Eyeballs continue to migrate to smartphones and tablets in greater numbers, but the TV screen still remains a key conduit in the over-the-top video era.
Roku players, Apple TV boxes and other TV-connected OTT devices now lead the way in terms of online ad view share, according to a new report from FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned multiscreen advertising company.
RELATED: Comcast Wraps FreeWheel Deal
FreeWheel’s Video Monetization Report for Q1 2017, noted that OTT has ballooned from 2% to 32% in a four-year period amid heavier investment by publishers and programmers on the TV.
Ad views on smartphones and tablets were steady during that span as they declined on desktops.
In Q1, nearly all the device growth came way of OTT devices and set-top VOD, which FreeWheel dubs as the “new living room” platforms. Ad view composition and growth on OTT devices surged 45% year-on-year, and 33% for set-top VOD, and while dropping 5% on desktops/PCs.
FreeWheel, which based its report on 200 billion video starts in 2016 and 59 billion video starts during Q1 2017, also found that 29% of all programmer ad views originated from “syndicated” platforms, which include “long-tail” web sites and multichannel video programming distributor platforms (TV Everywhere and virtual MVPD services).
A deeper dive into FreeWheel’s latest study will be featured in the Next TV section of the June 19 edition of Multichannel News.
