TV Ad Viewing Time Slips 1% In August, Analyst Finds

Total TV viewing time of all advertising content  -- linear TV and streaming platforms -- continues to drift lower, according to the Madison and Wall Substack publication.

In August, total advertising time viewed was down 0.8% to 4.5 billion hours -- a 13% share of all TV viewing time (content and advertising). The previous year, in August 2023, it was at a 13.2% share.  Two years earlier, in August 2021, it had 13.7% share.

Total TV programming content viewing time was at 87% share -- 30.5 billion hours.

“The reason for the reduced volumes of ad inventory are due to growth in viewing of ad-free and ad-light streaming services,” writes Brian Wieser, of Madison and Wall. 

More specifically, Wieser estimates while total ad-supported viewing hours fell by 0.8%, total TV viewing climbed 3.5% year-over-year, per Nielsen. This was largely due to heavy Paris Olympics viewing consumption in August.

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In addition, Wieser says, the drop comes amid increased streaming ad inventory this year -- attributable mostly to Amazon Prime Video, which started up as an ad-supported option in January.

“[Streaming ad-supported] growth means that even as increasing numbers of subscribers choose ad-supported plans -- especially for Disney+ and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max in recent months -- [it is] not enough to offset the lower ad loads that necessarily exist in primarily on-demand streaming environments relative to primarily passive linear TV environments.”

Looking only at premium streaming platforms, its share of ad inventory was at 10.3% in August 2024 -- up from 8.0% in August 2023, 6.3% in August 2022 and 4.4% in August 2021. This excludes YouTube -- which, according to Wieser, is still not generally budgeted as part of a TV media plan by most large marketers.

Breaking down individual streamers, Wieser estimates Disney has the largest ad share (22%) followed by Roku (20%); Paramount Global (16%, Paramount+ and Pluto); Fox’s Tubi (13%);  and NBCU’s Peacock (12%). Farther down the list are Amazon (8%) and Netflix (5%); and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max (2%).

Wieser estimates legacy-based TV-network based media companies roughly pull in over a 30% share of their overall video advertising revenue from their respective streamers' platforms.

Madison and Wall’s analysis is informed by data on ad-free and ad-supported subscribers produced by Antenna which are paired with additional estimates related to ad loads.

1 comment about "TV Ad Viewing Time Slips 1% In August, Analyst Finds".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, September 23, 2024 at 3:31 p.m.

    Wayne, I've been noting comparisone like these for some time but witheld comment. However, I feel obliged to ask---assuming that I'm reading the data correctly---how ad "viewing" can be such a small percentage of total TV viewing? For example approximately 20-22% of Total TV viewing---make that set usage---fot linear TV and streaming is ad-free. OK, so that leaves 78% ad-supported. And we know that the ad loads on linear TV are approximately 30% of the total while on streaming they are roughly half that. But linear accounts for 85% of all ad "viewings". so when you do the math and take out the ad-free viewing, you get something like 20-21% of all "viewing" is to ads. I wonder how Brian gets it so low---or have I miscalculated?

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