• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 19, 2023

Question: If 40% of U.S. consumer time is now spent streaming, why do so many media buyers still allocate traditional TV and streaming CTV into separate buckets?

Answer: Because many are still buying and selling TV advertising like it’s 2018.

When former TV industry insider turned analyst Evan Shapiro presents poses that during the presentation of his just-completed "Time Spent Well" analysis this morning during a session at Advertising Week, I'm going to assume some eyes will roll. But they shouldn't, because as Shapiro points out in his analysis, "it's not" 2018, it's nearly 2024 and the universe of television viewing is very different now, even if the advertising universe hasn't yet caught up.

You can thumb through Shapiro's deck here, and you can listen to him explain the genesis of this analysis -- including why it's no longer your father's couch potato medium -- below. But the gist is that most industry insiders have kept their index fingers in their ears, blocking out what they don't want to hear: That much of streaming is actually linear TV content being consumed over-the-top, not to mention live (not on-demand) vis a vis vMVPDs (virtual MVPDs like YouTube TV -- see above), and they're growing fast.

In full disclosure, Shapiro was commissioned to do the analysis for Charter's Spectrum Reach, but it's only because the execs over there have been following what he has been publishing recently, and asked him to do a more elaborate drill down.

During my conversation with Shapiro, I think he agreed that this is the current state of linear TV/streaming viewing and that it's being driven entirely by consumer adoption of new platforms and that likely will continue to be in flux and evolve over time.