Commentary

Co-Viewing For The Big Screen: How Big A Deal Is This Now?

by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 10 hours ago

Co-viewing continues to be a major focus of TV-centric advertisers -- especially when it comes to nonstop digital video competition.

TV still needs to up its game, this despite all that still sizable brand reach.

Nielsen says a recent pilot co-viewing program shows some key results for the February month.

Why that month? February is typically jammed with major live TV events: “Super Bowl LX”, Olympics Opening Ceremony, “NBA All Star Game”, “Daytona 500”, Olympics Closing Ceremony, Olympics Men’s Hockey Gold Medal Game, and State of the Union Address.

For Nielsen’s co-viewing pilot program, there was a 4.2% increase in the total number of viewers in February.

Nielsen says its new wearable devices now more accurately captures shared viewing.

All that is well and good -- but can it best all those devices that may already be sitting with Nielsen’s panel of people?

We speak of mobile phones, which already provide so much data for all those digital video channels -- social media video and yes, connected TV.

Panel-based results, of course, typically have more structure and approval from respondents -- with respondents showing less concern over privacy data issues than those who are not in a panel.

Co-viewing allows brands to optimize the reach of their media spend. The hope is for TV to go beyond “family movie night” or college roommates watching “big game” sports content -- giving brands access to big brand reach TV across all content.

Even then, co-viewing may still lack the surgical precision that advertisers have come to expect from digital channels.

Nielsen believes its co-viewing efforts -- along with new Big Data + Panel measurement, and out-of-home measurement expansion, are ramping things up for its advertising clients.

But we are left to wonder -- what about co-viewing in other time periods and from other programming? A 4% hike can be significant for brands. Guessing other times, not so much.

More importantly, what is the real value when it comes against drilling down to increasing more data that digital video can seemingly provide -- individual consumers buying specific products at specific times?

If a TV ad aired for running shoes during a co-viewing session and a purchase happened later that night, who sprinted to that purchase? And, another question might be -- who won?

connected tv, digital, media buying, mobile, nielsen, reach, social media, television, video

3 comments about "Co-Viewing For The Big Screen: How Big A Deal Is This Now?".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 6, 2026 at 10:46 a.m.
Wayne, Nielsen's new "wearable" methodology is merely a wristwatch type device which can "hear" a signal embedded in TV content, in which case it is assumed that the person wearing the device "watched" that content. This is not--repeat, not---a viewing measurement and it's quite likely that a fair proportion of those who remain in the room while TV content is on-screen are not watching-- especially when commercials are shown. As a guess, the inattentive, but present, "viewers" constitute a third of the reported "audience"--with variations around this guesstimated norm based on the demographics of the respondent, program content, degree of in-break ad clutter and other variables.
Reply

Ben Tatta from Operative, May 6, 2026 at 2:21 p.m.

It's frustrating we still don't have an accurate measure of co-viewing. Ed - what's your gut take on the 4%....is that feasible...low or high?

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 6, 2026 at 2:50 p.m.

Ben, I can't comment about any of the numbers mentioned so far, except to say that if you really want to measure who is viewing---looking at the screen with the sound not muted--- any specific bit of content, you need a camera-style system of some sort. Of course, it's not going to be perfect, but isn't that true of what we are using now?

The Nielsen attempt--assuming that it yields something resembling a representative sample--deals only with the absent viewer aspect--which is about half of the problem. Being there does not necessarily equate with viewing if you want valid data for each commercial.