There doesn’t seem to be any stopping streaming video’s popularity, as streaming services continue to rival linear TV for audience share. Streaming services accounted for 40.3% of total U.S. TV usage in June 2024, according to Nielsen — a new record high for the category. That’s up from 38.7% in July 2023 and 38.4% in July 2022, when streaming claimed the largest share of U.S. TV viewing for the first time.

“There is a shift happening in how and where viewers seek out and consume content,” YouTube’s managing director of U.S. video deals and creative works Brian Albert said in an email. “Streaming households are overtaking pay TV households for the first time in the U.S., and outpacing linear TV growth across the globe. Much like the shifts from desktop to mobile — and now to CTV — viewers are driving this massive shift — streaming what they want, when they want.“

Meanwhile, cable and broadcast usage remained below 50% for the second year in a row in terms of total share among U.S. viewers, according to Nielsen. The broadcast category lost 1.8 share points in June versus the prior month and cable fell by 1 point, bringing the two to a combined 47.7% of overall TV in June 2024.

While the U.S. video streaming market is seemingly saturated, reaching 96% of U.S. households and growing only 1% quarter over quarter as of Q2 2024, according to Kantar’s Worldpanel Entertainment on Demand report, ad-supported video services are still driving growth in U.S. video streaming. Paid and free ad-supported streaming grew by roughly 6% in the second quarter of 2024, adding 3.8 million net users, while paid, ad-free streaming shrank its user base by -0.6%, according to Kantar.

Roku’s vp of ad marketing and measurement Sarah Harms said ad-supported streaming services appeal to both viewers and brands. “We certainly think streaming provides great consumer benefits, but also great advertiser benefits of greater addressability, greater accountability, and so we love that trend,” Harms said. “I think we’ll see that trend continue, and we’re here for it.”

Taking note of consumers’ increased interest in ad-supported streaming services, demand-side platform The Trade Desk is poised to be the next entrant into the streaming wars. In November 2024, The Trade Desk announced that it’s building a CTV operating system called Ventura, which will give it direct control over the streaming TV experience and take a cut of the CTV platform market away from household names like Amazon, Roku and Samsung.

Bearing this increasing competition in mind, Digiday’s fourth annual report on the state of ad-supported streaming services presents an industry-level look at the top ad-supported streaming platforms to assess:

• What the platforms offer advertisers and consumers, including plans and pricing, audience reach, and ad options
• Where advertisers spent the bulk of their 2024 ad budgets, the metrics by which they judge campaign performance and challenges they face on the platforms

Digiday identified the top-earning ad-supported streaming services by 2024 ad revenue and also included other popular platforms selected by the Digiday editorial team for their prominence. Here are those platforms in alphabetical order:

• Amazon Prime Video (with ads)
• Discovery+
• Disney+ Basic (with ads)
• Hulu
• Max
• Netflix Standard (with ads)
• Paramount+
• Peacock
• Pluto TV
• Samsung TV Plus
• The Roku Channel
• Tubi
• YouTube

Digiday surveyed the 13 ad-supported streaming platforms about their basic data including pricing and plans, audience size, ad offerings, and ad innovations. Digiday updated data for platforms that did not provide updates when possible based on available information.

Digiday interviewed executives at Peacock, Samsung, The Roku Channel and YouTube about their platforms’ ad offerings and recent innovations.

Digiday fielded a survey in February to 195 brand and agency professionals on their streaming platform buying behaviors and preferences.

YouTube came out on top for the third year in a row as the ad-supported streaming service that received the largest portion of both survey respondents’ ad placements and ad budgets. Sixty-nine percent of brand and agency respondents said they currently place ads on YouTube as of Q1 2025. However, that is a drop from last year when 75% of respondents said the same, perhaps indicating that YouTube is experiencing some competition from Amazon’s Prime Video (with ads). Amazon launched its ad-supported streaming platform in January 2024, and the service placed second among the platforms included in this year’s report.

The percentage of marketers who said they invest in YouTube has also decreased slightly, Digiday’s survey found. Half of respondents (50%) said YouTube consumed the largest portion of their ad budget in 2024, down from 60% who said the same in 2023 and 2022 respectively.

Even though marketers’ ad placements and ad spending on YouTube have decreased, YouTube remains a draw for advertisers in large part due to its audience reach. Generally speaking, YouTube has the largest audience size of the ad-supported streaming services assessed for this report, at 2 billion-plus monthly logged-in users, according to YouTube.

Additionally, while most ad-supported streaming platforms offer similar content in the form of on-demand movies and TV series, original movie and TV programming, and live TV channels, YouTube also stands out as the only platform that offers user-generated content, which YouTube refers to as creator content.

“For us, it’s all about brands understanding the importance of creators and the communities of engaged viewers they have amassed through their content,” YouTube’s Albert said. “Creators are this generation’s content studios and they’re uploading new hits every day — fueling an always-on stream of fresh content that keeps viewers engaged. … When brands have creators in mind or bring them on board in their asset development and distribution — their campaigns feel more seamless and integrated to YouTube.”

YouTube also has access to Google’s entire first-party search and browser history data because of its connection to Google’s DSP (Display & Video 360), the dominant DSP in streaming and online advertising. Google, as the publisher of YouTube, can count its own user login data as its first-party data.

First-party data reserves continue to be a selling point to attract advertisers, despite Google’s July 2024 announcement that it will keep cookies in the Chrome browser. Fifty-four percent of brand and retailer professionals told Digiday in Q3 2024 that, in light of Google’s new plan to let consumers decide whether to be tracked via cookies, they’re more likely to continue to rely on cookies.

After YouTube, Amazon’s ad-supported tier Prime Video (with ads) came in second when it comes to where marketers are placing ads and spending their ad budgets, according to Digiday’s survey. (Last year’s report ranked Amazon’s Freevee as a separate ad-supported streaming service. Amazon has since folded Freevee into Prime Video.)

More than a third of brands and agencies (38%) said that they place ads on Prime Video as of Q1 2025, up from 36% of marketers who said the same in Q1 2024. Sixteen percent of brands and agencies said in Q1 2025 that Amazon had the largest share of their company’s 2024 ad-supported platform budget.

Last year, Prime Video (with ads) tied with Hulu as the No. 2 ad-supported streaming service on which marketers place ads. Prime Video (with ads) was a new offering last year having launched on Jan. 24, 2024, but it has gained traction with advertisers over the past 12 months by fine-tuning its pitch to buyers and brands to highlight its growing measurement capabilities and new ad formats. Prime Video (with ads) has also kept its CPMs at a competitive level, forcing rivals to lower their own prices.

Lower CPMs have made it easier for buyers to recommend streaming ads to clients, according to Harry Browne, vp of TV, audio and display innovation at performance marketing agency Tinuiti. “[Amazon’s move] has dropped CPMs,” Browne said. “It’s been a great time for us as an agency, because it means that we can really lean into streaming for our clients. And it has led to some great opportunities for them.”

While Prime Video (with ads) doesn’t have nearly the audience reach of YouTube, it brings its own consumer audience and data benefits that appeal to advertisers. Prime Video’s year-ago entry into the streaming ad market raised the stakes on its rivals because Amazon automatically opted in Prime subscribers to the streaming platform’s ad-supported tier, a tactic that has enabled the e-commerce giant to report an average monthly ad-supported reach of more than 115 million customers in the U.S. and more than 200 million globally as of February 2025. But it’s Amazon’s strength as a sales platform that gives it an added advantage over other streaming platforms due to the sheer volume of consumer data it collects.

Amazon is the third-most visited website in the U.S. — behind Google and YouTube — and it is the most visited e-commerce and shopping marketplace, according to web analytics company SimilarWeb. Due to the massive number of monthly visits to the site — 3.1 billion total visits worldwide in December 2024 alone — Amazon is able to collect data from a wide range of demographic groups with varied audience interests. That means Amazon can offer agencies and brands access to a massive amount of consumers, and their data.

Hulu, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company, fell to third place regarding both marketers’ ad placements and ad budgets in this year’s report. Thirty-three percent of brands and agencies said they place ads on Hulu as of Q1 2025, down from 36% in Q1 2024. Eight percent of marketers said Hulu consumed the largest portion of their ad budget in 2024, down from 13% who said the same the previous year.

Interestingly, the percentage of marketers who said they place ads on Disney+ Basic (with ads), which is also owned by The Walt Disney Company, increased year over year. Twenty-four percent of brands and agencies said that they place ads on Disney+ Basic (with ads) as of Q1 2025, up from 9% of marketers who said the same in Q1 2024. Overall, Disney+ Basic (with ads) tied for fifth place in Digiday’s survey with Netflix Standard (with ads) and Peacock when it comes to where marketers place ads.

It’s likely that Hulu continues to appeal to advertisers in part because it has access to all of Disney’s first-party consumer data through the company’s Disney Select platform. That gives Hulu a similar competitive advantage to YouTube and Prime Video (with ads) in the race to provide advertisers with immense first-party data reserves. In general, streaming platforms that are owned by larger parent companies have an overall advantage when it comes to data access.

The Walt Disney Company also gives advertisers the option to buy ads across both Hulu and Disney+ in a single campaign. The two streaming platforms, along with sports streaming platform ESPN+, fall under the larger “Disney Streaming” banner.

When it comes to audience size, Hulu trails behind YouTube and Prime Video (with ads). Hulu claimed 53.6 million U.S. subscribers as of February 2025.

Next year’s ad placements and budget allocation results could look very different from this year’s, depending on the success of The Trade Desk’s launch of its Ventura CTV operating system, which the ad tech platform announced it was building in November 2024. Having its OS baked into some of the world’s most common TVs would widen the scope of data the DSP can control — what people are watching, what ads they’re seeing — and feed that intel straight back into its own ad-buying platform. That would pave the way for even more growth in The Trade Desk’s booming CTV ad business, which already makes up nearly half of its ad revenue.

Tinuiti’s Browne said The Trade Desk’s upcoming launch of Ventura could disrupt Roku and Samsung’s dominance of the CTV market. “It’s a really interesting move for them. … The opportunity for Ventura is not immediately clear because there is a big presence in Samsung and Roku together operating the vast majority of operating systems,” Browne said. “They have a real incumbency advantage and so I think the most important thing for The Trade Desk is going to be who they partner with and which manufacturer wants to put this operating system in their TV. … There have been some thoughts about how Ventura might be leveraged in unique environments, places like airplanes, airports, hotels. So, there could be some cool opportunities when it comes to the blending of CTV with out-of-home. But the impact is not immediately clear because of the incumbency that Samsung and Roku already have.”

In April 2024, prior to The Trade Desk’s Ventura announcement, Roku signed a deal with The Trade Desk to use Roku’s audience data to target ads. When Digiday asked Roku’s Harms about competition in the CTV marketplace, Harms said Roku is concentrating on its own OS and advertiser relationships. “Roku is really keeping our head down and continuing to focus on having the best and biggest operating system in the landscape,” Harms said.

“The OS landscape is mature, and we’ve increasingly seen players exiting the market, so we think consolidation will continue. We’ll just see how the landscape evolves now, including another player in the space,” she added. “We continue to work with them [The Trade Desk], but also a growing number of the DSPs and SSPs in the ecosystem. So, they’ve been a great partner. We’re just going to keep at being the best OS and continue to build great partnerships for our advertisers.”

Despite some industry concerns that viewers might cancel their streaming subscriptions due to rising subscription prices, the amount of time U.S. viewers spent watching streaming services hit an all-time high at the end of last year. In December 2024, streaming’s share of overall TV watch time reached 43.4%, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge report, an increase of 9% since November 2024, which followed a 7.6% increase in November versus October.

In particular, ad-supported streaming, which is typically priced lower than ad-free tiers, seems to be holding its own among viewers. Over two-fifths of households (43%) are receptive to ad-supported streaming to save on monthly subscription rates, according to a study by Ernst & Young Global.

Executives at Disney and Netflix have been vocal about their respective ad-supported tiers’ subscriber contributions. Ad-supported sign-ups accounted for more than half of Netflix’s new subscribers in Q3 2024 for countries where its ad-supported tier is available, according to the company’s letter to shareholders on Oct. 17. Disney CEO Bob Iger said during the company’s earnings call in November 2024 that Disney increased Disney+’s subscription price in order “to move people in the AVOD direction.”

“Right now, in the United States, about 60% of all new [Disney+] subs are going to — are buying our streaming services, advertising supported or AVOD. I think right now, I think it’s 37% of total [Disney+] subs in the U.S. are AVOD subs — 37% in the U.S. and 30% globally,” Iger said.

To appeal to brands and consumers alike, the top ad-supported streaming services offer a variety of plans, pricing and ad options all in the hopes of winning viewers’ attention and advertisers’ dollars.

The charts below present an overview of what the top ad-supported streaming services analyzed in this report offer consumers and advertisers. Data were collected via platform surveys, publicly available financial filings and documents, and additional Digiday reporting.

* Data for asterisked platforms was compiled by Digiday after the platform did not respond to our request by the time of publication.

Audience size varies, subscribers vs. active users

Generally speaking, YouTube had the largest audience size at 2 billion-plus monthly logged-in users as of February 2025, according to YouTube. After YouTube, Warner Bros. Discovery had a combined number of 110.5 million global subscribers for its direct-to-consumer segment, which includes Discovery+ and Max, as of Q3 2024, according to Warner Bros. Discovery. Meanwhile, Hulu had the smallest reported subscriber base of the platforms in this report that provided data at 53.6 million U.S. subscribers as of December 2024, according to Hulu.

When it comes to audience growth, Netflix had the greatest year-over-year improvement, increasing from 23 million-plus global monthly active users in Q1 2024 to 70 million global active users as of November 2024, according to Netflix. To give some context, Netflix Standard with Ads launched in November 2022 and has been steadily building its subscriber base over the years. It had about 15 million monthly active users globally a year after its launch in November 2023.

Audience size data was either provided by the platforms or culled from publicly available company filings and press releases. While audience numbers for general platform viewers are often publicly available, several platforms have not released numbers pertaining specifically to their ad-supported audiences, and thus data are not all-inclusive. Likewise, it is difficult to draw conclusive comparisons when considering active viewers versus subscribers.

While audience size is a key factor for advertisers, it is only one piece of the puzzle. The audience demographic and customer persona can often play a more important role for advertisers looking to reach a specific type of customer.

Pricing plans range from free to $18.99 for ad-free options

Digday’s survey of ad-supported streaming services found that the platforms’ plans and pricing run the gamut from no cost to as much as $18.99 per month for an ad-free option. Aiming to give viewers the most accessible of all entry points, five of the 13 platforms included in this report (excluding Prime Video, which is free to Amazon Prime subscribers who already pay a for a Prime membership) are free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) services, with no monthly fee whatsoever for their ad-supported content.

Of those five platforms, only YouTube offers the option to subscribe to an ad-free tier for a fee. That fee is $13.99/month for a standard YouTube account and does not include YouTube TV, which is $82.99/month. (YouTube didn’t raise its standard account price since last year’s report, but it did increase the cost of YouTube TV by $1/month.) In March 2025, YouTube announced that it would begin offering its Premium Lite pilot plan to U.S. users. Premium Lite gives users the option to “enjoy most videos on YouTube ad-free” for $7.99/month, according to YouTube.

Prime Video also offers an ad-free tier for $2.99/month. However, that is on top of the $14.99/month or $139/year Amazon Prime subscription fee that members already pay. Consumers who don’t have an Amazon Prime subscription can subscribe to Prime Video for $8.99/month.

Meanwhile, seven of the 13 platforms charge a fee for their ad-supported subscriptions. The least expensive of those is Discovery+ at $5.99/month. Paramount+, Peacock and Netflix fall in the mid-range for pricing — all offering their ad-supported plans at $7.99/month. Disney+ Basic (with ads) and Hulu (both owned by The Walt Disney Company), along with Max (owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which also owns the least-expensive platform Discovery+) fall on the higher end of the spectrum.

In June 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery and The Walt Disney Company launched a cross-platform bundle of Disney+, Hulu and Max. The companies priced the three-platform bundle at $16.99/month with ads, or $29.99/month without ads. Likewise, The Walt Disney Company also offers bundled pricing for Disney+ and Hulu, and for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+.

Audience size may play a part in determining how much ad-supported streaming services charge, or don’t charge, for access to their platforms. According to Digiday’s analysis, FAST streaming services like Samsung TV Plus, The Roku Channel and YouTube boast sizable audience numbers and therefore can afford to offer their services at no cost to the consumer, relying instead on ad revenue from advertisers looking to reach those large audiences.

Similarly, Discovery+ has the lowest ad-supported subscription rate and also one of the higher audience sizes at 110.5 million for Warner Bros. Discovery’s direct-to-consumer segment. It could be that the platform offers lower subscription rates because it has the audience size to support healthy ad revenue.

On the flip side, Hulu’s audience size is about half of that of Discovery+ at 53.4 million, and its subscription rate is one of the most expensive at $9.99/month for the ad-supported tier. It’s possible that Hulu might rely on higher subscription pricing to offset a gap in advertiser revenue due to its smaller audience size.

Digiday asked the platforms included in this report what ad options they currently offer advertisers and what new ad offerings they’ve instituted within the last 12 months. The chart above provides an overview of their current ad options.

When it comes to deciding on which new ad offerings to institute, NBCUniversal’s evp of strategy, advertising and partnerships Gina Reduto said the media company considers a variety of factors. “We really take a collaborative effort with brands to understand their objectives, then incorporate what we know about the viewer experience and the consumer, and work with them to figure out what types of ad innovations to leverage that will be most additive to the consumer’s experience, but also most tailored to the objectives that the advertiser is trying to drive,” Reduto said. “It’s really all designed with the consumer in mind, and so it’s more about aligning the innovation and the content to the objective that the advertiser is trying to drive.”

It goes without saying that most marketers want their ads to reach their intended audiences as readily and precisely as possible. To aid them in that quest, six platforms told Digiday they have incorporated AI technology to improve ad targeting within the last year. Here’s a look at how they’re doing it:

• Disney+ and Hulu’s Disney Magic Words is a contextual targeting ad tool that uses AI and machine learning to enhance ad targeting and personalization on Disney+ and Hulu by analyzing emotional cues, creative content and contextual information from Disney’s library of movies and shows. It is currently in beta testing with food, travel and auto advertisers.
• Max’s Moments is a contextual targeting tool that uses AI-powered technology to analyze cumulative audio and visual cues and recurring themes throughout movies and shows. It allows advertisers to align their ads with relevant episodes and films across Max. 

• YouTube’s Video Reach Campaigns Non-Skip Mix is an ad optimization tool for non-skippable ads that uses AI to determine the optimal mix of non-skippable ads to balance viewer reach and completed views.
• “With video ads powered by Google AI, YouTube gives advertisers straightforward ways to connect with viewers across formats and devices, around the most relevant content to drive better results than linear TV and other platforms. For the broader industry, we encourage folks to lean in! These new AI solutions can turbocharge performance by helping fine tune an advertising asset for success — it’s still the brand’s story, just creatively optimized and with a more efficient process.” — YouTube’s Albert
• Samsung’s Smart Acquisition is an AI tool for advertisers who want to acquire new customers using Samsung Ads’ proprietary data and AI technology. The tool helps marketers target ads to increase the likelihood of conversion and is tailored to Samsung’s TV and mobile app partners.
• “Meaningful personalization and curation are integral to what we do — so much so that we’d updated our suite of AI-based tools to ensure our precision audience targeting is spot-on. Our Smart Acquisition solution was designed for content partners seeking to acquire new users on the unmatched scale and depth of Samsung Ads’ proprietary data and unique AI technology. By delivering ads to the right person at the moment, we can deliver the highest likelihood of conversion tailored to Samsung’s TV and Mobile app partners. … We also introduced Web Conversion, which takes advantage of Samsung’s Smart TV real estate and AI to drive users from TV to mobile apps, boosting engagement and user acquisition.” — Michael Scott, vp and head of ad sales and operations at Samsung Ads
• Samsung’s Optimal Reach uses machine learning and Samsung’s proprietary data to identify gaps in audience reach and opportunities to improve audience engagement and ad targeting.
• “While the booming growth of CTV is exciting, it’s also causing viewer fragmentation — and in turn causing frustration. With advertisers so focused on managing fragmentation, unique reach, and de-duplication, Samsung Ads is working to identify gaps across linear and streaming as well as target ‘missed audiences’ at scale with machine learning. In fact, our Optimal Reach solution leverages our proprietary TV & You Panel data, linear and in-app ACR data as well as other data signals, to provide advertisers a single-source solution extending incrementality to streaming viewership.” — Samsung Ads’ Scott
• Peacock and NBCUniversal’s One Platform Total Audience is an AI-driven planning and activation technology that utilizes machine learning and predictive analytics to produce a unified media plan across linear and streaming, including Peacock which has access to NBCU’s entire content portfolio.
• “Seventy percent of the people who view Peacock can’t be reached by other premium streamers, So, for an advertiser, being able to reach that audience is super important. And when you pair Peacock with the rest of the NBCU platform, we have the most ad-supported reach in the industry. So, the idea that advertisers can harness that and use it to drive immediate reach is really important.” — NBCUniversal’s Reduto

Although the streaming ad market is relatively new, traditional-TV style ads pervade the streaming marketplace. Viewers’ most-preferred ad format is the standard ad break — similar to those on traditional TV — placed at convenient plot point breaks in an episode or film, with 35% preferring this format, according to Tubi’s 2024 Streaming Insights for Marketers report, conducted in conjunction with The Harris Poll.

“We’re seeing a little bit more play with things like pause ads and things like shoppable ads and QR code enabled ads, but while those things have picked up and they are more frequent, they are not a majority of the advertising we’re doing,” said Tinuti’s Browne. “We are still seeing a lot of success with 15- and 30-second unskippable pre- and mid-roll ads, and as long as we continue to see success with them advertisers are going to want to get into that space.”

For those platforms that are experimenting with non-traditional ads, gamified ads were mentioned by five platforms as a new ad format they’ve introduced in the last year.

• Samsung’s “Rivals Arena” is a cinematic card game from game developer Return Entertainment. It will be available on the Samsung gaming hub on Smart TVs and can be played using a consumer’s phone as the controller. Gamers can jump in from the Samsung home screen or the gaming hub by scanning a QR code with their phone.

• Samsung’s “The Six” is an interactive trivia game built directly into a Samsung connected device. Anyone with a Samsung TV remote can play “The Six” on their TV, while advertisers can co-brand the entire experience to drive brand engagement and recall.
• “We also invested more in game breaks, with fun new experiences, our first being ‘The Six,’ an interactive trivia game built directly into Samsung’s connected devices, with more games to come throughout the year. These new gaming solutions give advertisers a chance to co-brand exciting experiences, creating a more engaging and memorable connection with users while making brand interactions feel natural and fun.” — Samsung Ads’ Scott
• Max’s trivia and polls ads give marketers the ability to engage viewers by asking questions about a brand and offering polls with the goal of increasing viewer interaction.

• Disney+ and Hulu’s “Beat the Clock” is an interactive branded game for sports entertainment company Topgolf that challenges viewers to use their remote to hit golf balls into targets. It was designed to give the company feedback on whether viewers noticed the content.
• Disney+ and Hulu’s Quiz Show is an interactive ad that asks the viewer a series of trivia questions about a brand and prominently displays the brand while the viewer answers. The ad includes a countdown clock and a score keeper and is intended to give advertisers feedback on whether viewers noticed their content.

• Peacock’s Mini Games and Prediction Games are being tested before a broader rollout in 2025. The games aim to deepen fan engagement around Peacock’s most popular content and offer gameplay influenced by TV shows and sports programming.
• “It’s engaging consumers in a different way. Can you create trivia around certain content or get consumers to make predictions about what’s going to happen, and give consumers an opportunity to engage in a different way.”  — NBCUniversal’s Reduto

Branded experiences and awareness stood out as another type of ad offering that five platforms said they’ve added or expanded in the last 12 months.

• YouTube’s Branded QR Codes let advertisers place a brand logo within a QR code. According to YouTube’s February 2024 internal data analysis, adding QR codes increased interactivity of CTV ads by more than 100% — measuring clicks and click-through conversions on Video Action Campaigns enabling QR code.

• Max’s title sponsorship co-branded ad suite allows two or more brands to co-brand ads and features art and logos from the sponsored program or show. The ad suite includes in-front, promotional bumpers, promotional frame, interactive, content and social posts.
• Samsung Spotlight gives advertisers the opportunity to raise brand awareness when a viewer turns on their TV by owning an entire row on the Samsung TV home screen, including the background image.

• Samsung’s Beacon places ads within the Samsung home screen near content that engages and interests consumers while they are choosing what to watch.
• Peacock’s Brand Tag ads appear as a viewer browses content tiles on Peacock. Viewers see a brand’s logo featured in spotlight ads, immersive highlights, hero rails and product details pages. In addition, a brand’s spot runs with premium positioning within specific sponsored programming.
• “As a viewer browses different content titles on Peacock, they can see a brand’s logo wherever that content art lives. It can be in the spotlight, in various highlights in the hero rails, but it’s the idea that the brand spot is running with premium positioning alongside that sponsored programming. It gives the brand an opportunity to be a hero of the content.” — NBCUniversal’s Reduto
• Roku Showrooms are interactive branded content hubs with full-screen video ads that allow viewers to explore product details and make purchases. Viewers can click through a virtual product catalog, and showrooms can include checkout options. They can also be used to retarget viewers who have already watched a video ad.
• “We see autos really investing there as more of a virtual showroom to see different configurations of the car, different models, and features and formats to the car. Think of it as a beautiful interactive ad format that you can click into and explore more of the car. Auto is a good example, but certainly not the only vertical investing there. But it is one where we think the big, beautiful TV experience and the intuitiveness of our remote allows [a brand] to provide that infrastructure, [with consumers] spending more time getting to know certain products.” — Roku’s Harms

Platforms that updated their content takeovers and shoppable experiences in the last year

Content takeovers and shoppable experiences were leading ad innovations in last year’s report. Over the past 12 months, platforms have continued to tweak and expand these offerings. 

Some of the platform’s recent content takeover updates include the following:

• YouTube Select Creator Takeovers is a brand sponsorship that allows advertisers to buy 100% of the ad inventory on channels representing the top 1% of content on the platform.
• “Advertisers can key into lineups and programs — each tailored to unique marketing needs. Through a recent Takeover on a YouTube Select creator’s channel, one advertiser was able to increase their brand equity with a +21% lift in brand favorability amongst those who watched their ad.” — YouTube’s Albert
• Max and Discovery+ takeovers give a brand the option to be the first ad viewers see for an entire day. Marketers can announce a takeover with an eight second bumper featuring customizable messaging followed by up to 30 seconds of pre-roll video, according to Warner Bros. Discovery.
• Disney+ Splash is a first impression takeover for 24 hours.
• Roku’s home-screen ads were updated to include videos, and video ad placements were added to the Roku City screensaver.
• “We’ve always had what we call our marquee unit, which, if you’re a Roku user, it’s the big rectangular unit in the home screen. This year, we introduced video within that unit. And so a really beautiful [ad], kind of still very helpful for the consumer, because you can click in to drive tune-in or drive engagement. And so just a really beautiful, kind of big, splashy opportunity for brands.” — Roku’s Harms

Some of the platforms’ recent shoppable experiences updates include the following:

• Tubi’s Shop the Red Carpet, in partnership with retail media platform Shopsense AI, offered curated digital storefronts on Super Bowl Sunday in which consumers could purchase game day essential products, audio products inspired by music from the game and team apparel and fan gear.
• Shop with Max uses metadata and AI technology to identify objects seen within TV series and films and pairs them with similar items in an advertiser’s catalog, allowing viewers to explore and purchase products that resonate with programming they’re watching.
• Peacock’s virtual concessions rolled out during the Paris Olympics and Paralympic Games last summer. Audiences could purchase food, beverages and other items throughout a livestream, including pre-, during and post-viewing.
• “Virtual food concessions was the idea that while you’re watching your favorite content you want to be those alongside the content. As it related to the Olympics, we actually saw 60% lift in sales through that virtual concessions innovation. We know that it’s impactful for brands. [In terms of] where we’re going, the idea is, how do we launch that in other experiences and other types of content? You think about watching your favorite movie or your favorite show the same way you’re leaned into sports and being able to access and order snacks or food is just leveling up that enjoyment so that … is obviously a big focus for us.”  — NBCUniversal’s Reduto
• Hulu’s Impulse is a type of shoppable ad that allows consumers to learn more or buy products directly from an advertiser’s website. The format is a QR code overlay followed by a video squeezeback (a short, promotional or informational graphic that shrinks the size of the main video content) with a shoppable product carousel and QR code overlay. The ads are available in direct and programmatic marketplaces.

Keep an eye out in April for the second report in this two-part series, in which we’ll explore marketers’ key success metrics and challenges on ad-supported streaming platforms.