Cable Is Losing 3,500 Customers A Day. Is Your Marketing Budget Keeping Up?

NOTE: This blog is a transcript from a podcast and therefore may contain errors.

Shannon Allen: Welcome to Digital Marketing ROWhy. I’m your host Shannon Allen, and I’m joined by my favorite host Krystal Vivian, welcome. And you did this all last month. I wasn’t here.

Krystal Vivian: I did this all last month and I’m glad to have you back, but it was a good month.

We did some great conversations.

Shannon Allen: I know the topics were great. the conversations on the podcast. I don’t think you guys missed me at all.

Krystal Vivian: we missed you because we always love having your presence, but it was really nice to be able to show off Megan and Melissa

Shannon Allen: Yes.

Krystal Vivian: And show off their expertise and what they do with our location intelligence percent location concierge.

I think that anytime now I also realize that I’m biased ’cause they’re both on my team. Sure.

Shannon Allen: Absolutely.

Krystal Vivian: And I think they’re both brilliant, but anytime that we can show off the rest of our team,

Shannon Allen: yeah. We have so many really nice, intelligent, credible understanding of what we do in marketing digital products.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: All of our services, right?

Krystal Vivian: Yes. So it’s, it’s nice to have you back and it’s nice that we get to

Shannon Allen: do this together. Yes. And by the way, I didn’t go anywhere. march was a busy month. Yes. and Crystal was kind enough to take that over, so I’m back. we just did a great in-person training that I thought would make for a great conversation with our clients because if my people and your people have questions.

Then we know our business owners that don’t live in it every day are gonna have questions. Right?

Krystal Vivian: Absolutely.

Shannon Allen: So today we’re gonna go all in on one topic. It’s not something we haven’t talked about. We actually have a lot, and that is CTV and specifically CTV viewership. So our goal is to talk more about where consumers are actually watching streaming or tv,

This year in 2026. we’re gonna break down the numbers. We’re gonna talk about what streaming’s dominance actually means for advertisers. Hopefully explain a little bit of the ecosystem that confuses a lot of people, and understanding the difference between cable broadcast and streaming as a whole, and how that viewership works.

That would be the goal. But honestly, my goal today is to help business owners. If they walk away with one nugget that they can talk to their marketing person about, then it’s a win. Right?

Krystal Vivian: We do talk about streaming all the time.

We talk about CTV all the time. But the main reason that we do that is because it’s still evolving. It is changing, and viewership is changing. The numbers keep moving. We’ve talked in the past podcasts about viewership, but we have to continue talking about it because it does change so much.

We wanna make sure our listeners are educated on where it makes sense in the consumer journey. So with that being said, where does viewership actually stand right now? As of, let’s say March 20, 26. And how does streaming stack up against cable and broadcast?

Shannon Allen: So we did do an entire podcast, talking about the tipping point, right?

Yes. So this is just kind of an extension of that. So what I mean by that is the way that we consume, entertainment when it comes to what we like to call tv. I like to call it streaming content. We like to call it many different things, but our entertainment portion, when we’re sitting down at home at night, what are we turning on?

Right? What are we watching? So the best way to break this down is something that Nielsen came out with last year that I think is really valuable is understanding where the consumer journey is going as far as viewership. And the best way to categorize it is really into four ways we have. We have broadcast, which keep in mind, broadcast makes up your top.

 

Krystal Vivian: that’s your CBS,

Shannon Allen: your

Krystal Vivian: Fox, your

Shannon Allen: Yes. I like to say stations, right? Yes. But those are really what CBS is across the country in how many different, you know, areas. It’s your local CBS, your local NBC, your local A, B, C. You have Fox, you have, you know, cw, right? Yep. So that’s what we consider broadcast.

That’s a 20% viewership averaging. Then you have cable. Cable’s also living in that 20% mark, right? And then you have, above that you have streaming. Now, this makes up a lot of things, and in, in Nielsen’s it includes a lot of different platforms. It includes Netflix, it includes YouTube, but it does not include.

Is called YouTube TV that we all know and love, right? Yep. I’m a subscriber that is called a walled garden, right? Mm-hmm. It is really what has replaced satellite and cable is that. YouTube tv, the Hulu Live, the Sling that replaced Dish, right? Yeah. It’s

Krystal Vivian: all live tv.

Shannon Allen: Right.

Krystal Vivian: it’s streaming.

Shannon Allen: Right. And that’s about 10% total.

But YouTube TV is a really big one. But YouTube TV alone still only has 2.5% of total viewership.

Krystal Vivian: Mm-hmm.

Shannon Allen: So looking at the big picture in March, what we’re seeing is. The tipping point happened in December where we hit the highest in streaming, which was about a 47.5%, and both cable and TV lived in that 21 to 20% other kinda lives.

The walled gardens and the virtual, cable replacement Yeah. As we like to call it now, that lived in that 10%. Those don’t really change a lot. The only thing that we’re really starting to see is streaming is growing. Cable and broadcast are not, cable specifically is taking the biggest hit.

They’re losing 3,500 customers a day. Let’s say that again. 3,500 customers a day. Right.

Krystal Vivian: That’s huge.

Shannon Allen: That’s huge.

Krystal Vivian: That’s a lot of people.

Shannon Allen: and cable does get bumps from, live sports. So does streaming. Netflix had one of the biggest streaming days on Christmas day because of live sports.

As we’re seeing predictions going in March right now, in the next couple months, we’re gonna see viewership hit that 50% mark for streaming specifically, and by mid-year you’re gonna see cable drop to that 17, 18% of viewership because they’re losing so many people daily broadcast kinda lives.

In that 20% mark. But again, it’s fragmented, right? Because out of that CBS is the winner at about 5% of that 20. So if you’re buying your local CBS, that’s great. Just make sure your budget aligns to that 5%.

Krystal Vivian: Mm-hmm.

Shannon Allen: So this is what we’re seeing in the big picture, and I wanted to start there so everybody understood how that pie chart’s getting broken up.

Krystal Vivian: So streaming is nearly half of all tv, but what does that actually look like?

How does that get broken down? When we say streaming, what are we talking about?

Shannon Allen: And that’s a great question because it does get very, very confusing. when I talk about streaming, I’m talking about it a little bit differently, but for the audience point of view and that Nielsen tipping point that we talked about, I wanna break it down this way.

You think about your big players in streaming first, and remember what I’m taking out of the equation is a hundred percent tied into this. this feeling of not just ad supporter, but subscription based, not the walled garden. So take YouTube TV out, take Hulu live out, Sling, which replaced Dish Network and DirecTV streaming, all of those are now replacing what we used to consider with a satellite buy through direct or dish or a cable buy. So those walled gardens or those cable replacements, I’m gonna take off the table. When Nielsen is talking about streaming, there’s first and foremost talking about their two biggest streaming.

Number one is YouTube. Don’t confuse it with YouTube tv. I weirdly do not watch YouTube to stream unless there’s something very specific because I still use YouTube in a very different way. I don’t go watch any kind of TV there unless there’s something I can only watch there.

Krystal Vivian: We watch a lot of TV on YouTube.

Shannon Allen: Well is it ’cause your daughter?

Krystal Vivian: No. I don’t let her watch YouTube anymore. We used to watch Miss Rachel when she was younger. But I don’t like YouTube so much anymore because it’s clips and it’s too fast

I just don’t like it as a parent. But for us, like my husband and I, there are shows that are just on YouTube from YouTube creators That we are watching we don’t watch like reruns of law and order on YouTube. We watch reruns of Law and Order on whatever. Is it peacock or paramount?

Whatever one it’s on now.

Shannon Allen: So when I said the word fragmented, earlier, when we talk about broadcast as a whole, that’s a lot easier to break up that fragmentation, right? Mm-hmm. 5% of CBS, 4% of NBC, you know, 4% of ABC. Fox is a little under 4% and CW is like 1%. So it’s easy for our business owners to understand that in a better way, I hope.

Mm-hmm. But when we talk about YouTube, there’s so many different reasons why we go to YouTube. The number one reason is not to watch TV necessarily.

Krystal Vivian: No.

Shannon Allen: It could be to watch a video. It could be to find music. It could be, there’s so many other ways that do it yourself video that you’re trying to figure out.

 

Krystal Vivian: I used it to figure out how to install my daughter’s new car

Shannon Allen: seats. Exactly. But if we went back even five years ago, we weren’t watching TV on YouTube. Mm-hmm. my kid had, you know, kids’ YouTube tv because that was different, right? Mm-hmm. But as a whole, YouTube is one of the largest, single largest platforms that people are streaming on.

12.7%, but again, this isn’t paid. This is ad based?

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: Okay. Now let’s talk about Netflix. Netflix now has both a subscription base and it has tiers now, but out of streaming, they still put that into the category even though it’s subscription based as well. Similar to a lot of these platforms.

I would compare it to Peacock. When Peacock first came out, we talked about this in our meeting today, I think the difference was it was either like. 3 99 and you had to watch ads, or it was 7 99, you didn’t have to watch ads. Well, it’s not that anymore. No, it’s not. Right. They supply and demand, right?

Netflix finally realized that they weren’t gonna make money just on subscription. So then they added, they opened up the ad inventory, but Netflix as a whole, both subscription-based and ad-based, which is how they make their money, makes up about 9% of that 50%. So I want that to be understood.

Below that you have. almost 5% Disney streaming. That includes Disney, Hulu, and ESPN Plus, right? But now again, we’re talking about Hulu, not Hulu Live. There’s a difference. We have Amazon Prime Video, 4.3% living in Amazon Prime.

The other day my mom was like, wait, I don’t have Paramount Plus, I have Paramount Plus. So my Amazon has a streaming platform with inside of it that I also pay for. Yeah, because you

Krystal Vivian: can add these add-ons.

Shannon Allen: Now you get, you can add these adds and you can

Krystal Vivian: add stars

Shannon Allen: So they make up 4.3%.

Roku channel. So now we’re getting in into what’s considered fast. And that’s the free advertised support platforms, right? Yep. This is what they call fast. These are the Pluto TVs, the Tubie. this is, you know, anything that you do not pay for subscription, you’re okay watching all the ads, right?

So all of that can make up nine to 10% when you add it all together. I mentioned Tubi just because it hit a 2.1% viewership, which is actually very large. When you think about the fact that YouTube TV is just under 3% and you think that was a bigger number.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: Peacock is just under two percents, 1.8. So when Nielsen talks about streaming, that’s what they’re talking about. So I named some of the bigger ones. Right. And then some of these little ones fall underneath that. It could be, you know, it could be fubu, it could be platforms that you’ve never, ever heard of.

The bro network. There’s literally a network, I believe called that right now, and it came up in one of our reporting platforms and we looked it up and it was like, demographic was like male, age 18 to 35 and their interests are sports and this and this and this.

And it’s like, that’s a network. We followed the journey so there was value in that streaming network, even though there’s no way my client would’ve ever went out and bought that ’cause they’ve never heard of it.

Krystal Vivian: But the audience is there and like I know on our smart TVs, we have a Roku tv and then we have.

An LGTV that has its own channels on it. And sometimes we’ll just search for what to watch on the TV and it’ll bring up whatever, wherever it’s on. Yeah. Because honestly, sometimes it’s exhausting to figure out if I wanna watch Mad Men, where can I watch Mad Men? Exactly. Right. Yep. and so we’ll do that and then, we don’t even know necessarily what platform it’s on.

Right. But that’s where we’re watching it. And then we get the ads as consumers. How much of TV viewing is ad supported right now?

Shannon Allen: This is a number that’s gonna surprise everybody because when I first started training CTV and talking to clients about fast channels, free ad supported, right?

They’re like, nobody’s watching that. Nobody’s doing that. But what happened is we were so overwhelmed. we were cord cutters to save money and then next thing you know, we’re paying more money than we were with the cable buy or the dish buy, whatever, right? what’s been going on is some of the bigger ones, the Tubi, the Roku channel, the Pluto TV together account for just under 5%.

Those are some of the big ones, but as a whole ad supported TV represented. You ready for this?

Krystal Vivian: Mm-hmm.

Shannon Allen: 74.2% of all viewing in Q4 of 2025

ad supported. That can be ad video on demand, and it can be fast streaming. Wow. Yeah. So that’s huge. People are willing to pay to watch a commercial so they don’t have to pay.

Krystal Vivian: Yeah.

Shannon Allen: They’re willing to do that.

Krystal Vivian: That’s what we did in our house. We realized that we were spending more on streaming than on cable. and the ads are actually really good. Yeah, because they’re targeted. Yeah. Because they’re ads for what we want.

Shannon Allen: well let me give you another stat here of that ad supported viewing.

That’s a huge amount, but the fast make can make up 45% of that. Right? That’s huge. Streaming is now the number one ad supported viewing category. Let me give you a few more stats that, ’cause I think stats are important. Among adults, 18 to 49, streaming accounts for 66.7% of all time spent with ad supported tv.

Think of that audience. 18 to 49. Now one of the big questions I get about this on the ad supported because they think that the older generation is still on cable. I’m like, well, my mom is 75. She doesn’t have a cable. She hasn’t watched cable in years. Mm-hmm. Right. So that 18 to 49 is the most popular, but I’m 55.

My audience is also that audience.

Krystal Vivian: Well, I think that goes to talk about the shrinking of cable and broadcast, right? And of where if you’ve got only 20% of viewership on cable and it’s gonna go down to 17% By the middle of this year. If you’ve got 20% on broadcast, what’s the average age of those viewers versus the average age of people who are watching streaming tv?

Shannon Allen: So the average age of the cable on the broadcast is 65. I think it’s 64.3, but it’s 65. Age 65.

Krystal Vivian: Okay.

Shannon Allen: That’s your average age. The median sits right there between, you know, just under 40 is the median, but the myth is that streaming is a young person thing.

Correct. That is a total myth,

Krystal Vivian: Well, that’s my point is if the median is, upper thirties, low forties. Well, That’s middle age. So that means that you have people, those are your

Shannon Allen: millennials.

Krystal Vivian: You’ve got 12 year olds watching, and you’ve got 70 year olds watching

Everyone’s watching streaming.

Shannon Allen: Everyone’s watching.

Krystal Vivian: That’s what that number means.

Shannon Allen: we know, like just in sports alone, we just recently started doing the live sports, which is a category in itself that’s amazing on the streaming platforms, right? But in Q4, in 2025, sports represented nearly.

30% of all ad supported streaming adults, 25 to 54. Wow. That’s why we sell it now. ’cause it’s such a big audience and they are sick of trying to figure out where it’s running. If you’re buying commercials to support that live sports. We wanna catch ’em wherever they’re at.

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: Right.

Krystal Vivian: Well, yeah, because in our house we watch sports all the time, but it’s all on streaming.

We’re not watching it on cable at all, and we’re not watching it on YouTube, tv or any of the live tv. We’re watching it on Peacock, on Netflix, on all of these other platforms. Let’s then go back to the other streaming, the walled garden problem. Okay. because you mentioned walled gardens, and this does come up a lot with clients, we hear all the time, what is a walled garden?

Yeah. And how does that actually make our CTV story stronger?

Shannon Allen: So the way that, when I first read the word walled garden, I was like, this is a great example. ’cause sometimes, I don’t know who the digital gurus out there that make up stuff like OTT to talk about. Like they make up the stupidest things, right?

The worst acronyms Walled garden is a great analogy ’cause you can visualize it. So think of Facebook. Facebook is a walled garden. Amazon, walled garden. They shut off their inventory. If any advertiser wants to go in there, they have to go through their door, right?

So a walled garden basically is a platform that controls its own ad inventory and it won’t let you access it through third party programmatic, which is what we’re talking about. Programmatic is not a dirty word. It’s the best world In the world. If you wanna reach masses with targeting capabilities, because why are we choosing as.

a marketing person where we think our audience is gonna be, why don’t we let the consumer journey, we follow them where the masses are, and then target ’em, right? So a walled garden is somebody you have to go directly to. So YouTube tv, you wanna buy from YouTube tv. Obviously they’re owned by YouTube, who’s owned by Google.

They like to make their rules and they like, they can get the prices they demand. Guess how much a average monthly to run YouTube tv. And by the way, they don’t just let you run on YouTube. You also have to combine the inventory with, YouTube TV and YouTube together. When you buy it this way,

Krystal Vivian: it’s gotta be thousands of dollars a month.

Shannon Allen: Our minimum is 30,000 minimum for targeted and it’s good targeting in one month. YouTube TV is, you know, makes up just under 3% and YouTube on its own is 12. So yeah, 15 percent’s not a bad thing, but to force me to spend, instead of 5,000, I gotta spend a minimum of 30,000.

Krystal Vivian: That, and that should be 15% of your ad budget. Mm-hmm. Of your TV budget

Shannon Allen: should be 15% of your video budget.

Krystal Vivian: Right.

Shannon Allen: Yeah, exactly. So, here’s our advantage, right? So we know that the biggest walled gardens are, you know, looking at that YouTube and YouTube TV together. Amazon Prime Falls in there.

Netflix falls in there as well, right? Netflix is a wall garden. You have to go directly to them. They make up 9% of streaming. so when you look at all that together, it’s roughly 28% that you’d have to go to each door and knock on it and do a buy. You could be spending upwards of 75 to a hundred thousand dollars in a month, and I’m not exaggerating that number.

Here’s why our advantage is so much better when we talk about the walled garden problem. More businesses that try to buy CTV on their own, they go straight to YouTube, straight to Amazon. They’re like, okay, this is a good buy. Or their local TV station comes out and talks to ’em and says, I know TV better than anybody.

Buy me first, and I can also put you on our programmatic, right. The problem with that. Whether that’s cable or broadcast, they wanna put you on what makes more sense for them, which is what we call their owned and operated, right? Their inventory is cheaper that way because anything that falls into the programmatic care category that’s targeted, that we have access to 93% of inventory, they’re competing with me now and they don’t want to sell it the way we sell it because they wanna make all their money on their own inventory.

Makes sense, right? I would too.

Krystal Vivian: So they’re running the ads on their own inventory. So if you’re buying CBS streaming, you’re getting or streaming with a CBS station, you’re getting. It’s CBS on YouTube tv, right? It’s CBS on whatever their cable provider is streaming, and maybe some targeted CTV.

But that’s gonna be a minority of your budget.

Shannon Allen: one of the things I would like our listeners to think about is just like. The old school tv buy. When you are trying to figure out what network makes the most sense for you, it’s really gonna come down to geography, right? Because I live in Decatur, Michigan, I could technically listen to South Bend or I could listen to Kalamazoo.

I listen to Kalamazoo. It’s a closer drive for me. It’s what I’ve always grown up. We’re Michigan, not Indiana. Mm-hmm. I would buy Kalamazoo’s WWMT 3 because they’re local. If I am a business owner in Grand Rapids and I wanna reach the Kalamazoo audience, that’s great, but if I’m a tire place sitting in Grand Rapids and nobody’s gonna drive from Kalamazoo Grand Rapids, I’m gonna buy WOODTV8.

That’s a Grand Rapids based, so think of that fragmentation. Oh, and by the way, that’s just CBS and and NBC. What about ABC and Fox? Like, I’d have to buy all that. Think of a walled garden the same way, but with five times the price tag.

we have a client that has told one of my sales rep.

My audience and all my friends are on YouTube tv and she’s like, how do I combat that? Well, the biggest thing that I take away from is that is great. Did you know that it’s under 3% of viewership?

Krystal Vivian: Mm-hmm.

Shannon Allen: Which is great. 3% is not a bad number, but why just reach 3% and decide that’s where your audience is at?

Krystal Vivian: Well, that’s the only place that your audience is at. Because Shannon, you’re a YouTube tv. Is that the only place that you’re watching tv?

Shannon Allen: No, I’m everywhere.

Krystal Vivian: Right. So it’s a percentage That’s a you’re doing, but. It’s much more cost effective.

Shannon Allen: Yes.

Krystal Vivian: instead of saying, oh, I wanna reach people who are watching YouTube tv.

It’s like, no, I wanna reach homeowners who are between 30 and 60 who have a household income of $75,000 or more, and they’re interested in my product.

Shannon Allen: Yep. And here’s the thing Did you just ask me a question or you just made a statement? No, I just made a statement. Okay. I wanna make sure they caught my eye.

Yeah. Here’s the thing and we’ll move on, to the end here, but the walled garden problem. I have opportunity. I can put you there if you want.

Krystal Vivian: Mm-hmm.

Shannon Allen: The bottom line when it comes to that is just like in everyday life, we have budgets, right? I have a budget. I do own a boat. I own a newer car.

I have a 2024 Volkswagen Atlas. I have other things that I like to buy. I have a great riding lawnmower. The truth is, 10 years ago, I couldn’t buy all of that because my income level was different, and I’m older now. There’s different needs I have, but when I can’t afford something, if I can’t afford to go spring break because I’m investing in my remodel in my basement, I eliminate and put the focus of my budget where it makes the most sense.

Yes, that’s exactly what marketing budgets are, right? Make sure that your marketing budgets match where the viewership is. That’s what the problem is with walled gardens, is you get all excited to go buy the Super Bowl commercial, but who wants to spend $25,000 on one commercial when I could actually spread that over a period of six months and reach a higher viewership and much more targeted because I’m guessing that somebody watching the Super Bowl might be interested in my product.

Krystal Vivian: Well, and that brings us so naturally to where we talk about ROI, Ultimately, you wanna match your budget to the solutions that are going to bring you the highest ROI. With all of this viewership data and everything that we’ve talked about today, how does a business owner actually measure the ROI of their CTV and why should they feel confident in investing it in programmatic?

Shannon Allen: Couple things. CTV drives 10 times more conversion than linear TV when it’s targeted and done correctly 10 times more. ’cause we’re done guessing. And keep in mind, when you’re trying to reach the masses with no targeting you have to really spend a lot, And I would talk about ROI this way as well. We usually start clients at about a hundred thousand impressions, and we don’t sell spots. But I could tell you right now, there’s nobody out there on TV selling a hundred thousand spots. And guess what an impression is? It’s every time the video plays and it’s unskipable, you get a hundred thousand of that.

Krystal Vivian: Yes.

Shannon Allen: That’s very similar to comparing it to spots. So that in itself has ROI. So that’s where the 10 times more conversion comes in. But let’s think about the real ROI calculation. What will it cost a business owner to not be on streaming? Like if you are running TV but you’re not running and streaming, if you go back to the consumer journey, how much of an audience are you missing?

You’re missing out on so much 50% of the audience. And if you have to choose in the budget, the ROI is simply and follow the numbers. You know, when I had a client that was spending an absorbent amount in cable. And I finally said to them, you have to match your budget to your viewership.

And when that finally sunk in, I didn’t tell ’em not to be on cable because 20% is not anything to sneeze at. But then it’s also fragmented and it’s an older audience, so make sure your message matches that. Mm-hmm. And that’s where strategy starts to come in. For ROI.

But make sure they match. And if you have to pick and choose, go where the bulk of the, the mass of the audience. That’s marketing 1 0 1.

So I guess my takeaway for business owners is CTV isn’t a nice to have anymore. The audience has moved and you have to move with it.

And you can afford it now than ever before. And work with a company that just isn’t in it for them. And that’s why I said you need to work with a digital marketing agency. I’m not telling everybody to run out and work with FDS. I mean, I kind of like it if you come and work with us naturally ’cause we know what we’re doing, but whoever you’re working with makes sure that they are doing what’s best for you and not what’s best for their inventory.

Krystal Vivian: That’s where all the ROI comes. Yep. I think that today’s training was incredible. I think this conversation was incredible. And really as viewership evolves, and as our consumer behavior evolves, we have to make sure that as business owners and marketing directors that we’re following the audience.

It all goes back to the consumer journey, and I think that this is incredibly powerful of. Showing exactly why that’s important.

Shannon Allen: It’s a fun one to do. Well, thank you. that’s gonna wrap it up for today. If you’re a business owner, keep this in mind. If you’re still trying to figure out whether CTV makes sense for you, reach out to us.

You know, I don’t always say that, but it’s a confusing topic and we’re here to walk you through it. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks everyone for listening. This is Shannon Allen here with Krystal, and we’ll see you next time on Digital Marketing ROWhy..

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