The news: Streaming ad revenues continued a growth trajectory in Q3 while national linear TV spend shrunk, per a recent MoffetNathanson Research forecast.

• Major US streaming platform ad revenues grew close to 18% YoY (8% when including year-ago Olympic revenues), reaching $3.8 billion. Netflix saw ad growth double (108%) YoY, while Disney+ revenues grew 32% YoY to reach $186 million.
• Other platforms that grew include Peacock (up 14% excluding year-ago Olympics results), Roku (26%), and Tubi (20%).
• Meanwhile, national linear TV struggled, with ad revenues dropping 10% to $4.65 billion excluding 2024 Olympics advertising. When including Olympic revenues, national TV was down 26%.
• Walt Disney was the only traditional TV media company that made slight gains across its cable networks, with ad revenues up 4.4% YoY to $705 million—largely attributable to ESPN. Disney’s broadcast offerings like ABC Television Network shrank 12%.
• Other linear cable networks are forecast to see significant losses: Warner Bros. Discovery ad revenues are estimated to fall 19% in Q3, while NBCUniversal will fall 33% and Paramount will be down 20%.

The trend: Ad dollars are shifting to connected TV (CTV) as audience attention turns to streaming. CTV ad spending is set to surpass TV by 2028, per our forecast, while audiences will spend more time with CTV than traditional TV for the first time this year. CTV and digital streaming will have surpassed linear TV in other crucial metrics by the end of 2025, including viewing share, number of viewing households, time spent, and content spending.

Yes, but: Brands shifting investment to CTV will benefit from an approach that still accounts for linear. Linear TV generated about six times as many ad impressions as CTV in 2024, and remains more effective than CTV at boosting key metrics like ad awareness, purchase intent, brand favorability, and message association.

What marketers can do: A successful advertising strategy will understand the increasing need to invest in cross-platform campaigns in the digital age.

The best strategies require brands to sustain investment in linear for its scale and reliability while steadily increasing investment in CTV to align with evolving user behaviors. Advertisers who carefully diversify across both streaming and linear platforms will best capture fragmented audiences compared with brands who take single-platform approaches.