The CTV Trends Report 2024

How ads and content are shaping the world of streaming

Introduction

Following the release of our guide, A Full-Funnel Approach to CTV Marketing 2024, we have collected a series of data-based insights into the wider CTV industry.

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This report aims to provide streamers and content providers with data on viewership, ad experience, and trends that can help inform decisions.

In the following sections, we’ll explore what sessions, ad load, and viewership look like — especially in 2024 — and explain why we’ve focused on this and why it matters to you.

Content experience in 2024

To navigate the evolving landscape of CTV, publishers and marketers must address key questions about modern viewer behavior. How are shifts toward CTV influencing viewer engagement? Are the viewing habits established during the pandemic persisting? This section sets the stage by examining these trends and their implications for business strategy.

There is a full methodology section at the end of this report, but first, a quick note on normalized data. To preserve potentially sensitive commercial information, we have obfuscated the numbers to protect our clients and partners. This means that for the following sections, the most recent time period is set to a value of 1, and the preceding periods are represented relative to that.

As an example, if the average session length over the past quarter was 1 minute, 30 minutes or 10 hours, any of those values would be represented by 1. If the preceding quarter was only 80% of that figure, it will be represented by 0.8. This allows us to show the data trends without revealing any confidential information from our partners and gives our readers perspective on how the current CTV landscape compares to past time periods

Normalized Data Example

With that in mind, let’s now turn to each of the key metrics we will examine in this report, starting with viewership.

CTV viewership matches pandemic highs

Average daily user hours of viewing (HOV) measures the total amount of time a typical user spends watching CTV each day. This chart helps us understand how time spent with CTV has changed. With the most recent quarter set as the baseline, we can see the ebb and flow of viewing patterns.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on viewing behaviors. During the pandemic, the average daily HOV saw a dramatic increase, before a small decline once society started to open up again.

Over the past year, daily HOV has been steadily increasing and is once again approaching the high levels seen during the pandemic’s peak, with a 5% increase from Q3 2023 and Q3 2024. The next quarter is on track to be one of the best quarters ever for CTV viewership.

Average daily HOVs are increasing again

This chart tracks the average daily hours of viewing (HOV) per user, illustrating the increase during COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022, a slight decline thereafter, and a recent uptick in 2024. Q3 2024 data is incomplete at the time of publication.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

Why hours of viewing matter

Benchmark performance

As viewers transition from linear TV to CTV, it is crucial to assess whether this shift is translating into increased viewing times. Are the viewing boosts observed during the pandemic sustaining? What proportion of daily viewing hours (HOV) are publishers capturing? This data provides a benchmark that can be helpful when examining the programming decisions that have impacted performance and provides insight into strategy effectiveness.

Content discoverability

Opportunities to expand your audience are growing as viewers become more accustomed to ad-supported streaming TV. How are you leveraging this trend to enhance engagement and boost your market share?

Are you ready to capitalize on the shift to streaming?

Wurl’s Global FAST Pass streamlines the creation, distribution and monetization of FAST channels, enabling publishers to reach new audiences and maximize revenue.

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CTV is growing stickier — slowly

Churn rate is a critical metric that measures the percentage of users who are seen in one week but not in the following week. It provides insight into viewer retention and the overall “stickiness” of CTV platforms.

Over the past three years, churn rate in CTV viewership has remained relatively stable. This stability indicates that the proportion of users who leave and do not return week over week has not fluctuated dramatically. However, a gradual decline in churn rates has been observed, suggesting a slight improvement in viewer retention and platform loyalty.

Churn rates are mostly stable over the past 3 years

This chart displays a normalized churn rate, defined as the percentage of users active one week but not the next, showing stability and a slight downward trend over the past three years.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

WURL TOP TIP

As viewers are exposed to more channels and more content, hours per user per day increase — which has a direct relationship to reduced churn. This makes content discoverability incredibly important.

Why churn rate matters

Engagement quality

Tracking churn rates helps in evaluating the effectiveness of content and engagement strategies. Platforms with lower churn rates are likely providing compelling content and user experiences that encourage viewers to stay.

Revenue stability

Lower churn rates contribute to more stable revenue streams. When viewers consistently return to a platform, it supports steady ad impressions and subscription renewals, which are vital for financial stability.

Platform loyalty

A gradual decline in churn rates highlights growing platform loyalty. Loyal viewers are more likely to engage deeply with content and respond positively to advertising, benefiting both content providers and advertisers.

Are potential viewers able to find your content?

Wurl’s ContentDiscovery helps publishers and streamers capture new audiences and increase content engagement – maximizing viewership while minimizing advertising waste.

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Viewers are watching for longer

Average session length is a critical metric for gauging user engagement and content consumption on Connected TV (CTV) platforms. It measures the duration a user spends on a single channel before switching or ending their viewing session.

In the chart below, we can see that the COVID-19 pandemic had a profound and lasting effect on CTV viewership patterns. During the pandemic, average session lengths saw a significant spike as lockdowns and social distancing measures drove people to consume more content at home.

In the post-COVID era, session lengths significantly corrected, though they did not return to pre-pandemic levels. The pandemic’s impact created a new baseline for viewership habits. Even with the reduction, session lengths remained elevated compared to pre-COVID times, with the current quarter’s average session length up nearly 7% compared to the same quarter last year — suggesting a lasting shift in consumer behavior towards longer content consumption periods on CTV.

Average session length rising after post-pandemic dip

This chart plots the normalized average session length per quarter, showing how long users typically engage with a single channel. Q3 2024 data is incomplete at the time of publication.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

Why session lengths matter

Stickier viewership

Extended session lengths suggest viewers are more satisfied with their viewing choices. Unlike pre-pandemic behavior where viewers frequently switched channels, current trends show viewers are more selective, sticking longer with their initial choices. This shift not only makes it challenging to capture high hours of viewing (HOV) but also underscores the importance of first impressions in viewer content selection.

Revenue potential

Longer session lengths have direct implications for revenue potential. When viewers are involved with, and loyal to the content, streamers can position their audiences as highly engaged, and valuable to advertisers. In addition, viewers watching in longer sessions provide more opportunities for ad impressions, which can lead to increased advertising revenue.

Wurl’s top tips for increasing session duration

Session length is an excellent indicator of engagement and can be driven by a number of factors — including scheduling know-how — that optimize the viewing experience. Some trending strategies that are contributing to increased session lengths overall are:

Elevate the quality of content

Ensure your quality is constantly improving as CTV continues to mature.

Focused content streams

Develop channels around single IPs, themes, genres, or moods, to hold interest and create a cohesive viewing experience.

Keep things interesting

Do your best to manage content variety and repetition

Scheduling off-the-clock

Smooth transitions between shows and maximize content-time, while minimizing potential exit points.

Leverage data insights

Maximize viewing by scheduling top-performing content in bingeable stacks and introducing content viewers will enjoy.

Focus on your ad breaks

Retain more viewers by optimizing content cuts, running promo bumpers before ads, and dynamically managing ad duration.

Use advanced channel features

Adopt tactics such as custom branded graphics which enhance channel identities and improve viewer navigation.

Live streamed events

Schedule timely and/or live events that anchor viewers in captivating can’t-miss viewing experiences.

Reality TV is the most prevalent genre on CTV

Next, let’s delve into the content preferences on ad-supported CTV platforms. While CTV is known for its high-quality, high-production content primarily available through subscription-based (SVOD) or hybrid (HVOD) services, what are viewers watching on ad-supported platforms?

Interestingly, Reality TV is the most common genre of content available in ad-supported CTV – it had the most scenes scheduled in our dataset. To conduct our analysis, we took the number of scenes from each TV genre and compared them to Reality TV which we set at the highest value of 1 on our scale.

Reality TV is most frequently scheduled across FAST

This chart illustrates the distribution of genre tags, measured by the number of four-minute scene-level segments per genre.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

Each subsequent genre is then scaled proportionally against the count for Reality TV. For example, Drama has approximately 80% of the count of Reality TV scenes. By doing this, we can see how popular other genres are in comparison to Reality TV.

It’s important to note that this analysis reflects only one side of television content—what publishers choose to distribute—not the demand or viewing preferences of the audience. Therefore, while Reality TV shows the highest frequency in our dataset, this does not necessarily correlate with audience viewing habits. It merely indicates that publishers are scheduling more Reality TV scenes than those of any other genre.

After Reality TV, the next most common content types in ad-supported CTV are Drama, Documentary, Lifestyle, Crime, Mystery, and Comedy.

Another way of visualizing genre prevalence

This chart illustrates the distribution of genre tags, measured by the number of four-minute scene-level segments per genre.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

Why genre matters

How do the genres of your programming stack up? The prevalence of Reality TV is notable, particularly since CTV is celebrated for its high-quality content. It’s crucial for publishers to assess whether they are leveraging their entire content library effectively on CTV. If they are featuring unexpected content types, such as reality programming, what strategies are they employing to enhance viewership and drive monetization?

With such a wide variety of genres available on CTV, ensuring your advertising appears in the right context is key. Advertisers need to think not only about the genre of the program as a whole but also about the context around the ad break where their ad will be shown. Understanding the emotional and genre content at the scene level is crucial to ensure you reach the right user at the right time with the right message.

Peter Crofut

VP Business Development – Agencies & Brands at Wurl

How much do viewers watch holiday channels?

One interesting finding from viewership analysis is that holiday channels perform exceptionally well on CTV — and not just during the holiday season! Of course, during December, their viewership increases to four times that of other months. This plot shows several years of data, normalized by month of year, with December hourly viewing normalized to 1.

Viewers get in the holiday spirit early – and stay year round

This chart shows the normalized monthly viewership of holiday channels on CTV over several years, highlighting a fourfold increase in December compared to other months, with December hourly viewing set as the baseline at 1.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

Interestingly, the holiday spirit continues into the new year: May ranks fourth highest, before dipping. A core 25% of viewers continue to watch holiday content throughout the summer. October, or “spooky season,” is the least festive month of the year.

Why holiday viewing matters

For publishers trying to attract campaigns to holiday-related programming, it’s helpful to understand that consumers are in the holiday spirit year-round. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation, 59% of holiday shoppers started shopping and browsing before November. Holiday-themed viewership during earlier months of the year can be positioned as part of a full funnel marketing strategy, with benefits to brand building, awareness, and consideration. In contrast, holiday performance marketers should focus on taking advantage of the uptick in highly-motivated viewership during November/December.

Looking for a less disruptive ad experience?

Wurl’s BrandDiscovery classifies CTV content in real time, improving performance by matching ads to the context of what’s shown on screen directly before the ad break.
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Ad experience in 2024

Now that we’ve looked at some key content trends, we’ll turn to ad experience. This section will delve into how streamer and advertiser strategies are evolving in response to viewer trends and the implications for viewer engagement and satisfaction. We’ll also explore how these changes in ad experience are impacting overall monetization efforts on CTV platforms.

Ad load is finding a new balance after a peak in 2023

Ad load per hour measures the total amount of advertising content viewers are exposed to within a given hour of programming. On average, an ad break in CTV is approximately two minutes long and typically includes four 30-second commercials. Across an entire hour, viewers are exposed to around nine minutes of advertising content on FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channels. This metric is crucial for understanding the balance between content and advertising and its impact on viewer experience.

The chart below highlights how many minutes the average ad load per hour reached over time — with July 2023 reaching the highest average ad load, averaging 9.4 minutes of advertising per hour of viewing, 2.6% higher the previous month, the month with the second highest ad load.

Ad load peaked in 2023 before a slight decline

This chart presents the ad load, indicating the number of minutes of ads shown each hour of live TV, demonstrating a consistent range of 8-9 minutes per hour.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

Today’s ad load is down 3.4% from peak, suggesting platforms are showing fewer ads, though numbers are increasing again.

Why ad load matters

Viewer experience

The amount of advertising content per hour directly impacts the viewer experience. Excessive ad load can lead to viewer dissatisfaction and ad fatigue, while a balanced ad load can enhance viewer engagement and content enjoyment.

Ad effectiveness

Managing ad load is crucial for maintaining ad effectiveness. An optimal ad load ensures that ads are delivered at a frequency that maximizes their impact without overwhelming viewers.

Revenue implications

Changes in ad load can influence revenue generation. Increased ad load may boost ad revenue in the short term, but overloading can lead to viewer churn, ultimately affecting long-term revenue and platform profitability.

WURL TOP TIP

Wurl data shows that on average, approximately 4% of viewers are lost per minute of an ad break, meaning an 8% loss during a typical two-minute break. However, research by Wurl found that emotional resonance between ad and content can reduce user loss by as much as 60%.

Ad Fill rate is cyclical and has seasonal variations

As ad-supported content has increased, if ad loads have remained the same, that means there is potentially significantly more ad inventory on the market. How has this impacted Ad Fill rate? And what can publishers do to improve it?

The Ad Fill Rate measures the proportion of available ad inventory that is successfully filled with advertisements. This metric is closely related to the actual render rate of inventory filled with viewed impressions. Variations in Ad Fill Rate can occur across different supply owners, influenced by their experience levels and the effectiveness of their demand facilitation teams. Monitoring this rate provides crucial insights into inventory utilization and advertising efficiency.

The Ad Fill Rate chart reveals several key patterns:

Cyclical trends

The Ad Fill Rate exhibits a cyclical pattern, with each quarter starting with a lower fill rate compared to the end of the previous quarter. This cyclical behavior reflects the typical ebb and flow of ad demand and inventory availability throughout the year.

Ad seasonal variations

Seasonal trends are also evident. January consistently shows the lowest fill rates, while December generally experiences the highest fill rates. This variation is likely due to marketing budget cycles, where budgets are often frozen at the beginning of the year and quarters, leading to increased ad purchases towards the end of reporting periods.

2024 has slightly lower fill rates, most likely due to increase in supply

This chart displays the Ad Fill Rate, normalized to June 2024, reflecting the proportion of available ad inventory filled by demand.

Source: Wurl, 2024 CTV Trends Report

In 2024, the fill rates are noticeably lower, likely due to an explosion of supply in the market.

Why Ad Fill rate matters

Revenue

Unfilled ad units are money left on the table. Partners like Wurl can provide unique sources of programmatic demand that improve yield management and don’t compete with direct sales efforts.

Demand partner performance

Benchmarking performance over time can help streamers and publishers determine if they are getting their fair share from partners and open doors for better collaboration and sell through.

Data drives the programmatic ecosystem

Adopting the right data strategy is crucial for aligning inventory with programmatic demand. Providing comprehensive and accurate metadata can attract high-quality, targeted advertising that complements existing monetization strategies.

Struggling with low Ad Fill rates?

Wurl’s AdPool improves fill rates and boosts ad revenue by connecting publishers and streamers with high-quality, exclusive sources of mobile & contextual demand.

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Conclusion

Overall, our data shows significant growth in CTV viewership, with session lengths rising by 7% and daily hours of viewing nearing pandemic levels. With this in mind, there are some key takeaways that you should keep in mind.

Increased viewership and engagement opportunities

Recent data indicates that average session lengths and daily user hours of viewing (HOV) have seen significant increases, with session lengths rising by 7% and daily HOV approaching pandemic peak levels with a 5% year-over-year increase.

As viewers engage more with CTV content, viewing times are extended, creating numerous opportunities for ad placements. Longer viewing periods also provide more opportunities to capture audience attention with impactful advertising messages, potentially boosting revenue.

As exposure to a broader range of channels and content grows, so do the hours each user spends watching daily, which correlates with lower churn rates. This makes content discovery incredibly important—making sure that users find engaging content and stay in the CTV ecosystem.

Ad Load and Fill Rates: Balancing revenue and viewer experience

The data reveals a complex landscape regarding ad load and fill rates. While ad load per hour has decreased from its peak, indicating fewer ads are shown per hour, the numbers are beginning to rise again. This trend highlights the need for advertisers to manage ad frequency carefully to avoid viewer fatigue.

Additionally, the Ad Fill Rate has experienced seasonal variations and a noticeable decline in 2024 due to increased market supply. For content publishers, this underscores the importance of working with experienced partners to optimize fill rates and ensure that their ad inventory is both profitable and efficiently utilized.

Something to watch out for here is that as fill rates drop, publishers may be tempted to increase their ad load to ensure optimal monetization. But this may not be the best experience for viewers, or advertisers.

Conversation starters

With average session lengths on CTV rising by 7% over the past year, what strategies are you using to capitalize on the increased viewer engagement?

With recent data showing a decline in Ad Fill rates, how are you adapting your ad sales and inventory management strategies to maintain profitability?

How do you ensure that advertisers’ creatives are placed in contexts that resonate positively with viewers?

Methodology

To ensure the integrity and confidentiality of our data, we have adopted several approaches to data presentation:

Normalized data

In certain instances, we present normalized data to avoid disclosing sensitive information, even in aggregate form. This approach helps maintain the confidentiality of our partners while providing valuable insights. Normalized data sets one data point, usually the most recent or the most frequent data point, to the value of 1 — all the other data points are then scaled to this reference point.

Global averages

In some cases, we provide a global average over all FAST streams. This method aggregates data across various platforms to offer a broad perspective on industry trends.

Platform averages

Alternatively, we may average data by platform and then average the platforms. This approach allows for a more granular analysis, highlighting differences and similarities across platforms.

Genre prevalence

Genre, in our context, is measured by the number of scene-level segments (4 minutes each) classified as a given genre by our BrandDiscovery algorithm, reflecting the distribution of various genres over time. This measurement indicates what is being broadcast, not what is being viewed, and should be considered an indicator of supply rather than demand.

These methodologies ensure that our findings are both comprehensive and respectful of the sensitive nature of some of the data we handle. Our goal is to provide actionable insights while maintaining the highest standards of data privacy.

The data is based on CTV viewership in the United States from January 2020 to July 2024.

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