
On average, well over half of streaming’s reach
is incremental to linear TV’s, according to the latest viewership report from Comcast Cable’s advertising division, Effectv.
Specifically, in this year’s first half,
streaming’s incremental reach averaged 57% across more than 20,000 cross-platform campaigns run through Effectv.
The report, which is based on 15 billion hours of aggregate
household viewership data from 17 million Comcast households across 65 markets, as well as Effectv ad-exposure data, confirms that “streaming advertising consistently extends traditional TV
campaign reach in meaningful ways,” said John Brauer, Effectv vice president, insights and analytics.
Comcast households spent an average of 6 hours and 2 minutes per day watching
TV — although daily viewing time dropped significantly between the two quarters, from nearly 6.5 hours in Q1 to just over 5.5 hours in Q2. The analysis attributes this to vaccinations and the
start of reopening in March of this year.
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Among these households, 88% of daily viewership time was spent watching live linear TV — up from 86% in 1H 2020 — and 70% was spent
watching cable. About 70% of live viewing occurred outside of prime-time hours.



Cable networks’ average share of 1H viewing was 70%--up from 67% in 1H 2020.
The
top five networks accounted for just 31% of total viewing. Comcast households watched an average of 30 different networks, with 304 of the networks found to be most-watched.
The analysis found
that viewers were +214% more likely to watch news and +73% more likely to watch sports on traditional TV versus streaming.
In comparison, they were +153% more likely to watch young adult
content via streaming instead of TV.
TV remained the preferred viewing device, even when watching streaming content, with 76% of streaming viewing occurring on a TV screen during the
period.