This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at what TV and streaming companies’ latest quarterly earnings report indicate about the state of the streaming ad market.
The third quarter in a non-election year is typically a tricky time for TV and streaming advertising businesses. People usually spend less time in front of their TVs in July and August (at least until the NFL and college football seasons start). But Q3 earnings season can actually be a pretty great time to get a read on what TV network and streaming service owners’ ad businesses are up to.
During the latest quarterly earnings calls, executives from the major TV and streaming companies shared details on how their streaming businesses fared in the latest upfront cycle and teased out new ad products and capabilities.
The streaming-TV ad revenue dynamic
Some companies also shed light on how their streaming ad businesses currently stack up against their traditional TV ad businesses. So let’s start there.
In short, they still don’t. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery provide the clearest views of the dynamic, and at best streaming delivers 30% of the ad revenue of traditional TV. And that figure comes from Paramount, which saw 41% year-over-year declines in both TV and streaming ad revenue.
Meanwhile, WBD’s streaming ad revenue increased by 15% year over year, which was not enough to outpace the 20% decline in TV ad revenue.
The situation was similar at TelevisaUnivision where streaming ad revenue grew but not enough to offset declining TV ad revenue, leading to a $21.1 million decline in U.S. ad revenue.
The dynamic may not be all that different a year from now.
Upfront updates
NBCUniversal’s parent company Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said during the company’s most recent earnings call that Peacock represented one-third of the money advertisers committed to spend with NBCUniversal in this year’s upfront. That’s a 20% increase compared to…