Copyright Adweek
The advertising world is at an inflection point. Over the past few years, consumers have shifted to streaming media in record numbers, reshaping how they discover, engage with, and ultimately buy from brands. In June, Nielsen reported a significant shift in TV viewing habits. Streaming platforms saw a 71% growth in viewership over the past four years, reaching 45% of total TV consumption. This milestone marked the first time streaming surpassed the reach of broadcast (20%) and cable (24%) for the first time. Streaming is now fully mainstream. According to Pew Research, 83% of adults in the U.S. watch content on streaming services, with particularly high adoption rates among younger demographics aged 18-34, making these platforms especially valuable for advertisers targeting this coveted audience segment. But with so many platforms and apps to subscribe to, media consumption has also become increasingly fragmented. A study from Boston Consulting Group showed that modern shoppers are using over 20 media touchpoints in the run-up to making a purchase. While media fragmentation presents a challenge, addressable streaming TV advertising turns this into an opportunity by enabling precise targeting across platforms, with digital measurement capabilities providing clear performance insights. Marketers will spend over half of their $413 billion U.S. ad budget on media and entertainment platforms this year. But we know that the data reveals significant—and sometimes extreme—imbalances between where marketers put their ad dollars and where consumers spend their media time, with less than half of that entertainment budget (43%) invested in streaming. As a marketer tasked with innovating cross-channel strategies for your organization, you’re constantly reassessing your media mix to understand the best scaled, data-driven placements to reach engaged audiences. But because this new media landscape is developing so rapidly, you may be struggling to understand what’s myth and what’s reality. By separating fact from fiction, you can make the right choices to ensure your messaging is reaching relevant audiences, driving full-funnel results, and earning you performance wins that justify your spend. Let’s break it down. The advertising world is at an inflection point. Over the past few years, consumers have shifted to streaming media in record numbers, reshaping how they discover, engage with, and ultimately buy from brands. In June, Nielsen reported a significant shift in TV viewing habits. Streaming platforms saw a 71% growth in viewership over the past four years, reaching 45% of total TV consumption. This milestone marked the first time streaming surpassed the reach of broadcast (20%) and cable (24%) for the first time. Streaming is now fully mainstream. According to Pew Research, 83% of adults in the U.S. watch content on streaming services, with particularly high adoption rates among younger demographics aged 18-34, making these platforms especially valuable for advertisers targeting this coveted audience segment. But with so many platforms and apps to subscribe to, media consumption has also become increasingly fragmented. A study from Boston Consulting Group showed that modern shoppers are using over 20 media touchpoints in the run-up to making a purchase. While media fragmentation presents a challenge, addressable streaming TV advertising turns this into an opportunity by enabling precise targeting across platforms, with digital measurement capabilities providing clear performance insights. Marketers will spend over half of their $413 billion U.S. ad budget on media and entertainment platforms this year. But we know that the data reveals significant—and sometimes extreme—imbalances between where marketers put their ad dollars and where consumers spend their media time, with less than half of that entertainment budget (43%) invested in streaming. As a marketer tasked with innovating cross-channel strategies for your organization, you’re constantly reassessing your media mix to understand the best scaled, data-driven placements to reach engaged audiences. But because this new media landscape is developing so rapidly, you may be struggling to understand what’s myth and what’s reality. By separating fact from fiction, you can make the right choices to ensure your messaging is reaching relevant audiences, driving full-funnel results, and earning you performance wins that justify your spend. Let’s break it down. Streaming TV’s fragmented landscape makes it impossible to achieve the broad, targeted reach that broadcast TV offers. Traditional TV is the only way to achieve mass reach and create cultural moments that bring audiences together at scale. Times are changing. Streaming is now the dominant platform and offers both scale and reach. In the U.S., streaming is estimated to have over 234 million viewers monthly, with Amazon Ads alone reaching an average monthly reach of over 200 million, according to Amazon Ads' internal data. The mass audience is clearly there—and, more importantly, much of it is exclusive. According to an analysis of third-party incremental reach studies on Amazon Streaming TV campaigns, 60% of Amazon Streaming TV viewers were exclusive to Amazon and did not see the campaign on linear TV. The analysis also showed that streaming campaigns deliver more than 17% incremental reach on top of linear TV campaigns—a number that continues to increase year over year. While traditional TV's audience continues to age upward, streaming TV is becoming the go-to destination for advertiser-coveted demographics. The audience reached by streaming TV is equally compelling. During the 2023-2024 viewing season, 76% of Amazon's streaming audience fell within the coveted 18-49 age bracket, far exceeding linear TV's 42%. Even more striking is the affluent reach: Amazon Streaming TV delivers 65% more efficient reach among $100,000+ income households compared to linear TV—clearly indicating where high-value consumers now prefer to consume content. Streaming isn't just about scale; it is transforming how people consume content. When 30 million viewers tuned into the new season of The Summer I Turned Pretty on Amazon Prime, they weren't just watching—they were part of a cultural moment, creating a social media phenomenon with real-time reactions and shared experiences. This evolution is particularly evident in live sports. For example, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video has redefined game day with immersive experiences, real-time stats, and seamless shopping integration that are driving engagement and consideration in ways traditional TV simply cannot match. This shows that audiences still crave shared cultural moments. As streaming platforms secure more exclusive live events—from sports to concerts to awards shows, they're not just replicating the "appointment viewing" effect; they're enhancing it. This new era of streaming is combining the communal experience of traditional TV with the personalization and interactivity that digital platforms excel at, creating a viewing experience that's more engaging and measurable than ever before. Streaming isn't just changing where we watch; it's revolutionizing how we watch, interact, and connect with content. For advertisers, this presents an unprecedented opportunity to engage with audiences in more meaningful and measurable ways, turning viewers into active participants in the brand experience. Streaming platforms speak to a wide, engaged audience that can no longer be reached with linear TV. And as more premium experiences launch exclusively on connected surfaces, the live tune-in viewership will continue to shift. With the continuing momentum, streaming will be essential for reaching audiences across all channels and platforms. Streaming TV’s fragmented landscape makes it impossible to achieve the broad, targeted reach that broadcast TV offers. Traditional TV is the only way to achieve mass reach and create cultural moments that bring audiences together at scale. Times are changing. Streaming is now the dominant platform and offers both scale and reach. In the U.S., streaming is estimated to have over 234 million viewers monthly, with Amazon Ads alone reaching an average monthly reach of over 200 million, according to Amazon Ads' internal data. The mass audience is clearly there—and, more importantly, much of it is exclusive. According to an analysis of third-party incremental reach studies on Amazon Streaming TV campaigns, 60% of Amazon Streaming TV viewers were exclusive to Amazon and did not see the campaign on linear TV. The analysis also showed that streaming campaigns deliver more than 17% incremental reach on top of linear TV campaigns—a number that continues to increase year over year. While traditional TV's audience continues to age upward, streaming TV is becoming the go-to destination for advertiser-coveted demographics. The audience reached by streaming TV is equally compelling. During the 2023-2024 viewing season, 76% of Amazon's streaming audience fell within the coveted 18-49 age bracket, far exceeding linear TV's 42%. Even more striking is the affluent reach: Amazon Streaming TV delivers 65% more efficient reach among $100,000+ income households compared to linear TV—clearly indicating where high-value consumers now prefer to consume content. Streaming isn't just about scale; it is transforming how people consume content. When 30 million viewers tuned into the new season of The Summer I Turned Pretty on Amazon Prime, they weren't just watching—they were part of a cultural moment, creating a social media phenomenon with real-time reactions and shared experiences. This evolution is particularly evident in live sports. For example, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video has redefined game day with immersive experiences, real-time stats, and seamless shopping integration that are driving engagement and consideration in ways traditional TV simply cannot match. This shows that audiences still crave shared cultural moments. As streaming platforms secure more exclusive live events—from sports to concerts to awards shows, they're not just replicating the "appointment viewing" effect; they're enhancing it. This new era of streaming is combining the communal experience of traditional TV with the personalization and interactivity that digital platforms excel at, creating a viewing experience that's more engaging and measurable than ever before. Streaming isn't just changing where we watch; it's revolutionizing how we watch, interact, and connect with content. For advertisers, this presents an unprecedented opportunity to engage with audiences in more meaningful and measurable ways, turning viewers into active participants in the brand experience. Streaming platforms speak to a wide, engaged audience that can no longer be reached with linear TV. And as more premium experiences launch exclusively on connected surfaces, the live tune-in viewership will continue to shift. With the continuing momentum, streaming will be essential for reaching audiences across all channels and platforms. Linear TV is more cost-effective, offering mass awareness opportunities, competitive CPMs, and trusted measurement tools to understand performance. Streaming is harder to gauge in terms of comprehensive impact. Linear TV relies on broad demographics, significantly oversaturating heavy viewers, while struggling to achieve minimum-frequency targets. Broadcast and cable simply don’t have the same scale of signals to leverage. Streaming customizes audiences down to the household and viewer level, enabling personalized ads and frequency targeting that deliver ROI. Streaming combines scale and precision. Leading third-party measurement providers have consistently shown that streaming ads are more efficient in terms of reaching the right audience, dollar for dollar. According to Nielsen ONE, Prime Video Ads are 3.6X more effective at reaching intended audiences and 4X more cost-efficient than traditional TV advertising. These efficiency gains come from leveraging scaled first-party signals and the right measurement solutions for reaching your audience. Advertising dollars work harder and go further with streaming. The difference lies in the how: Optimal Target Rate: Streaming delivers ads where they matter most—among the right audience segments—rather than paying for wasted impressions across broad demographics. Frequency Management: Unlike linear, where heavy TV viewers can account for over 50% of exposures, streaming uses frequency management solutions to avoid oversaturation while ensuring lighter viewers still get adequate reach. This improves both cost efficiency and audience quality. Audience Exclusivity: Streaming reaches segments linear simply cannot—cord cutters and streaming-first households—making each incremental dollar more valuable. The shift in viewership tells a compelling story about where valuable audiences are spending their time. Streaming TV audiences consistently demonstrate stronger purchase intent and should not be seen as just "viewers." In fact, three out of four viewers exposed to streaming TV ads on Amazon went on to make a purchase. They're engaged consumers with significant spending power, making them particularly valuable for advertisers looking to drive real business outcomes. So, capturing engaged audiences is one cost-effective benefit to a streaming ad strategy and capturing attention is another. “The CTV Advertising Insights Report 2024” from Innovid shared that because streaming ads are often unskippable, they see an over 90% completion rate on most platforms. In these premium-content environments, viewers are simply more likely to see the ads they’re being served, leading to greater brand and product-specific recall. In today's evolving media landscape, brand success lies in maximizing reach to high-value audiences while maintaining optimal frequency targets—all to drive both awareness and conversions within budget parameters. Strategically, streaming allows you to reach the right audiences at the right time—and to leverage precision targeting to drive effective and efficient results. Linear TV is more cost-effective, offering mass awareness opportunities, competitive CPMs, and trusted measurement tools to understand performance. Streaming is harder to gauge in terms of comprehensive impact. Linear TV relies on broad demographics, significantly oversaturating heavy viewers, while struggling to achieve minimum-frequency targets. Broadcast and cable simply don’t have the same scale of signals to leverage. Streaming customizes audiences down to the household and viewer level, enabling personalized ads and frequency targeting that deliver ROI. Streaming combines scale and precision. Leading third-party measurement providers have consistently shown that streaming ads are more efficient in terms of reaching the right audience, dollar for dollar. According to Nielsen ONE, Prime Video Ads are 3.6X more effective at reaching intended audiences and 4X more cost-efficient than traditional TV advertising. These efficiency gains come from leveraging scaled first-party signals and the right measurement solutions for reaching your audience. Advertising dollars work harder and go further with streaming. The difference lies in the how: Optimal Target Rate: Streaming delivers ads where they matter most—among the right audience segments—rather than paying for wasted impressions across broad demographics. Frequency Management: Unlike linear, where heavy TV viewers can account for over 50% of exposures, streaming uses frequency management solutions to avoid oversaturation while ensuring lighter viewers still get adequate reach. This improves both cost efficiency and audience quality. Audience Exclusivity: Streaming reaches segments linear simply cannot—cord cutters and streaming-first households—making each incremental dollar more valuable. The shift in viewership tells a compelling story about where valuable audiences are spending their time. Streaming TV audiences consistently demonstrate stronger purchase intent and should not be seen as just "viewers." In fact, three out of four viewers exposed to streaming TV ads on Amazon went on to make a purchase. They're engaged consumers with significant spending power, making them particularly valuable for advertisers looking to drive real business outcomes. So, capturing engaged audiences is one cost-effective benefit to a streaming ad strategy and capturing attention is another. “The CTV Advertising Insights Report 2024” from Innovid shared that because streaming ads are often unskippable, they see an over 90% completion rate on most platforms. In these premium-content environments, viewers are simply more likely to see the ads they’re being served, leading to greater brand and product-specific recall. In today's evolving media landscape, brand success lies in maximizing reach to high-value audiences while maintaining optimal frequency targets—all to drive both awareness and conversions within budget parameters. Strategically, streaming allows you to reach the right audiences at the right time—and to leverage precision targeting to drive effective and efficient results. Streaming platforms are for top-of-funnel plays only. They’re great solely for marketplace perception, but can’t deliver measurable conversions, direct-response actions, or long-term business impact. Streaming TV ads, in fact, deliver the best of both worlds: the cultural impact once unique to linear television and the measurability of digital. They also unlock more engaging and interactive ad formats to creatively draw consumers in, gamify branding experiences, and build direct connectivity to shoppable moments. Unlike linear TV's limited visibility, streaming provides comprehensive insights into brand performance across the entire customer journey. Marketers can now track paths to conversion by mapping touchpoints across streaming, search, display, and DSP—effectively turning fragmented media channels into connected, measurable pathways to understand which combinations drive the strongest results. The digital nature of streaming TV further enhances this advantage by offering advertisers flexibility in their preferred measurement approaches. Data also shows customers influenced by streaming TV often generate significant value beyond the initial window. Solutions like long-term sales metrics allow campaigns to finally get credit for influence beyond immediate results: capture detailed page views, branded searches, incremental reach across audience segments and dayparts, and post-exposure behaviors like repeat purchases over 12 months. Ad technologies like Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) offer granular visibility from exposure to purchase, helping you connect awareness to conversion and loyalty. Thanks to their granular measurement and custom analysis capabilities—allowing you to have a clear look at viewability, dwell time, engagement, and downstream actions—advertisers can also directly tie exposures to customer actions. For example, viewers were 101% more likely to search for CPG brands advertised during Thursday Night Football on Amazon than viewers of CPG ads during all competitive NFL 2025 games, according to EDO, based on Google search rate. And, maybe just as important, the connected TV experience allows for more interactive, dynamic ad formats—from QR codes to shoppable ads—that drive engagement in real time. Interactive ad formats have been shown by Amazon Ads' internal data to lead to engagement gains to the tune of brands seeing 27% more page views and 28% higher purchase rates compared to standard video ads. That's a tangible impact that goes well beyond sentiment metrics. Streaming TV isn’t just for awareness—it’s a great medium to reach new-to-brand audiences that don't convert right away. But with the right full-funnel solutions, you're able to see its downstream influence to help you gauge its contribution toward your business/brand's outcomes. By moving beyond last-click thinking and adopting long-term measurement strategies, marketers can ensure their campaigns receive credit for their true influence and make smarter investment decisions across the entire funnel. Streaming platforms are for top-of-funnel plays only. They’re great solely for marketplace perception, but can’t deliver measurable conversions, direct-response actions, or long-term business impact. Streaming TV ads, in fact, deliver the best of both worlds: the cultural impact once unique to linear television and the measurability of digital. They also unlock more engaging and interactive ad formats to creatively draw consumers in, gamify branding experiences, and build direct connectivity to shoppable moments. Unlike linear TV's limited visibility, streaming provides comprehensive insights into brand performance across the entire customer journey. Marketers can now track paths to conversion by mapping touchpoints across streaming, search, display, and DSP—effectively turning fragmented media channels into connected, measurable pathways to understand which combinations drive the strongest results. The digital nature of streaming TV further enhances this advantage by offering advertisers flexibility in their preferred measurement approaches. Data also shows customers influenced by streaming TV often generate significant value beyond the initial window. Solutions like long-term sales metrics allow campaigns to finally get credit for influence beyond immediate results: capture detailed page views, branded searches, incremental reach across audience segments and dayparts, and post-exposure behaviors like repeat purchases over 12 months. Ad technologies like Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) offer granular visibility from exposure to purchase, helping you connect awareness to conversion and loyalty. Thanks to their granular measurement and custom analysis capabilities—allowing you to have a clear look at viewability, dwell time, engagement, and downstream actions—advertisers can also directly tie exposures to customer actions. For example, viewers were 101% more likely to search for CPG brands advertised during Thursday Night Football on Amazon than viewers of CPG ads during all competitive NFL 2025 games, according to EDO, based on Google search rate. And, maybe just as important, the connected TV experience allows for more interactive, dynamic ad formats—from QR codes to shoppable ads—that drive engagement in real time. Interactive ad formats have been shown by Amazon Ads' internal data to lead to engagement gains to the tune of brands seeing 27% more page views and 28% higher purchase rates compared to standard video ads. That's a tangible impact that goes well beyond sentiment metrics. Streaming TV isn’t just for awareness—it’s a great medium to reach new-to-brand audiences that don't convert right away. But with the right full-funnel solutions, you're able to see its downstream influence to help you gauge its contribution toward your business/brand's outcomes. By moving beyond last-click thinking and adopting long-term measurement strategies, marketers can ensure their campaigns receive credit for their true influence and make smarter investment decisions across the entire funnel. As streaming continues to evolve, its unique ability to blend precise measurement with engaging formats provides marketers the data-driven insights they need to justify investments and optimize campaigns across the entire customer journey. This isn't just a new way to advertise—it's a new way to understand, measure, and maximize advertising's true business impact. Before making cross-platform video investments, marketers should evaluate their partners carefully. Can you measure full-funnel performance? How do your analytics tools help connect streaming TV exposure to both immediate conversions and long-term customer value? How do you identify, measure and optimize high-value customer journeys? How do you ensure accuracy and relevancy in reaching your audience? Are you using any interactive or engaging streaming TV ad formats, and how do you measure their performance? In an era where every marketing dollar must demonstrate value, forward-thinking brands are making streaming TV a cornerstone of their data-driven strategies. Streaming offers a way to maximize efficiency without sacrificing reach, making it the ideal driver of long-term growth. Contrary to the myths, streaming isn’t a short-term play; it’s only gaining momentum and market share. Streaming TV ads are a strategic, future-ready pillar of the marketing mix—and with the right measurement approach, they will fuel sustainable business impact both on and offline.
