A CTV pacing tool for agencies checks every connected TV order's spend against its budget and flight dates each day, flags under- and over-delivery while there is still time to fix it, and turns the same numbers into client reports. For CTV bought through Amazon DSP (Prime Video, Fire TV, and third-party streaming apps), Peachblue does this across every client in one view: pace percent per order, blended CPM against your goal, supplier breakdowns, and client reports with your agency margin applied.
CTV is where pacing discipline pays most. Streaming inventory clears at higher prices than display, flights are often short and tied to a launch or a season, and a CTV order that falls behind early has less room to catch up. This guide covers what a CTV pacing tool should do, the math it runs, how to report CTV to clients, and which tools agencies use.
What does a CTV pacing tool need to do?
Five things, every day, across every client:
- Track spend against budget per order. Expected spend to date assumes even delivery across the flight; pace percent is actual spend divided by expected.
- Flag the exceptions. Peachblue flags an order under 90 percent pace as an underdelivery risk and over 110 percent as early exhaustion, so the daily check is sorting by risk and acting on the few rows that need it.
- Watch CPM against goal. On CTV the clearing price is the main cost lever, so each order needs a CPM goal and a blended CPM to compare it with.
- Show where the money ran. A supplier breakdown tells you, and the client, which inventory took the budget.
- Roll up across clients. One portfolio view of every active flight, with each client's numbers scoped to that client and your margin applied only in client-facing views.
The Amazon DSP console holds the raw numbers for each order. The piece agencies most often rebuild by hand is the fifth one: a single ranked list of every client's flights, every morning.
How do you calculate CTV pacing?
The same flight math as any DSP order, run daily:
Expected spend to date = budget x (days elapsed / days in flight)
Pace % = actual spend to date / expected spend to date
Daily spend needed = remaining budget / remaining days
A worked example: a $60,000 CTV order on a 30-day flight, checked on day 10. Expected spend is $20,000. Actual spend is $15,000, so pace is 75 percent and the order is underdelivering. To finish on budget it now needs $2,250 a day for the remaining 20 days, against the $1,500 a day it has averaged so far: a 50 percent lift. At a $30 CPM (an example, not a benchmark), that is 25,000 more impressions every day.
That last step is the useful one. A pace percent tells you something is wrong; the daily spend needed tells you how big the fix has to be. The Amazon DSP pacing guide walks through the full math and the causes.
Why do CTV flights underdeliver?
Usually because the bid, the audience, or the supply is too narrow for the budget. A CPM bid below what premium streaming inventory clears at, a tight frequency cap on a small audience, a flight restricted to one deal or publisher, or creative that is approved late all leave budget unspent. Overdelivery is the reverse: a loose setup that spends the budget in the first weeks of a flight meant to run all month.
The fix is easier on day 3 than on day 23, which is why the daily check matters more than the end-of-flight report. Our pacing guide covers what to do when an order underdelivers in the first days.
How should agencies report CTV to clients?
Lead with delivery, then outcomes, then pacing.
- Delivery: impressions, video completion rate (complete views divided by starts), viewability, and CPM against goal, with a supplier breakdown so the client sees where the money ran.
- Outcomes: CTV has no click to measure, so outcomes come from views. On Amazon DSP that means attributed detail page views, purchases, and new-to-brand purchases, credited by Amazon's last-touch rules (14 days for clicks and views by default). Amazon's own help center says view-through conversions are typically the majority for display, video, and audio campaigns. The Amazon DSP attribution metrics guide covers the rules.
- Pacing: every active flight with its pace percent and what you are doing about the exceptions.
If you bill media with a margin, mark up spend and every spend-derived metric (CPM, CPA, ROAS) in the client's view, and keep budgets raw so pace still compares real spend with the real budget. Peachblue applies the margin server-side per client and never in the all-clients view. Judging the CTV creatives themselves is a separate job, covered in Amazon DSP creative performance, and the Amazon DSP reporting guide covers the rest of the client report.
Which tools do agencies use to pace CTV?
Most agencies combine a DSP console with something that rolls clients up. We make Peachblue, one of the options below.
| Tool | What it covers | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon DSP console | Its own orders, streaming TV included | Making the bid and budget changes pacing tells you to make |
| Spreadsheets | Whatever you export | A handful of flights for one or two clients |
| Peachblue | Amazon DSP orders, CTV included, every client in one view | Daily pacing and client reporting at agency scale |
| Pacvue | Amazon DSP and search, with AMC measurement and rules-based automation | Automating Amazon campaign rules; demo only, no published price |
| Other DSPs' own consoles | Their own CTV campaigns (The Trade Desk, MNTN, and StackAdapt all sell CTV) | CTV bought outside Amazon, which Peachblue does not connect to |
Peachblue's Pacing view gives one row per Amazon DSP order with budget, flight dates, spend to date against expected, pace percent, blended CPM against an editable CPM goal, and supplier filters, and its Reports turn the same data into PDF and CSV client reports with daily supplier sections. A client switcher scopes everything to one advertiser, Agent Peach answers questions like which flights are behind pace, and the MCP server puts the same tools in Claude. The CTV creatives get the same AI analysis as the rest of your ads, so the client report can say which spot earned its budget. Amazon DSP sync starts on Scale ($499 a month), Reports and Pacing on Power ($799), and multi-client agency workspaces on Agency, priced to your client roster; see pricing and the Amazon DSP integration.
If your CTV runs on several DSPs, pace each in its own console and keep one cross-platform sheet for the client view. If most of it runs through Amazon, the morning check can be one list.