Analyst: TV Viewers See Far Fewer Ads in Streaming Era

With the average U.S. TV viewer divvying up viewing time among traditional pay TV, subscription video-on-demand and free ad-supported TV, they're seeing about half as many ads today as they did before streaming, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote. The ad loads of each service type vary sizably, he said. In the pre-streaming era, the average traditional pay-TV watcher saw 17 minutes of ads per hour, Dixon said. In Q4 2024, the average viewer sees 9.5 minutes, as the smaller ad loads of virtual MVPDs, subscription VOD and free ad-based services drag down that average.