CTV's Looming Credibility Problem

Sure ad-supported streaming is BIG - but are you sure?

As I settle in for the long weekend, forget about the NFL playoffs. I for one can’t wait to crack open a beer and flip on - the Roku Channel.

That’s off course if I can pull myself away from many of the long tail content apps I frequently check out via the Roku menu, such as Haystack News, or Popcorn Clips Comedy, or K9 TV (which is aimed at dogs but I love it).

Over the course of the next few days, I’ll more than likely dive into some Tubi TV, where I’ll kick off a binge of the first season of What’s Happening!! before drifting over to the 1988 classic “Action Jackson.”

And let’s not forget that at some point I’ll throw on my LG TV’s live linear lineup, perhaps catching an old episode of the Johnny Carson show. That’s if I don’t first throw on Pluto TV’s live feed to see if maybe “CSI: New York” is streaming. Iike to jump in mid episode if I can. Sometimes in this on-demand era you just want to lean back and let programmers do their thing.

Surely, it’s not just me. Despite the hype surrounding the likes of Netflix and HBO Max, there are millions of us streaming free ad-supported content every day. If you’re not sure, just as the services themselves:

• The Roku Channel reaches 63 million unique viewers each month, according to Roku

• Tubi has 33 million unique viewers, per Tubi

• Pluto has 50-plus million viewers each month as well - said Pluto

• Vizio has 11.6 billion streaming hours, sources in a Vizio press release said

• I could not find numbers for the audiences on LG or Samsung’s streaming apps (such as the comedy app Next Up) but it is presumed they are huge.

Perhaps you see the problem here. We’re amidst this amazing boom in streaming consumption and ad spending on connected TV - TV is finally uber-trackable like digital - and the collective measurement strategy appears to be ‘take our word for it.”

Right now, the CTV market is on fire, so it’s not so tragic that Nielsen has struggled to keep up and roughly 15 would-be replacements are vying to squeeze in. But you can envision what happens over time when there is no third party source of truth - particularly in a medium that already seems highly susceptible to fraud.

I’m not saying that some of the numbers being thrown around in CTV smell fishy, but they don’t smell great, particularly if you go out in the world and talk to people. I get it what you’re thinking. Hey middle aged East coast elite with money - sure you can afford Netflix and HBO Max and Paramount+, but the rest of us cord-nevers just throw on whatever our smart TV or Amazon fire stick throws at us. Maybe so.

But as an advertiser, I’d feel better if somebody was keeping score.

And all we’re hearing of late is that Nielsen and comScore and iSpot.tv and VideoAmp have new ways to track viewership across platforms, often pulling data right from TV screens.

So I’ll be excited to see when their latest audience reports come out showing huge audiences all these AVOD guys. Let me know when.

To be fair, it’s not just these guys. Over 100 million watch YouTube on CTV - according to Alphabet. Amazon - roughly the same, per Amazon. I mostly believe that these public companies wouldn’t mess around with these kind of numbers.

Similarly, I wouldn’t think that Roku (public), Tubi (owned by Fox, public) or Pluto (owned by Viacom) would play any games with viewership data.

But I also covered digital advertising for a long time. And I can tell you this self reporting is not a good look.