• by Alex Weprin , May 3, 2019

As consumers embrace streaming video, consumption habits are shifting in interesting ways. 

According to new research from Samsung Ads, a plurality of consumers that watch on Samsung devices stream TV and watch linear TV. The company is calling these consumer “Total TV Watchers.”

They make up 38% of Samsung TV owners, compared to 32% who only watch linear TV, and 30% who only stream TV.

Samsung’s data found the “Total TV Watcher” households are 65% more likely to have a young adult living in them and 56% more likely to have a yearly household income above $175,000.

That means there may be an opportunity for marketers looking to reach certain households.

“This group consumes nearly seven hours of a combination of traditional and streaming TV daily,” Tom Fochetta, vice president of Samsung Ads, tells Digital News Daily. “For advertisers looking to reach households with millennials and young adults that spend more — online and offline — than the average, advanced TV strategies become increasingly more important. And Total TV Watchers become a critical audience.”

Samsung also found its consumers were less likely to use a streaming box or stick than others, instead using the built-in apps on its smart TVs.

As more new TVs ship with built-in software, the number of consumers watching via those apps will rise.

“Less fragmentation in the hardware that consumers use reduces complexity for advertisers,” Fochetta says. “Not only can advertisers more closely manage frequency capping, but by leveraging a robust ACR dataset, they can more easily understand what, where and how content is being consumed. That makes it easier for brands to create meaningful connections and experiences.”