Big multiscreen advertising still scores a lot of power, impact and "attention" for brands, according to new industry research compiled from the first half 2026.
Big-screen advertising --
traditional TV and streaming -- delivers 36% more viewing ad time for brands than social media, and brand recall 2.2 times higher, according to research from MediaScience in partnership with Comcast
Advertising.
TV and streaming "reach" is a key element. Comcast says traditional TV has 71% "unique" reach, with streaming at 21% reach. The report also notes there is 8% overlap of TV and
streaming.
Digging deeper into streaming, sports programming has become a key piece of its reach growth -- especially in the first half of 2026 which included big sports programming: The Milan
Cortina 2026 Olympics, NCAA’s March Madness college basketball event, and the FIFA World Cup 2026.
For those campaigns that include sports, 52% of those brands “reach” came
from sports streaming.
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In addition, those campaigns were ten times as likely to get into “hard-to-reach” households versus traditional TV.
In terms of business
outcomes, Innovid found out that website visits were a key indicator as far as effectiveness of campaign engagement and condition -- something that traditional TV and streaming continues to do
well.
Multi-screen campaigns deliver 2.4 times more website visits than those that use just on channel -- traditional TV or only streaming.
Multi-screen efforts are 105% more likely to
deliver website visits.
In partnership with Comcast Advertising, Mastercard says TV advertising continues to deliver two times the return on media investment when it comes to TV/streaming,
with 75% coming from traditional TV and 25% on streaming.
Comcast Advertising research in the first half of 2026 came from more than 30,000 TV and streaming campaigns, and more than 200 sports
campaigns.
Mastercard's research came from more than 6,000 campaigns; with Innovid’s research from more than 1,200 campaigns.