TV isn't going anywhere, but traditional pay TV is

Early in 2020, as the pandemic was getting underway, Americans flocked to their TV sets at a rate unseen in years. Initially, US households were glued to the news, as uncertainty over the coronavirus drove viewership. In the following weeks, the TVs mostly stayed on, as the initial wave of lockdowns kept Americans stuck on the couch with lots of new time to kill.

There are two front-and-center industry initiatives for testing and enabling household-level addressability within national TV inventory: Project OAR (Open, Addressable, Ready) and Nielsen. Both organizations are partnering with smart TV manufacturers to develop systems for executing addressable across multiple TV networks.

This year, we expect 46.0 million US households will use a smart TV at least once per month, a 16.0% increase from 2017.

Cost may be a factor—though smart wristbands are more popular even in affluent households. Smart TVs are also entering more homes; in H1 2020, overall penetration passed 50% for the first time. Suburban residents were more likely to own a web-enabled TV than those living in cities or rural areas.

Ad-supported OTT services are proliferating alongside SVOD services—and ad spend that goes toward these services will grow as US households increasingly adopt connected-TV devices, access a growing number of ad-supported streaming services on those devices, and as cord-cutting erodes audience reach on traditional TV. Three Key Questions This Report Will Answer:.

More than 6 million US households will cut cable this year

Smart TVs are still growing in popularity. Almost half (49.6%) of UK internet users polled in H1 2020 had such a device, compared with 45.1% in H1 2019. In affluent households, nearly 57% owned a smart TV this year. Smart home items are also gaining traction.

Smart TVs and other digital devices are gaining fans. Smart TV ownership climbed several percentage points between H1 2019 and H1 2020 to 43.6%. There’s little sign that smart TVs are a priority purchase for internet users in Canada who don’t already have one. That said, 51.2% of respondents in high-income households did say they owned a smart TV.

As in Turkey, there was a notable drop in ownership of smart TVs among internet users living in affluent households. All traditional media lost audience share in UAE between Q1 2019 and Q1 2020, according to GlobalWebIndex/Publicis Media.

Advertiser demand for video impressions has always outstripped supply, but supply has gotten a big boost as consumers started adopting streaming video viewing in larger numbers—especially on CTV devices—and more of those impressions have been made available programmatically.