While commercial ratings continue to decline, total use of TV rose 1.2% among adults 18-49 in October, including over-the-top viewing, according to a report by analyst Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research.
Viewing via internet-connected devices rose 65% from a year ago and accounts for 8.1% of TV use among adults 18-49, according to Wieser, based on data from Nielsen.
The rising OTT viewing didn’t help commercial viewing. Wieser says commercial viewing among adults 18-49 was down 2.4% in primetime and 1.4% on a total day basis.
Viewing was boosted by heavy viewing of news on cable news networks and an extra weekend of football in the month.
The number of commercial impressions was up 2.6% to 940 billion because networks on average increased commercial loads. Commercials accounted for 10.8 minutes per hour across Nielsen-tracked programming, up from 10.5 minutes a year ago and 10.3 minutes in Oct. 2014, Wieser said.
Many programmers, including Viacom, Time Warner and NBCUniversal have been talking about plans to reduce commercial loads on some programming on some of their networks.
NBCU had the largest share of C3 commercial impressions with 14.6% of adults 18-19, up from 14.5% a year ago. 21st Century Fox and Scripps Networks Interactive also increased their share of C3 impressions, along with several independent networks including NFL Network, WGN America, Weather Channel and Ion.
