Nielsen's October 'Gauge' Remains Relatively Flat For Streaming

by Wayne Friedman , November 18, 2021

An October reading of Nielsen’s “The Gauge” now says streaming broadly accounts for a 28% share of total TV usage among persons 2 years and older -- the same levels since June.

Still, there were some micro-changes from month to month.

“The Gauge” is a monthly “macro-analysis” of TV consumption derived from two separately weighted panels. Streaming data comes from a subset of streaming meter-enable TV homes within the national TV panel.

Broadcast moved up two percentage points in October to a 28% share versus September. Nielsen says total TV consumption rose by 0.5% in August-- boosted by broadcast TV, which was up 2.9% versus July -- largely due to the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

Cable TV still commanded the biggest share -- now at 37%, down from 38% in September.

Streaming’s October 28% share mark has stayed since June -- but up from 26% in May, the initial reading of “The Gauge.”

The biggest individual streaming platform shares stayed the same versus September: Netflix, 7%; YouTube, 6%; Hulu (including Hulu Live), 3%; Prime Video, 2%; and Disney+, 1%.

The “other” streaming category stayed at 9%, the same since August.

Nielsen also calculates an additional overall “other” category, now at 6%. This is primarily unmeasured video-on-demand tuning, streaming through a cable set-top box, gaming and other devices, such as DVD players.

For the August period, Nielsen says streaming was “relatively flat,” taking a more granular view, streaming among kids 6-17 was down 7.5% as a result of back-to-school attendance, according to Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president, product strategy at Nielsen.

This story has been updated to include October data

cable tv, digital, media measurement, nielsen, streaming, tv

2 comments about "Nielsen's October 'Gauge' Remains Relatively Flat For Streaming".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, November 19, 2021 at 11:35 a.m.
Wayne, Nielsen has also released similar data for September and October and in both cases streaming's share has remained at 28%---in short no gain since last June when it stood at 27%.
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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, November 22, 2021 at 8:08 a.m.

It's a shame that Nielsen is presenting these stats rounded off to the nearest whole percentage point as these are not individual show figures where sample size might be an issue but, rather, the total usage of each platform for a month. Netflix's seeming bounce up to 7% from 6% may be caused by nothing more than a single decimal point gain, yet it will be interpreted by many as a 17% increase. So when it drops down to a 6 share will that be a 14% decrease? Not necessarily. By rounding the numbers off in this manner, it will be very hard to track the performance of new players like Peacock, Paramount+, etc as well as Disney+. .