- Linear TV is a schedule. Streaming TV is just that – a stream. Linear is about reach. STV is about relevance. Linear was built for brands. STV is being rebuilt for brandformance.
- Understanding this shift is the key to understanding the future of TV and video advertising—and why the next great media strategy won’t look anything like the last one.
What is Linear TV?
Linear TV is television the way it’s always been—programmed in advance, distributed via cable or satellite, and broadcast on a fixed schedule. Everyone sees the same content at the same time. Want to change the channel? Grab the remote. Want to advertise? Call the network rep.
A staple of linear TV was everyone tuning in to the same big titles each week, at the same time. This is called “Appointment Viewing”.
Appointment viewing refers to the tradition of watching television at a specific time when a program is scheduled to air. It’s a hallmark of linear TV, where viewers must tune in live—say, 8 PM on Thursday for a sitcom—or miss out. Think of it as making a date with your TV: you show up when the network says, remote in hand, ready for whatever’s on.
Streaming TV (STV): Internet-Native Viewing
Streaming TV—or STV—is how we describe content that’s delivered Over-The-Top (OTT) of traditional cable infrastructure via the internet but watched on a television screen.
💡Think: Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Electronics Smart TVs, or apps like Hulu and Peacock.
STV behaves like digital in that you can:
- Target audiences based on behavior, interests, geography, and 1PD
- Buy media programmatically (in real-time)
- Swap out creative dynamically
- Measure the impact of Streaming TV on channel contribution and outcomes
It’s dynamic video on a big screen—but under the hood, it’s an entirely different engine.
The Viewership Shift: Numbers Tell the Story
The migration from linear to streaming is happening at breathtaking speed:
Streaming Dominance
- Streaming now accounts for 43.7% of total U.S. TV/video viewing time as of February 2025, surpassing traditional TV (broadcast 22.5% and cable 24.4%) by less than a percentage point. 12
- Connected TV usage surged, with U.S. adults aged 18-64 spending 90+ minutes daily on smart TVs (31% of viewing time), overtaking traditional TV in Q3 2022. 5
- Prime-time streaming hours grew 34% year-over-year, while linear TV ratings for broadcast networks declined 15%. 9,12
Linear TV Decline
- Cord-cutting accelerated: Pay TV subscribers fell 6.1% YoY in Q2 2024, with cable (-7.8%), satellite (-12.5%), and telco (-10%) providers all seeing steep declines. 3
- Projected 2025 losses: An additional 4.8 million subscribers are expected to cut the cord, continuing the trend of 21.5 million losses since 2020. 4
- Linear TV ad spending is projected to drop 13% to $51 billion in 2025. 11
Generational Shifts
- Younger viewers (18-34): Spend <1 hour/day on traditional TV vs. 102+ minutes on streaming platforms. 69
- Older demographics: Baby Boomers remain linear TV’s core audience (5 hours/day), though 63% now use streaming services. 6
FAST Growth
- Free ad-supported streaming (FAST) viewership rose 55% YoY, driven by cost-conscious consumers. 7
- Tubi (a leading FAST platform) reached 184.4 million users in 2024, with Super Bowl LIX driving a 17x surge in usage during the game. 29
- Pluto TV and similar services now command 20-25% of ad-supported streaming viewership. 15
Sports and Live Events
- Streaming surpassed linear TV for sports in 2024, with 100M+ viewers tuning into digital platforms for live games. 9
- Super Bowl LIX: Fox’s cross-platform strategy (broadcast + Tubi) attracted 127.7M viewers, making February 9, 2025, the second most-watched TV day in Nielsen Gauge history. 2
This isn’t just a gradual evolution—it’s a fundamental restructuring of how video content reaches consumers.
Why Is It Changing?
The biggest shift isn’t just in how people watch—it’s in how the ad supply chain is built:
- Linear = pre-scheduled slots sold via direct sales
- STV = impression-level auctions powered by DSPs, SSPs, and ID graphs
You don’t buy shows. You buy moments of attention. And you compete for them every millisecond.
That introduces challenges—fragmentation, latency, inconsistent standards—but it also opens the door to smarter, more accountable advertising.
Why Does Attention Matter?
At its core, TV—whether linear or STV—is about capturing attention. Linear TV assumes a captive audience: you sit down at 8 PM, and the network dictates what you see. STV flips this completely. Attention isn’t guaranteed; it’s earned through relevance.
Linear is passive. STV is permissioned.
The data supports this shift in dynamics:
- 67% of streaming viewers regularly use second screens (their phone or a tablet) during content, compared to 78% during commercial breaks.
- STV ads see 98.5% completion rates when properly targeted versus 82% for linear commercials. Because think about it – who is going through a multi-opt-in process to turn on their favorite show (turn on the TV, find the app, find the show, find the episode, etc). They’re pretty committed, they’re likely not turning off the TV in spite of your ad.
- Viewer attention metrics are 27% higher for streaming platforms than for traditional TV. It makes sense. Sure, we may be on our phones while we’re watching, but we’re watching what WE want. So naturally, we’re paying more attention.
The battle for attention isn’t just about screens; it’s about who controls the content and data to deliver the right moment (over and over and over).
The Delivery Engine: Pipes, Protocols, and Problems
Linear TV runs on a one-way pipe: satellite or cable beams content to your set-top box. STV, by contrast, is a two-way internet protocol system. This isn’t just a tech upgrade—it’s a paradigm shift with profound implications.
What is SSAI?
Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) has been rolled out as the silver bullet to buffering problems that plagued early STV advertising. The idea is that by stitching ads directly into the content stream before delivery, SSAI promises a seamless viewing experience.
But here’s where SSAI causes transparency gaps. When ads are inserted server-side:
- Third-party verification becomes drastically more difficult: Imagine you’re trying to make sure an ad you paid for actually showed up on someone’s TV. Back in the day, (with regular TV), companies could hire an outside checker—a “third party”—to confirm everything went as planned. But with STV, it’s like the ad system is locked inside a black box. The streaming companies control everything, and they don’t always let outsiders peek in. So, it’s way harder to double-check if your ad really played or if you got what you paid for.
- Impression counting can be manipulated (studies show up to 15% discrepancy): An “impression” is just a fancy word for someone seeing your ad. On regular TV, counting viewers was straightforward(ish)—everyone watched at the same time, and big surveys tracked it. With streaming, it’s trickier because the system counts every time an ad loads, even if no one’s watching. Studies in 2024 found that these counts can be off by as much as 15%—that’s like if you paid for 100 people to see your ad, but only 85 actually did. Understanding how ad serving works is an important piece of this. Check out this recent conversation with Matt Burk on [radically candid] where we talk all things ad serving.
- Ad viewability becomes nearly impossible to validate independently: “Viewability” means checking if an ad was actually seen, not just loaded on a screen somewhere. With regular TV, you could assume people saw it because they were sitting there watching. On streaming TV, it’s not as easy—did the ad play while someone was in the kitchen? Did it even load properly? Having a fully composable streaming TV ad tech stack gives you control over streaming platforms that hold all the data.
- Fraud detection tools lose critical client-side signals: Fraud in STV means fake views—like robots pretending to be people to trick advertisers into paying. On websites or apps, tools could spot this by looking at clues from your device (called “client-side signals”), like how you move your mouse. But with streaming TV, everything happens on the platform’s server, not your TV remote. Luckily, there is one easy answer – being able to measure outcomes related to ad exposure. Learn about how [cognition] does that with [headless analytics] in this conversation with Michael Lieberman.
Value Exchange: From Eyeballs to Outcomes
Linear TV sold impressions: “10 million people saw your ad.” STV sells results: “10,000 people visited your website within 24 hours of seeing your ad.” This shift fundamentally rewrites the advertiser’s playbook.
The numbers support this evolution:
- Campaigns using 24-hour lookback attribution found streaming drove 26% of all website traffic
- Viewers exposed to STV ads are 5X more likely to convert than non-exposed visitors
- The average time from streaming ad exposure to website visit is 8.2 hours
This connection to outcomes is transforming how brands value premium video inventory.
What is the “Second Screen” and Why does it matter?
The idea of the second screen is that we watch TV (linear, streaming, or otherwise) actively with another device (phone, tablet, laptop). Basically, it’s the idea that we’re not watching TV. We’re watching TV while scrolling TikTok, texting casserole recipes to the family group chat, and changing a load of laundry.
What that means is that we have a closed loop for demand generation and demand capture. That is, we should be optimizing our creative for personalized conversations, commerce, and conversion.
Check out some of these stats and think about how you can use them in strategy:
- 90%+ of TV viewers use a second device while watching — perfect for QR engagement
- 83.4 million U.S. smartphone users scanned QR codes back in 2022
- 99.5 million projected U.S. QR code users by 2025 — effectively 1 in 3 people
- 67% of users are willing to scan a QR code on a commercial if it’s relevant
- 30 seconds is the minimum recommended ad length for QR code effectiveness
- 67% scan QR codes to learn more about a product or brand
- 55% scan QR codes to make a purchase
- +5% increase in response when a QR code is added in the corner of a TV ad
- +15% increase in response when the QR code is integrated into the storyline as a featured element
- QR codes outperformed 1-800 numbers and URLs in driving traffic and measurable engagement
- QR code placement and post-scan experience were key to maximizing conversion rates
The Strategic Shift for Advertisers
This isn’t just a media channel change—it’s a planning model change.
Advertisers have to rewire how they:
- Define audiences (not just Nielsen demos)
- Structure creative (for personalization and speed)
- Allocate budgets (fluidly, not quarterly)
- Measure outcomes (with real-time feedback loops)
The infrastructure has changed. Your media strategy should too.
Take a peek at some of the tech that the leading agencies are taking to market.
What’s Still Broken (and How to Navigate It)
Despite the momentum, STV still has friction:
- Platform fragmentation splits audiences across 200+ streaming services, with the average household using 5.7 different platforms monthly.
- Measurement inconsistency persists, with 68% of marketers citing it as their biggest STV challenge.
- Supply chain transparency issues mean at least 14% of STV ad spend still can’t be tracked to specific publishers.
Smart advertisers are testing streaming strategies to find the mix that works best for them.
- Broad is better – reach more people and use personalized retargeting to drive maximum impact.
- Building unified audiences and 1PD practices to unlock hidden value from data.
- Measuring omnichannel impact from streaming investments and optimizing allocations.
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