In a year in which streaming made big gains, TVision has put out a report looking at the connected TV highlights and trends of 2023.
The biggest show on CTV was Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso, according to TVision’s Power Score rankings.
No. 2 was Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty and No. 3 was Disney Plus’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season 3).
The top show on Netflix was The Night Agent, which was fourth in the rankings.
Among movies on CTV, Top Gun: Maverick soared to the top for Paramount Plus. Top Gun was followed by three films on Netflix: You People, The Out Laws and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
TVision said that the average American household watches content from about seven apps, but noted that more than 25% of households view video on more than 10 apps.
Netflix was the leader in household reach with 69.5%, followed by YouTube. Amazon Prime Video overtook Hulu for the third spot and Max jumped over Disney Plus for fifth place.
Broadcast and cable continue to dominate sports viewing, but CTV is gaining.
Beyond drawing viewers, sports also generate attention for commercials, making ieven more important to linear networks, according to TVision.
Sports events on linear generated an attention index of 102.2 compared to an index of 96.2 for non-sports programming on linear. Content on CTV generated a 99.6% attention index.
Guess who boosted attention for NFL games, TV’s biggest draw? Power couple Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Before Swift started showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games to watch her boyfriend, female viewers generated an 86.6% attention index. Since Taylormania set in, the attention index rose to 88.3.
The Swift effect was more pronounced for games involving Kelce, which jumped to a 91 index from 85.6.
Sports is also a powerhouse when it comes to co-viewing. The co-viewing rate for sports on linear networks was 59.7%, compared to 54% for non-sports events on linear. Content on CTV generates a 58.5% co-viewing rate.
Speaking of ads, TVision found that viewers are spending more time with ad-supported versions of subscription streaming services.
“This suggests that ad-supported tiers are increasing in popularity and streaming viewers are becoming more receptive to CTV advertising,” TVision said in its report. “In turn, this creates more opportunity for advertisers to reach hard-to-find CTV viewers.”
Viewers of ad-free versions of subscription streaming services tend to pay more attention than ad-supported ones. But Peacock, Paramount Plus and Discovery Plus were exceptions.
“This may be because of the ad-break format they have deployed, viewer expectations for ads with this content, or other factors,” the TVision report said.
As on traditional TV, there’s a big advantage to being in the first position within ad pod on CTV. Commercial in the first position had a 49.4% share of the attention generated by CTV ad pods. The Second ad garnered 24.9% and the third pod got 25.73%.
“Many apps let viewers know how many ads to expect and exactly when to expect the programming to begin again,“ TVision said. “Viewers catch the first several seconds of the first ad before giving their attention elsewhere. The small bump in attention for the last ad in the pod could be attributable to viewers getting ready to reengage with content.”
