Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services like The Roku Channel, Tubi, and Pluto TV will bring in tens of millions of viewers this year, though time spent with the platforms isn’t comparable to that of Netflix or YouTube, according to our forecast. Still, marketers should keep an eye on these streaming services, especially those with parent companies like Paramount or Fox that may be able to spin free viewers into paid members.

Each year, our analysts dig into media and device usage across the world. In total, we looked at 44 markets. Here’s a look at eight key insights our analysts found in the United States and Canada.

The average US adult will spend more time watching digital video than TV in 2024, marking a victory for connected viewing in the streaming revolution. Daily time spent with TV will fall below 3 hours next year, down more than 1 hour, 30 minutes over the course of a decade.

As the US streaming market matures, the companies that make TV are expanding their purview. This can mean a lot of things, including moving into the hardware space, moving away from the hardware space, taking ownership of ad platforms, and extending coverage locally and internationally.

US spending on linear TV ads will peak this year at $68.35 billion, up from $65.66 billion in 2021. This figure will not surpass $68 billion again for the next four years, with TV ad spend dropping to $64.94 billion in 2026 as its share of total media ad spend decreases as well.

US political advertisers will splash out $8.8 billion on video in 2022, close to the record $9.5 billion spent in 2020, despite this year marking a midterm rather than presidential election.

In North America, TV is the dominant screen for viewing OTT video content, accounting for 82% of time spent on the activity in Q2 2021.

Average daily time spent with media shot past the 10-hour mark last year, pushing media consumption to new levels in Canada.

This report summarizes our forecasts for nine countries—the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Japan, and South Korea—and offers comparative analyses of the major time spent numbers for each.

Too much TV to talk about

TV ads are still playing to win

US upfront TV ad spending will decline 1.4% in the 2019-2020 season to $20.28 billion, and drop a substantial 27.1% in the 2020-2021 season to $14.78 billion, a $5.5 billion difference year-on-year.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom, vice president of content studio Paul Verna and Business Insider Intelligence senior analyst Audrey Schomer at Insider Intelligence discuss the most impressive video streaming players this year, whether bundling will come to streaming and how significant is the "mooch factor." They then talk about TVs that rotate, YouTube wanting advertisers to spend more to reach consumers watching content on TVs and what to make of D2C's jump into TV advertising.

With the coronavirus pandemic leading to a significant economic slowdown, we’re providing updated guidance to our clients about what we expect for ad spending during H1 2020. We finalized our most recent complete forecast on March 6, 2020, before the cascade of drastic social distancing and market declines began in the US. Since then, we have provided guidance through a series of "Analyst Take" notes on US ad spending. Guidance for US search, out-of-home, display, digital video and TV are now available. We also issued ad spending guidance in Canada, China, France, Germany and the UK. We will update our full-year forecast for ad spending again in June.

After reaching an expected saturation point last year, daily media time in Canada will climb further this year based on our latest forecasts. COVID-19 has driven up demand for media while people are quarantined at home, which will impact our full-year forecast.

eMarketer analyst Ross Benes and forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom discuss what advertisers are doing with those sports programming dollars, how bad cord-cutting might get, the future of spending on original content, and more. They then cover how Disney+ is doing in the US and abroad, Fox Corp.'s recent purchase of Tubi and Hulu viewership growth.

Adopting new technology is the norm among Generation X, and unlike digital natives, this adoption hasn’t crowded out old media. But before marketers can tap into Xers’ widespread accessibility, they should understand their unique device and media usage, social platform preferences and privacy concerns.

According to a March 2019 survey from mobile ad and app monetization company Tapjoy, 69% of US consumers said they would rather give up social media apps or TV than lose their favorite mobile games.