important. BARB (Broadcast Audience Research Board) data shows 20.8 million UK homes now have access to an SVOD (subscription video on demand) service, with streaming accounting for 38% of total UK TV viewing by 2025. The IAB predicts that CTV ad spend will grow by 13.8% by 2026. Audience and money go the same way.
No official product has been announced, and plans remain fluid. What is clear is that Meta has been engaging with its supply partners (SSPs, TV producers, ad servers). And that work, supported over time, points to something more than theoretical interest.
Questions about inventory economics, algorithm transparency, and SMB affordability are the ones we’re exploring directly with Meta right now.
Whether this reshapes TV advertising or becomes another LiveRail will come down to how Meta navigates the gap between the demand that drives it and the supply that doesn’t. Those answers are coming. They will be worthy of attention.
