• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 7 hours ago

More streaming platforms with advertising inventory -- including FAST channels -- continue to fuel an overall rise in total TV ad-supported share.

This fall, streaming platforms -- with growing NFL and college football programming -- pushed up the overall ad-supported share of all TV (linear and streaming TV) to 72.9% in the third quarter of 2025 for viewers two years and older, according to Nielsen. Non-ad-supported share was at 27.1%.

In the third quarter of this year, streaming had 46.4% share of all ad-supported television, while linear cable TV had 27.2% and broadcast TV had 26.4% share.

Other industry estimates show that compared to a year ago, streaming ad-supported viewing had around 40% share in Q3 2024 -- with the remaining 60% divided up somewhat evenly between broadcast and cable.

Then in the first quarter of 2025, streaming ad-supported viewing data rose to a 42.4% share of total TV streaming ad-supported viewing, per Nielsen.

The Nielsen results come from its national TV panel data and its streaming platform ratings.

Contributing to these results are FAST channels (free ad-supported streaming TV) which have seen an increase of over 43% in total hours viewed to 1.8 billion (versus 1.2 billion) season-to-date through August 2025, according to Comscore.