Peacock soars but has catching up to do: Olympics gave the streamer its best month ever in August, but viewership was still dwarfed by Netflix and YouTube.

Advertisers and tech vendors look to capitalize on CTV’s growing importance in digital advertising.

This is the first installment of our quarterly “Ad Spending Benchmarks” series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

Paris Olympics drives record viewership: NBCU sees 82% increase, highlighting value for advertisers in live sports events.

DoorDash is the latest delivery platform to turn to streaming to boost membership sign-ups: The company will offer DashPass subscribers free access to Max’s ad-supported tier in a bid to boost sign-ups and grow sales.

This report compares our 2024 US ad spending and time spent with media forecasts. It identifies incongruities between how marketers are spending ad dollars and where consumers are spending their time.

Our forecast for time spent with media has held relatively steady throughout 2024, but several important milestones are on the horizon.

Consumers are feeling the squeeze of the rising cost of subscriptions. Nearly seven in 10 (67%) US consumers saw at least one of their subscription services increase their cost, per March 2024 survey by CNET. Meanwhile, more than half (52%) of US adults have canceled a streaming service subscription because of increased pricing, per October 2023 data by TransUnion and Dynata.

NBA lands historic media deals: New agreements with Disney, NBC, and Amazon promise expanded coverage and increased accessibility for fans.

Netflix viewership grows thanks to hit show ‘Bridgerton’: While Netflix is seeing gains, it still falls behind NBCU, YouTube, and Disney.

New NBA broadcasting deals with NBC and Amazon: These partnerships, pending approval, are set to enhance live sports accessibility and boost advertising revenue.

Most subscription streaming services offer ad-free and ad-supported plans. After Amazon Prime Video introduced its ad plan in January, Apple TV+ became the biggest advertising holdout among streamers. Advertising holdouts have gradually accepted commercial breaks in their programming.

Streaming has been a home run for sports-based advertising Through sports rights, new and niche content, and creative ad formats, every major streamer is attempting to grab a share of sports connected TV (CTV) ad spend.

Politics will buoy linear TV ad spending this year, but allocations will continue to shift toward streaming options that keep gaining ad-supported viewers.

Total media ad spending growth has stabilized, and digital ad spending is set for an extended period of low double-digit annual increases. Amazon, TikTok, and Instagram will be the main growth drivers this year.

Roku in talks for exclusive MLB Sunday broadcasts: A shift from NBC to Roku could reshape sports streaming landscape.

With most of the US already watching, growth in overall OTT viewership has slowed to a crawl. But some platforms, formats, and service tiers are still booming, and digital pay TV is complicating the linear TV narrative.

Sports streaming momentum keeps building: Roku and NBA team up on FAST channel as Peacock and Prime Video win more exclusive streaming deals.

Among subscription video streaming services, Amazon Prime Video has the highest share of ad-supported viewers, while Netflix has the lowest.

The ecommerce giant’s launch of ads on Prime Video instantly gave it the largest audience for an ad-supported subscription video service in the US.