Without live sports on TV, streaming services have an opportunity to attract audiences to on-demand, premium content. And even if those brands weren’t getting aggressive with TV ads in the immediate aftermath of quarantines, things have ramped up considerably since late March.
Total media value* for streaming services hovered around $25-26 million per week for March 9-15 and March 16-22, then jumped over $40 million both for the week of March 23 and March 30, respectively. After dipping down to $28 million the week of April 6, media value climbed over $31 million for the week of April 13 and then nearly $42 million during the week of April 20.
The streaming rise has been led by Disney-owned properties: Hulu’s media value is $42.6 million since March 9, and Disney+ is second at $37.3 million. One of those two has topped the list (by media value) for five of the last seven weeks. New services have also joined the fray, including mobile video platform Quibi, which has spent $21.5 million in the timeframe. HBO Now has also made a recent push, with a media value of $4.5 million this past week.
ABC’s delivered the most streaming service ad impressions since March 9, with over 1.2 billion (11% of the total), followed by Fox News (7.2%), NBC (6.8%) and FX (5.8%). On a show level, American Idol (181.5 million) delivered the most impressions, followed by The Voice (169.0 million). Despite the lack of live sports on TV, ESPN’s SportsCenter was fourth in terms of impressions, with 141.3 million.
The image below shows the top six streaming services since March 9 — arranged by media value.
*Note: media value is utilized instead of ad spend, to account for streaming advertising that appears on owned networks (Disney+ ads on ABC/ESPN) which is not paid for in the traditional sense. Media value measures how much advertising is worth, vs. how much the ad placement actual costs
