Household TV ad impressions rose 1.8% to 8.5 trillion, but spending on national linear TV fell 4.7% to $43.71 billion, according to iSpot.TV.

In its TV Transparency Report for 2023, iSpot said the increase in impressions was the result of more streaming commercials and linear networks adding more commercials per hour.

After years of trying to address advertiser complaints about clutter by reducing ad loads, the Big Four broadcast networks aired 2.9% more minutes of ads during primetime in 2023, iSpot said.

With ratings eroding NBC’s commercial load was up 4.71%, Fox’s was up 4.45%, CBS  raised its ad load 1.74% and ABC increased it by 1.09%.

Most subscription streaming services are promising to air five minutes of commercials or less per hour on the ad-supported tiers.

CBS had the biggest share of ad impressions — 7.24% — among linear networks. 

ABC was No. 2, followed by NBC, Fox News, Ion, ESPN, Fox, HGTV, Hallmark Channel and Univision.

Ad impressions for Spanish-language networks jumped in 2023, with Univision up 21%, Telemundo up 18.5% and UniMas gaining 23.1%. Telemundo’s gain came despite decreasing ad minutes by 2%.

The number of advertisers on Spanish-language TV grew by 27%.

In terms of programming, the NFL had the largest share of impressions, followed by college football, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the NBA, Good Morning America, NCIS, college basketball, Today and SportsCenter.

NFL impressions grew 7.9% and college football impressions hiked 20.3%.

iSpot noted that HGTV’s House Hunters increased ad impressions by 154% as more new and old episodes aired.

The brands with the most impressions were Progressive, Domino’s, Liberty Mutual, Verizon and Burger King.

“While national linear TV was once the only story of TV, it’s now part of a much larger puzzle, along with streaming and local,” the iSpot report said.

“In 2023, iSpot found that more than 35.2K brands appeared on TV, with many not appearing on linear at all. Increasing fragmentation of audiences has fragmented advertisers as well, and necessitated a more unified approach to remove blindspots from all aspects of TV measurement,” the measurement company said.

The amount of commercials in TV network programming rose to 10.9 minutes per hour in November from 10.7 minutes last year, according to Nielsen data analyzed by Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group.

Several networks have been talking about reducing commercial loads to make their programming more attractive to viewers, who are being lured away by commercial-free alternatives like Netflix and over-the-top video sources, which often have fewer, shorter breaks.

Commercial loads were down at networks run by Time Warner, Scripps Networks Interactive and 21st Century Fox, according to Wieser.

Viacom, which has talked about lowering the amount of commercials in some new programming on some of its networks, was up for the month.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.