• by Wayne Friedman , June 27, 2018

Live viewing of advertising views on all digital media platforms continues to rapidly climb -- with sports content a main reason.

In the first quarter, live viewing comprised 35% of all advertising views, up from 24% a year ago, and 5% five years ago.

This research comes from FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned video management company, based off of census-level advertising data through the FreeWheel platform.

Much of this is due to more sports content -- 76% of live viewing ad views come from sporting events; 16% from entertainment programming and 8% from news content.  

Overall, there has been a 77% year-over-year increase in live viewing of ad views, with smartphone live ad views up 171%.

Big sporting events contributed this year, such as the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl (both on NBC) and CBS/TNT’s NCAA’s March Madness. The Super Bowl's live stream posted a record 2.02 million viewers, the average minute audience.

Looking at all streaming advertising views -- clips, full-program episodes, and live airings -- full-episode entertainment programming comprises 53% of all ad views in the U.S., and 35% for live content and 12% from content clips.

Freewheel says 50% of all digital ad views came from the big-screen programming -- OTT (over-the-top) and set-top-box VOD (video-on-demand); 24% from desktop computers; and 27% from smartphones/tablets.