• by Wayne Friedman , Yesterday

Although the streaming share of ad impressions has grown some 44% for the first half of 2025, its overall share of total TV/streaming ad impressions is still at a modest 16% share compared to linear TV, according to a recent report by iSpot.tv.

Linear TV still commands a massive 86% of total TV/streaming ad impressions -- averaging nearly 17 billion impressions a day, according to the TV/CTV measurement company.

Estimates from iSpot.TV showed linear TV growing 3.3% in overall ad spend to $21.9 billion for the first six months of the year.

Linear TV prime time was up 13% to $4.2 billion, boosted by sports and news programming.

Two major multi-week sports events during the period -- NCAA’s “March Madness” men’s college basketball event and the NBA playoffs and championship (May/June) -- showed a 15.5% and 16% gain in TV ad impressions, respectively.

For the top TV networks -- in terms of airing the most TV ad impressions during the first half of 2025 -- CBS led with a 8.1% share, followed by Fox News Channel (7.1%), ABC (6.4%), NBC (5.7%) and ESPN (4.0%).

CBS, ABC, NBC, and ESPN, grew anywhere from 2% to 6% versus the same period a year ago.

Fox News Channel was up 35.1% -- with CNN in 9th place growing 16%. The TV measurement company credits “a busy first half of the year news-wise helped fuel double-digit TV ad impressions growth.” On the flip side, MSNBC was down 7%, good for 13th place.

Top overall brands for streaming -- regardless of ad category -- showed Progressive, Allstate, and Hyundai in the top three positions for the first six months of 2025 -- with a 0.93% TV ad impressions SOV (share of voice) with Allstate at 0.85% and Hyundai at 0.79%.

Major performance by individual brands showed Burger King with a high 17.2% SOV in the quick service restaurant category when it came to linear TV. Hyundai had a commanding 11.2% SOV for streaming platform ad impressions for automotive.

Among pharmaceutical brands, Wegovy (2.o%) led for linear TV, and Skyrizi (2.4%) was highest for streaming. Febreze won top honors for linear TV and streaming TV for consumer packaged goods -- at 2.2% and 2.4%, respectively.

TV networks, as marketers, trimmed back their overall promotion/advertising impressions in the first half of 2025 -- down 5.4% to a 14% share of voice.