Daytime Streaming Time Spikes

Coronavirus shelter-in-place orders have been in place for less than a month nationally, but consumer media habits are already massively changing, The AdExchanger reports.

Streaming is the clear winner of social distancing. From March 9 to March 16, total streaming time grew to 156.1 billion minutes per day in the United States, compared to 127.6 billion minutes during the last week of February, per Nielsen. In March, streaming accounted for 23% of consumer TV viewing time, up from 21% in February and 14% a year ago.

Meanwhile, live TV viewing grew between 1% and 3% during the last week of March across all demos, while streaming increased up to 8% during the same time period. NBCU saw an 80% spike in viewership across its digital assets in March compared to a 20% increase in linear TV viewing.

Homebound people are streaming more TV during the daytime. Streaming between 10 am to 5 pm grew 39% during the week of March 17 to 23, compared to the previous week, Conviva found. Meanwhile, prime-time viewing declined by as much as 5% between 8 pm and 11 pm.

“Prime time is starting nine hours earlier than normal,” said Conviva CEO Bill Demas. “Even if people are working from home and kids are distance-learning, streaming accelerates at 10 am and goes throughout the day.”

“Streaming will go down as people go back to work,” Demas said. “But the rollback into work will take months. How many habits are formed in that time because people got used to streaming?”

Ad dollars, however, are likely to lag until the economy gets back on track and the industry creates a common currency and measurement standard for streaming that brands can trust.

What about linear?

Viewing of live local news grew 7% across demos from early February to the week of March 9, with adults over 25 spending 30.4% of their TV consumption time watching local news during the same period, according to Nielsen. Ratings increased 3.5% to 12.5% across local markets as more people tune into the news to find out what’s happening where they live.

Daytime cable news viewing skyrocketed 347% year over year during the last week of March, growing 50% more than total TV viewing time during the same period, according to Samba TV.