What you will find in the article:
- Big-screen advertising outperforms social media in viewing time.
- TV and streaming provide higher brand recall rates.
- Sports programming significantly boosts streaming reach.
- Multi-screen campaigns lead to increased website visits.
- Traditional TV delivers higher returns on media investment.
Big multiscreen advertising still scores a lot of power, impact and "attention" for brands, according to new industry research compiled from the first half of 2026.
Big-screen advertising — traditional TV and streaming — delivers 36% more viewing ad time for brands than social media, and brand recall 2.2 times higher, according to research from MediaScience, conducted in partnership with Comcast Advertising.
TV and streaming reach is a key element. Comcast says traditional TV has 71% unique reach, with streaming at 21% reach.
The report also notes there is an 8% overlap of TV and streaming.
Digging deeper into streaming, sports programming has become a key part of its growth in reach — especially in the first half of 2026 which included high-profile sports programming: the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics, NCAA’s March Madness college basketball event, and the FIFA World Cup 2026.
For those campaigns that include sports, 52% of those brands' reach came from sports streaming.
In addition, those campaigns were ten times as likely to get into hard-to-reach households versus traditional TV.
In terms of business outcomes, Innovid found that website visits were a key indicator as far as effectiveness of campaign engagement and condition — something that traditional TV and streaming continues to do well.
Multi-screen campaigns deliver 2.4 times more website visits than those that use just one channel, including traditional TV or only streaming.
Multi-screen efforts are 105% more likely to deliver website visits.
In partnership with Comcast Advertising, Mastercard says TV advertising continues to deliver two times the return on media investment when it comes to TV/streaming, with 75% coming from traditional TV and 25% on streaming.
Comcast Advertising research in the first half of 2026 came from more than 30,000 TV and streaming campaigns, and more than 200 sports campaigns.
Mastercard's research came from more than 6,000 campaigns; with Innovid’s research from more than 1,200 campaigns.
Source: mediapost.com