• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 18, 2024

Although connected TV keeps making gains in terms of advertising spend, linear TV still dominates CTV in terms of viewing time of advertising.

Total TV/streaming ad time for linear TV has an 87% share, compared with 13% for CTV, according to eMarketer.

Linear TV also still has higher ad spending than CTV -- with a 63% share of the total TV/streaming marketplace, compared to CTV’s share of 32.5%.

The share of time spent viewing content for linear TV has a slight edge -- 54% with 46% going to connected TV, says eMarketer.

Recently, Nielsen's Total TV/Streaming November reading puts streaming at a 42% share, compared to cable with 25%, broadcast at 24% and "other" viewing at 10%.

"Other" TV usage includes all other tuning from unmeasured sources -- unmeasured video on demand (VOD), audio streaming, gaming and other device (DVD playback) use.

WARC estimates CTV ad spend will grow 20% to $35.2 billion for all of 2024. Total linear TV ad spending -- national and local -- is projected to be around $65 billion in 2024, according to other industry estimates.

Still, eMarketer says, CTV generates more revenues than linear TV on a per-hour viewing basis.

Using Comscore data, for each ad share percentage point of viewers advertising time CTV estimates $2.2 billion in ad spend. This compares with $690 million for linear TV.

CTV platforms generally air fewer ads per hour than linear TV -- nearly 9 minutes/hou,  versus around 15 minutes/hour for linear TV.

Still, overall premium streaming inventory is steadily growing -- which pushes down industry-wide cost-per-thousand viewing (CPM) pricing.

Projections are that by the second quarter 2025, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max will be the only two streamers with CPMs to exceed $30. By way of comparison, both Netflix and Max -- early this year in the fourth quarter -- where getting on average around $37 CPMs.

Emarketer estimates that by 2026, nine premium streaming platforms will exceed one billion dollars per year in advertising revenues -- Disney+, Pluto, Tubi, Peacock, Netflix, Roku, Amazon, YouTube, and Hulu. In 2020, there were only two -- YouTube and Hulu.