The WNBA is not just generating big ratings. Viewers are paying attention to the games, shoulder programming and the sponsors that support them, according to new data from TVision.

The Caitlin Clark effect has been well known. College basketball’s all-time scoring leader, now a rookie for the Indiana Fever continues to draw viewers.

TVision found that with Clark in the lineup, viewers are paying more attention to Fever games than other WNBA games.

After analyzing viewer attention across 70 WNBA games across multiple TV networks between May 14 and July 21,, TVision found that its Attention to Visible Index–which measures how well viewers pay attention while in the room–for all WNBA games in the time-period was 101.  

Fever games scored a 107 in the index. This means that Indiana Fever Games delivered approximately 6% more attention for advertisers than typical WNBA games.  

The average performing television program scores a 100 on the Index. 

TVision also found that regardless of which teams were playing WNBA games on NBA TV and the E.W. Scripps Co.’s Ion network scored 107 on the index, with games on ESPN also outperforming the average with a 103 index.

That’s good for advertisers on Ion. 

TVision's Ad Attention metric measures the proportion of viewers who pay attention to at least two seconds of an ad. The average linear Ad Attention is 55%, but WNBA games on Ion delivered 62% Ad Attention, in the time period, TVision said.

TVision said that studies show that every 1% of attention correlates to a 1% increase in brand recall, suggesting WNBA games on Ion are a significant opportunity for advertisers to reach engaged viewers.

“More viewers are tuning in, and more importantly, those viewers are paying attention,” said Brian Lawlor, president of Scripps Sports. “We have always thought, from the beginning of our relationship with the WNBA, that our broadcasts on Ion, including our studio shows, are great opportunities for advertisers to reach growing and highly engaged audiences.”

Connected TV is becoming a bigger deal for consumers and advertisers, according to a new report from TVision.

According to TVision’s Q1 2024 State of CTV Advertising Report, the attention paid to CTV advertising rose from the end of last year.

Overall CTV ad attention rose to 51.5% from 49.2% in Q4 2023, but attention paid to ads in premium CTV jumped to 56.1% from 51.7%.

That makes attention to premium CTV higher than attention to linear ads. Attention to linear ads rose to 54.5% from 54%.

TVision defines premium apps as those with both ad-supported and subscription-only tiers.

"Each quarter we see advancements in CTV advertising - in terms of reach and scale but also in terms of attention and engagement from viewers,” said Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “The latest report highlights these trends and is a useful tool for marketers to better understand CTV attention norms, and how to leverage these metrics within their own campaign processes.”

TVision found that in Q1, most household tuned into three or fewer apps. Lower income households were more likely to use 10 more more apps than more affluent households.

Households used 2.5 devices on average and watched 9.4 over-the-top programs per person.

TVision noted that equipment-makers’ free ad-supported streaming television apps have a household reach of  24%,  That’s up 9% from Q4 2023.

The streaming leaders in terms of reach were Netflix with 64%, YouTube with 57%, Hulu with 41%, Amazon Prime Video with 34%, Max with 29%, Peacock with 23%, Disney Plus with 22%, Paramount Plus with 21 and Tubi with 18%.

Ranked by viewing time, YouTube was No. 1, followed by Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV and Prime Video.

The top show for the quarter was Season 2 of Amazon Prime Video’s Reacher, based on TVision’s Power Score formula.

Other top shows included Netflix’s Griselda, Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Disney Plus’ Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Peacocks’ Ted.

The top movie was Amazon Prime Video’s remake of Road House.

TVision found that shorter ad break yield higher attention scores, with breaks of less than one minute getting a 55.4% attention score, compared to a break of two to three minutes getting a 50.8% attention score. Breaks o five minutes and up had a 48.4% attention score.

As wilth linear, the first commercial in a pod garnered the most attention, while the final ad in a pod did better than spots in the middle.

Industries buying the largest share of CTV ads included entertainment, health and legal/financial.

Categories that are growing including government and organizations, education, electronics/technology and consumer products.

Fubo, the sports-focused streaming service, scored high in getting its viewers' attention, according to a study conducted by measurement and analytics company TVision.

Ads on Fubo outperform the average for attention across connected-TV applications and linear networks among 25-to-54-year-olds, TVision said.

“Attention is the next wave of CTV ad measurement and TVision is a valuable partner at the forefront of this movement,” Dina Roman, senior VP, global ad sales at Fubo, said. “TVision’s study found that Fubo is a leader in commanding audience attention among our competitive set and linear TV, reinforcing the value of our highly engaged audience and premium live sports and entertainment content.”

Also Read: Fubo-Led Ragtag Coalition Asks Congress to Conduct Hearings on Spulu

The TVision study found that viewers in the 25-54 demo are at least 23% more likely to be in the room for Fubo programming than cable and all categories of CTV.

For the same demo, content on Fubo captured 33% more attention than cable and 70% more attention than typical vMVPD norms. 

Also Read: Fubo Continues To Reduce Red Ink Despite Losing 110,000 Subs in Q1

Fubo advertisers benefit from the attention the platform generates.

TVision said a major consumer packaged-goods brand saw attention rise as much as 67% on Fubo compared to other CTV apps where its ads ran. 

Ads on Fubo outperform the average attention of other ads across cable, CTV, and FAST apps. Fubo ads outperform vMVPD ad norms by 50%, TVision said.

"Fubo should be proud of its ability to capture attention from viewers,” said Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “Advertisers recognize the impact of high-attention apps and programming, and they are placing a premium value on the opportunity to reach more engaged viewers. The data shows Fubo is a strong investment for advertisers looking to connect with sports fans and beyond this year.”

TVision provides second-by-second person-level data about how people watch TV.

Opening up this year’s upfront season, A+E Networks is telling advertisers that it will continue to put out original content created by high-profile talent and that it has developed a new measurement system to assure brands their campaigns will get results.

In a quick 30-minute virtual presentation, A+E said that as many media companies are cutting back on content to reduce costs, it will be producing 2,500 hours of new multiplatform content, about the same as last year.

This year’s A+E talent roster includes Tom Hanks, Derek Jeter, Dan Aykroyd, Reese Witherspoon, Danny Trejoy, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, Don Cheadle, Alice Cooper, Kevin Costner, Bethenny Frankel, Gloria Gaynor, Sammy Hagar, Delilah Hamlin, Melissa Joan Hart, Michael Imperioli, Janet Jackson, Chloe Lukasiak, Peyton Manning, Terry McMillan, Bret Michaels, President Barack Obama, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Rachael Ray, Lisa Rinna, Robin Roberts, Elisabeth Röhm, JoJo Siwa, Savannah Lee Smith, Dee Snider, Buddy Valastro, Kendall Vertes, Brian White, Reese Witherspoon and Billy Zane.

“A+E continues to move forward with intention and pace in the ever-evolving media landscape, bringing forth premium quality content for viewers and innovative solutions for advertising partners,” A+E president and chairman Paul Buccieri said.

“Behind the scenes, we partner with the best talent in the business — in front of and behind the camera — resulting in a diverse roster that resonates emotionally with all audiences everywhere,” Buccieri said. “We are creators of content that inspires, captivates, delights and informs, and it is the power of imagination and storytelling that binds us all, no matter how or where we choose to watch.”

A+E is putting original content on cable, where fresh programming is increasingly rare. It is also offsetting the loss of reach due to cord-cutting by distributing its programming on streaming platforms.

“This whole approach of pushing our content out into all the windows is to build back as much reach as possible,” A+E president of ad sales Peter Olsen told Broadcasting+Cable about the company’s multi-platform approach. 

“We’re still reaching two-thirds of the country,“ Olsen said. ”We know television works. We’ve known that for five decades. This multiplatform approach gives us so much confidence that its going to work because it always worked and it still does.” 

A+E isn’t the biggest programmer, so it has to be more nimble and willing to do things to help advertisers others aren’t willing to do, said former Fox ad sales president Toby Byrne, who joined A+E as executive VP in January.  

“We made different decisions about how we’re going to distribute our content, as opposed to our own streamer,” Byrne said.  “That’s helped us build reach. It’s helped us build our digital audience. Our product now is our total audience.”

Byrne said A+E is making a case to be looked at differently by ad buyers than other traditional cable programmers.

“We want to be the partner that they choose to work with because we do so many things so well,” he said.

A+E is looking to assure advertisers that multiplatform campaigns will work with a new metric it calls InterAction. 

“We’ve realized that to compete in this marketplace, we need additional ways to prove our value,” Olsen said.

InterAction uses three key metrics: attention data from TVision, recall measurement from Brand Effect and search results from EDO.

 “We know how complex the marketplace is and we wanted to get beyond counting impressions,” said Rosanne Montenes, senior VP of ad sales-audience solutions. “It’s really shorthand for how A+E takes consumers further down that purchase journey from actually seeing an ad to then taking an action.”

InterAction is used to plan a campaign on the front end, while A+E’s Performax tool is used to execute it and guarantee it will work.

A+E has been offering clients guarantees campaigns will perform for a few years. 

The TV advertising market was weak last year and on earnings calls this quarter media company executive have said the see signs demand is improving.

“We feel cautiously optimistic about the market,” said Olsen. 

“As a company and a sales force, we are upbeat, optimistic and energized. There's a lot of challenges but there's no reason to wallow in all the problems. We just focus on what we can do, how we can solve problems and go out and do it,” he said.

“I think clients are recognizing once again the value of a full-funnel approach. We are seeing more activity in traditional scatter,” Olsen added. “I think the desire to work with publishers versus aggregators is a legitimate debate that’s happening because of all the things we bring to the table.”

Olsen said that A+E has been pleased with its early, on-video upfront presentation strategy.

“We always say we’ll do it in 30 minutes or less,“ he said. “That’s a big promise we make to people.

“We love going early because it gives us top-of-mind awareness during what we think of as the most important six week of actual dealmaking,” Olsen said, adding that A+E is also making personalized visits to media buyers and marketers.

With a video presentation, “we reach 3,000 plus people in the first month, more than we could host at the Armory like the old days, and we can do it in a more cost-efficient, effective manner,” he said. “And we get home for dinner instead of being out spending all of our T&E money.”

A+E’S UPFRONT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Here are some of the programs A+E Networks will be announcing during its upfront presentation:

History Channel

• Tom Hanks World War II Documentary Series (Untitled): Hosted and narrated by Tom Hanks, the new 20-part untitled documentary series offers a comprehensive view of World War II.
• Reconstruction Podcast With President Barack Obama (Untitled): Produced by President Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Audio, Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries and Audible, the eight-part untitled podcast explores the history and legacy of America’s Reconstruction Era.
• History’s Greatest Warriors: Produced by Derek Jeter’s production company CAP 2 Productions and Citizen Jones, the new series explores the step-by-step process to produce some of history’s most infamous and lethal warriors — Samurai, Spartans, Delta Force, Navy SEALS and Vikings. 
• The Icons that Built America: Produced by Jeter’s CAP 2 Productions and Blackfin, a division of Lionsgate’s Alternative Television group, the series celebrates the innovators, trailblazers, and risk-takers who pushed boundaries and redefined what it means to be a performer. The seven-episode series explores the lives and careers of such individuals as daredevil Evel Knievel, martial artist and actor Bruce Lee, comedian Richard Pryor, radio host Howard Stern and hip-hop group N.W.A.
• The UnXplored with Danny Trejo (working title): Shedding a light on the mysteries of the past and present, the new series examines the fascinating stories surrounding buried artifacts and lost civilizations. Hosted and narrated by Trejo, the eight-part series seeks to unearth what the human eye cannot easily detect.
• History 250: The History Channel is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States with History 250, an initiative highlighting long-form content on-air, multiplatform short-form content and premium events reflecting the power and legacy of American history and stories. This initiative will run across all platforms and highlight many lives and experiences from 250 voices across 50 states to honor, acknowledge and reflect different perspectives from our past and present.

Lifetime

• Gloria Gaynor Biopic/Robin Roberts Presents: Two-time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter and music legend Gloria Gaynor is set to have her extraordinary journey brought to life in a new Lifetime biopic which marks the network’s third film project with journalist Robin Roberts under her “Robin Roberts Presents” banner.
• Dance Moms: The Reunion: The two-hour special event — produced by the A+E Factual Studios Group — is set to premiere in May featuring Dance Moms fan favorites JoJo Siwa, Chloe Lukasiak, Brooke Hyland, Paige Hyland, Kendall Vertes and Kalani Hilliker looking back at the show that became a worldwide pop-culture sensation.
• Untitled Larry Ray/Sarah Lawrence Cult Movie: Executive produced and directed by Elisabeth Röhm, Billy Zane will star in the yet-to-be-titled movie based on the true story of Larry Ray, an ex-con who moved in with his daughter at Sarah Lawrence College and created a cult-like influence over her friends.

A&E Network

• Secrets of the Hells Angels: Under former leader Sonny Barger, the Hells Angels expanded across the United States. The series examines the history of the group of outlaws to uncover the organization’s darkest secrets.
• Houses of Horror: Secrets of College Greek Life: The series exposes the dark side of fraternities and sororities and its impact on some of the young men and women who participate.

Home.Made.Nation

• Hello Sunshine Development Deal: Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine will develop premium lifestyle content for A+E’s Home.Made.Nation multiplatform content hub. The first series to launch is Country House Hunters, which will follow couples as they search for the perfect country home.
• Property Virgins: Hosted by celebrated radio and TV personality and one of Toronto’s top realtors, Wendy Wolfe, this update of the classic series portrays the experiences of first-time home buyers looking for their dream homes.
• 24 Hours To Buy: Series profiles couples who are in a housing pressure cooker - whether they're relocating unexpectedly for work, or compelled by a personal situation, their relocation is coming up and they need to find a house fast.

Among the millions of Americans who watched the Super Bowl, 34% watched via streaming, according to research and analytics company TVision.

Last year, 28% of viewers streamed the big game, TVision said.

The figures show how viewers are shifting away from traditional broadcast and cable to streaming, even for the biggest sports events.

Last year's game, according to Nielsen's final count, tallied 115.1 million total viewers. iSpot.TV pegged the figure at more than 118 million. 

TVision also measured how much attention viewers were paying when Taylor Swift popped up on the screen to root for her boyfriend, Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce.

The attention index for female viewers when Swift was on screen was 126, compared to 117 when she wasn’t on the screen.

Among men, attention rose to 128 when Swift was on screen, up from 119 without Taylor.

The Super Bowl ad that best kept viewers’ eyes on the screen during the Super Bowl was for T-Mobile. 

Other top attention-getting ads were for Dunkin, Hellman’s, Uber Eats and Door Dash. 

In a year in which streaming made big gains, TVision has put out a report looking at the connected TV highlights and trends of 2023.

The biggest show on CTV was Apple TV Plus’s Ted Lasso, according to TVision’s Power Score rankings. 

No. 2 was Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty and No. 3 was Disney Plus’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season 3). 

The top show on Netflix was The Night Agent, which was fourth in the rankings.

Among movies on CTV, Top Gun: Maverick soared to the top for Paramount Plus.  Top Gun was followed by three films on Netflix: You People, The Out Laws and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

TVision said that the average American household watches content from about seven apps, but noted that more than 25% of households view video on more than 10 apps.

Netflix was the leader in household reach with 69.5%, followed by YouTube. Amazon Prime Video overtook Hulu for the third spot and Max jumped over Disney Plus for fifth place.

Broadcast and cable continue to dominate sports viewing, but CTV is gaining.

Beyond drawing viewers, sports also generate attention for commercials, making ieven more important to linear networks, according to TVision.

Sports events on linear generated an attention index of 102.2 compared to an index of 96.2 for non-sports programming on linear. Content on CTV generated a 99.6% attention index.

Guess who boosted attention for NFL games, TV’s biggest draw? Power couple Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Before Swift started showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games to watch her boyfriend, female viewers generated an 86.6% attention index. Since Taylormania set in, the attention index rose to 88.3. 

The Swift effect was more pronounced for games involving Kelce, which jumped to a 91 index from 85.6.

Sports is also a powerhouse when it comes to co-viewing. The co-viewing rate for sports on linear networks was 59.7%, compared to 54% for non-sports events on linear. Content on CTV generates a 58.5% co-viewing rate.

Speaking of ads, TVision found that viewers are spending more time with ad-supported versions of subscription streaming services.

“This suggests that ad-supported tiers are increasing in popularity and streaming viewers are becoming more receptive to CTV advertising,” TVision said in its report. “In turn, this creates more opportunity for advertisers to reach hard-to-find CTV viewers.”

Viewers of ad-free versions of subscription streaming services tend to pay more attention than ad-supported ones. But Peacock, Paramount Plus and Discovery Plus were exceptions.

“This may be because of the ad-break format they have deployed, viewer expectations for ads with this content, or other factors,” the TVision report said.

As on traditional TV, there’s a big advantage to being in the first position within ad pod on CTV. Commercial in the first position had a 49.4% share of the attention generated by CTV ad pods. The Second ad garnered 24.9% and the third pod got 25.73%. 

“Many apps let viewers know how many ads to expect and exactly when to expect the programming to begin again,“ TVision said. “Viewers catch the first several seconds of the first ad before giving their attention elsewhere. The small bump in attention for the last ad in the pod could be attributable to viewers getting ready to reengage with content.”

Connected TV content generates a 13% higher attention index and 74% more co-viewing than linear TV content, according to a study from LG Ad Solutions and TVision.

The study also outlined strategies for optimizing campaigns using CTV.

The survey found that 88% of those responding co-viewed streaming television and 67% said they pay at least as much attention to programming when co viewing, while 54% say they pay the same or more attention to the commercials.

The longer the ad, the less attention, the survey found, so the first 15 second of a commercial is critical in conveying the brand message, the survey found. Attention is highest during the first exposure to an ad and gradually decines as frequency increases.

"This data indicates that on average, streaming TV viewers are more likely to be watching with other people than linear TV viewers,” said Tony Marlow, CMO at LG Ad Solutions. “Interestingly, this research also indicates that people tend to pay more attention to the screen when co-viewing. This could mean that streaming may be a much more shared experience than previously realized and that this helps drive a higher level of attention for content and ads.”

Naturally LG Ads suggest that a direct-to-glass approach is best for advertisers who want to pursue a CTV strategy because of the set maker’s deterministic audience data, its advanced measurement and actionable measurement capabilities. 

LG said it can help advertisers with frequency management, choosing relevant creative and with enhanced ad formats. 

“This research supports our existing knowledge which indicates that consumers are paying more attention to streaming content than linear content. High-attention content gives advertisers a valuable opportunity to increase engagement and generate outcomes,” said Yan Liu, CEO at TVision. “This research shows how to find that sweet spot with consumers and provides a valuable roadmap for advertisers looking to capitalize on the growing streaming marketplace.”

Ad-supported apps drew the vast majority of time spent watching connected TV in the first half of 2023, but the level of attention paid to streaming ads fell, according to a new report from TVision.

TVision said 66% of CTV viewing went to ad-supported apps in the first half of the year, up 38% from a 48% share in the second half of 2023. 

The share of viewing for virtual multichannel video programming distributors fell 27% to a 19% share and viewing of subscription VOD app dropped 25% to 6%, TVision said.

But while more people are watching ad-supported streaming, the attention paid to streaming ads dropped.

TVision found that CTV ad attention dropped from 31.2% to 29.6%. 

CTV presence-in-room, which signals whether a viewer is in the room and able to receive the message, dropped from 59.2% to 55.9%. Linear attention and viewer presence both slightly increased. 

TVision said the dip in attention was party caused by more people watching. It also noted that most CTV apps run a clock during commercial breaks letting viewers know exactly when they should return to the room as programming resumes.

Overwhelmingly, CTV ads are delivered when the majority of viewers are not watching CTV ads are generally delivered evenly across a 24-hour day and do not align with how viewers tune in to CTV programming. 

TVision found that 40% of CTV ads are delivered in lower-value late-night, overnight, and morning dayparts. That compares to linear TV ads, where only 20% of commercials are delivered in these less-attentive time periods. 

The app generating the most attention is ad-free Apple TV Plus, with an attention index of 136.7, compared to a CTV average of 119.1. YouTube had an attention share of 120.9 and Amazon Prime Video had a 119.4 score. Netflix and Peacock were below average with indexes of 113.4 and 112 respectively.

During the first half of the year, Netflix increased its household reach to  62.9% the most of any streaming app.

“It’s likely that the new ad-supported subscription model helped propel Netflix to an increase in subscribers in the first half of the year,” TVision said. “But Netflix’s deep well of content including returning series like You and Bridgerton, as well as new shows like Night Agent also help Netflix maintain its prominence.” 

Second in reach was YouTube, which posted a gain to 58.6%. Other apps increasing reach were Peacock, Paramount Plus and Tubi.

YouTube was tops in share of time spent viewing at 17.3%, followed by Netflix at 11.5%  

Disney Plus led in co-viewing with 1.53 people in front of the screen per hour viewed, followed by Paramount Plus at 1.48 and Philo at 1.41.

Although overall streaming viewing time continues to grow as the number of CTV enabled households has ticked up to 84%. But the number of apps that are watched in Americais declining. Households have gone from watching an average of 7.3 apps at the start of the pandemic in Q2 2020 to 6.6 apps in Q2 2023. Meanwhile 23% of homes use 10 or more apps.

Travel advertisers increased their spending on CTV by 41% and restaurants boosted spending by 20%. Government and organizations cut back b 52% and retailers reduced expenditures by 15% compared to the the second half of 2022, which included the Chrstimas holiday.

“Legacy television companies jumped on board the subscription-first model,” TVision said in its report. “But with new economic realities and household reach for CTV settling to a constant at approximately 82-84% of all households over the last few years, the streaming industry must pivot to find new revenue. With most time spent viewing now taking place in apps with ad-supported models, it’s clear that subscription-only is out and ad-supported CTV is here to stay.

“With access to more granular insights about CTV audience engagement, viewer attention and in-room presence, the opportunity exists for advertisers to engage much more effectively with CTV audiences,” the report said.

TVision said A+E Networks signed an agreement giving the programmer access to TVision’s Total View, which measures and analyzes person-level viewing of content and ads on linear and connected TV.

Total View provides A+E’s ad sales team with multiple dashboards that help understand ad performance, improve engagement and maximize the value of impressions, TVision said. TVision's data includes attention-based metrics and program-level competitive intelligence.

“To effectively position our premium content delivered across all platforms, we require a solution for apples-to-apples measurement and analysis of content performance and advertising value,” said Suzanne Persechino, senior VP, ad sales research at A+E Networks. “TVision’s Total View gives us the data we need to get a holistic view of our premium content within the industry.”

Also Read: TVision, DoubleVerify Team Up To Bring Attention Metrics to CTV

One of Total View’s dashboards provides program analysis, letting users know how viewers engage with content, broken down by demographics.

Another extends brand and category analysis, with insight as to how brands and advertiser categories are performing within specific media properties and across competitive networks and apps.

“Across A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime, A+E Networks produces some of the best content in the industry and so its inventory is a high-value investment for advertisers. A+E’s team is adept at using innovation and the latest metrics to position that premium content,” TVision CEO Yan Liu said. “Total View delivers unparalleled insights into co-viewing, attention, and engagement across networks and apps in a single platform, giving A+E’s team easy access to run deep analysis of performance across properties. As a result, their team can maximize investments, and drive demand.”

TVision said it is working with DoubleVerify to bring attention-based measurement to connected TV.

TVision’s viewer presence and eyes-on-screen ad attention signals are being added to DV’s exposure data, including viable time and share, giving advertisers a better way to gauge the performance of the exposures. 

“We are thrilled to collaborate with DoubleVerify to advance the adoption of attention measurement across CTV environments,” TVision CEO and co-founder Yan Liu said. “Our partnership enables marketers to gain deeper insights into where and when they get the most value in CTV.”

Technical integration between DV and TVision will be ongoing over the next few months. The companies anticipate the combined offering will be available for customers in a closed beta in the second half of 2023, followed by a broader market release.

DV’s current DV Authentic Attention product is accredited by the Media Rating Council.

“Our alliance with TVision is a significant stride towards comprehensive and reliable attention measurement in CTV,” DoubleVerify senior VP of attention Daniel Slotwiner said. “This partnership underscores our commitment to delivering the most scaled, objective and actionable performance metrics for our clients. By aligning TVision's viewer presence and eyes-on-screen attention data with our own ad exposure and user-engagement data, we are establishing a new standard for assessing the true impact of CTV advertising — ultimately driving superior outcomes for brands across the globe.“

Apple TV Plus’ Ted Lasso remained at the top of the table for a second-straight week as the top connected TV show according to TVision’s CTV Power Score ratings for the week of May 15.

Jury Duty, which streams in Amazon’s Freevee, moved up to No. 2 from No.3 and Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story slipped to No. 3 from No. 2.

Rounding out the top five were Citadel on Amazon Prime Video and Paramount Plus’ RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, which launched a new season.

Other new shows in the rankings this week include Selling Sunset on Netflix, XO Kitty on Netflix, Reno 911! on Roku, The Great on Hulu and Muted on Netflix.

Netflix had seven of the top 20 shows.

The Power Score ranking is designed to compare streaming shows on an apples-to-apples basis. In calculating its Power Score, TVision, which measures activity across over 1,000 apps, looks at the amount of time viewers pay attention to the program, the amount of program time available for the season, the program’s reach, as well as the application’s reach.

TVision said it chose that combination of metrics to enable a neutral look at the quality of programming and its unique, inherent ability to draw in viewers — regardless of the scale of the platform, or the program’s release schedule.

Apple TV Plus series Ted Lasso climbed to the top of TVision’s Power Score rankings for shows on connected TV for the week of May 8.

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story from Netflix ranked second, climbing from 22nd last week and Freevee’s Jury Duty, last week’s top show, came in third place. 

Rounding out the top five were Missing Dead or Alive from Netflix, which was new to the rankings, and Citadel from Amazon, which had been the second-ranked show.

Netflix has eight shows in the top 20, including Queen Cleopatra, which was new to the list.

Other new shows on the list included Apple TV’s The Last Thing He Told Me, Peacock’s Bupkis and The Muppets Mayhem on Disney Plus.

The TV Power Score ranking is designed to compare streaming shows on an apples-to-apples basis. In calculating its Power Score, TVision, which measures activity across over 1,000 apps, looks at the amount of time viewers pay attention to the program, the amount of program time available for the season, the program’s reach, as well as the application’s reach.

TVision said it chose that combination of metrics to enable a neutral look at the quality of programming and its unique, inherent ability to draw in viewers — regardless of the scale of the platform, or the program’s release schedule.

Amazon Freevee’s hit series Jury Duty was the No. 1 show on connected TV for the week of May 1, according to a new ranking created by measurement company TVision.

The No  2 show, according to TVision’s Power Score, was Ted Lasso on Apple TV, followed by Fatal Attraction on Paramount Plus. 

The TV Power Score ranking  is designed to compare streaming shows on an apples-to-apples basis. In calculating its Power Score, TVision, which measures activity across over 1,000 apps, looks at  the amount of time viewers pay attention to the program, the amount of program time available for the season, the program’s reach, as well as the application’s reach.

TVision said it chose that combination of metrics to enable a neutral look at the quality of programming and its unique, inherent ability to draw in viewers - regardless of the scale of the platform, or the program’s release schedule.

Netflix, the top streaming service, has 9 of the top 20 shows on the Power Rankings.

"Movies have box office sales. Linear TV has ratings. Music has the top 40, but CTV programming—one of the most important influences on today’s cultural zeitgeist—has lacked a fair measure of performance ranking CTV content across all apps,” said Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “At TVision we are uniquely designed to solve this problem - with our ability to measure all programs across thousands of apps - from niche to the largest players. That's why we have introduced the TVision Power Score."

TVision plans to update its Power Score for CTV Shows on a weekly basis. It will also be releasing rankings for movies on CTV on a monthly basis.

For May, the top movie was Netflix’s Murder Mystery 2. It was followed by Apple TV’s Ghosted and Peacock’s Ticket to Paradise.

TVision notes that its rankings are likely to be different from other lists, like the Netflix Top Ten or Nielsen’s ranking of streaming shows.

“The Power Score is meant to reflect how engaged viewers are with the content, regardless of the scale of the platform. If a program does not engage a significant portion of the app’s viewers, or capture high attention, that will lower the score.k” TVision says.

TVision said the goal of the list is to help the industry better understand the relative value and engagement of content across all CTV apps.

"What I am most excited about is that using TVision’s data, and applying the right formulas, we can finally get a measure of relative performance of all the amazing content, across various streaming services. And even more exciting, truly predictive signals on breakout shows and movies." Joe Marchese, Executive Chairman, Human Ventures, and former head of ad sales at Fox.

Research and analytics company TVision has launched Total View, a new platform designed to provide granular, person level measurement of viewing across linear and connected TV.

The product is aimed at media sellers. Sellers are under pressure to monetize their connected TV channels as more consumers cut the cord with pay TV  and marketers shift their ad dollars to CTV to reach streaming viewers.

“When looking at providing data to networks and streaming platforms, it’s not good enough to have just linear or traditional tv or CTV separated," Sameer Aghera, VP of product at TVision, told Broadcasting+Cable.

“We need to have an apples-to-apples comparison across both, and Total View has the capability to do comparisons across streaming apps and also across traditional linear networks,” Aghera said.

Most measurement companies have been looking for ways to get a handle on how many people are watching CTV, as opposed to how many households are watching. Being to measure viewing across both streaming and linear TV has been easier said than done.

Total View takes these issues with its panel of 5,000 homes and 13,000 people. The panel enables TVision to check who, if anyone, is in the room when an ad is served to a device. It can also calculate co-viewing, which occurs when people are watching together, delivering  bigger audiences for programmers to sell.

“CTV platforms have a lot of data about viewership, but the are not always willing to share,” Aghera said. “Our panel-based measurement allows us to get a look inside these walled gardens and not be reliant on those platforms to provide us data.”

TVision has been able to measure co-viewing when more than one person is in the room watching a TV show. It can also ensure that there is at least one person in the room when the ad runs.

“Advertisers want to know how content is resonating with viewers,” he said. “They also want to know exactly who is watching, the age, the demographic. How are they watching?”

The platform gives a media seller analytics on who is watching and advertising on their own networks, plus information on their competitors.

TVision has been best known for measuring attention, and those are baked into the platform. An attention metric could be 

used by the networks, because, according to TVision, its research shows that when the programming captures your attention it leads to attention during the ad time.

“Our data can be used to price,” Aghera said. “It allows networks and streaming apps to understand which dayparts have high engagement and use that datapoint to price accordingly.” 

All connected TV ad inventory is not created equal.

According to a study conducted for Tegna’s Premion advanced advertising unit by TVision, commercials placed by Premion score higher in co-viewing and attention than norms for CTV.

Premion said the high scores were the result of Premion’s focus on serving directly sourced premium content and precisely targeted audiences.

“Proving the efficacy of CTV ad spending is a top advertiser priority and co-viewing is an added value that gives advertisers meaningful insights on audiences and outcomes,” said Dave Marquard, head of product at Premion. “The TVision study underscores that co-viewing is a valuable metric.”

Even as marketers shift more ad dollars from linear TV to CTV in order to reach the growing number of viewers who stream TV content, measuring CTV audiences has remained a problem for buyers. Most viewing data reflects how many TVs and other devices are tuned in, not how many people are watching those devices.

TVision, best known for its measurement of how much attention viewers are paying to what’s on the screen, also uses its panel of 5,000 homes to determine if more than one person is watching, or co-viewing.

TVisision found that Premion inventory came in 19% above CTV normal for the average number of viewers present in the home when content is on the screen. The average views per viewable household (VPVH) for Premion was 1.5, compared to an average of 1.26 for ad-supported CTV.

Viewers paid 3.5% more attention to Premion ads than to the average CTV ad. The different was particularly large in prime and overnight dayparts. attention, and our studies show that attention is closely correlated with both aided awareness and ad recall — two fundamental brand metrics,” and Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “Premion scored high in attention and views per viewer household which validates the power of premium content. This maximizes value for brands by getting the ads in front of a larger audience without them having to increase ad spending.”

In conducting the study, TVision measured CTV attention, views per viewable household (VPVH) and CTV viewability. Premion inventory was placed on more than 125 streaming apps, providers and networks from September 1 through November 30, 2022.

With more ad dollars flowing to ad-supported connected TV, a new study aimed to determine if streamers were paying attention to the commercials they are showing and found ways to improve how closely viewers look at advertising.

The study found that nearly every variable affected attention, from the streaming service type to the content viewed, the time of day, the viewer’s age and how frequently an ad is seen.

On a fundamental level, the study, commissioned by media agency Publicis Media and Yahoo found that most consumers were OK with seeing commercials during programming if it meant they’d pay less — or nothing — to watch. According to the study, 82% of CTV viewers expect ads on free streaming services and seven in 10 ad-supported VOD users are at least somewhat satisfied with their CTV experience.

But the data on viewability and attention, collected by TVision through facial recognition and eye tracking, and the information on receptiveness, resulting from surveys conducted by Open Mind Strategy, found that paying customers paid more attention, in some cases.

The study found that ad-supported tiers of subscription services — including Hulu, Peacock and HBO Max — and virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) like YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV, generated higher attention than commercial-free versions. The attention percentage for vMVPDs was 35% and the attention percentage for ad-supported hybrids was 33%. That was higher than the 30% generated by smart-TV FAST channels (30%) or FAST platforms (28%). 

Similarly, hybrids and vMVPDs drew more attention time than their free counterparts.

But the study found that some FAST apps were among the higher scorers in terms of attention. Xumo actually had the highest attention percentage of the apps studied, with 47%, and Roku was in the top 20 with 34%. 

The Yahoo and Publicis Media study found that younger viewers (under 40) are almost 60% more likely to spend time with hybrid applications than their older counterparts.

Commercials that appeared on content with high engagement — crime dramas, political commentary, game shows — generated higher attention shares, compared to spots that aired in awards shows, sci-fi or action/adventure programming.

The highest-performing commercials featured people or elements from the show being watched.

Commercials needed six to 10 exposures to generate peak attention, but relatively few ads achieved that level of exposure. Meanwhile, being overly repetitive had a negative impact on brand sentiment. Changing the ad creative over multiple exposures had a positive impact on receptiveness, the study found.

And as on other TV platforms, pod position mattered, with the first commercial in a pod getting more attention time than spots in the middle or at the end of a pod.

The study analyzed 66,000 ads from January to November 2022. The TV panel included 5,000 households and 15,000 individuals who received 1.3 million impressions in four CTV environments. The Open Mind Strategy survey had 1,000 respondents. ■

As much as TVOS companies try to surface relevant content suggestions to us across silo'd streaming services, most of us still go app to app to find what we want to watch when we turn on our smart TVs. 

And "pole position" -- being the first app chosen for perusal -- remains a huge advantage. 

According to an opt-in panel of 5,000 U.S. households conducted by TVision Insights, YouTube was chosen first by 24.2% of respondents. 

That was more than twice as many as the No. 2 app, The Roku Channel, and nearly three times more than Netflix. 

YouTube is also the leader in terms of time spent using the app in the U.S. CTV ecosystem.

There are other notable tidbits in TVision's "State of CTV Advertising" report, which was released last week. 

Not surprisingly, since the end of 2020, TVision found a huge uptick in the consumption of ad-supported connected TV viewing, which is up 55%. 

Meanwhile, YouTube may be the default app for the most streaming consumers, but Netflix remains the leader in terms of penetration/reach into U.S. homes, with 61% reporting that they have the app in their TVOS. 

Viewing of ad-supported connected TV apps was up 55% in the second half of 2022, compared to the second half of 2020, according to a new report from measurement company TVision.

TVision’s The State of CTV Advertising report says that as consumers move to CTV, advertisers are looking for strategies for using CTV to reach viewers no longer subscribing to traditional TV.

“While CTV presents a massive opportunity to reach TV viewers, it can be an extremely frustrating and opaque environment for advertisers, due to walled gardens and their own proprietary metrics,” TVision CEO Yan Liu said. “With the data from our single source panel, we are able to report universal metrics across hundreds of apps, which tell the real story on who advertisers are reaching and how well they are engaging those audiences.”

TVision says that 83% of households are CTV enabled. The average home used 7.3 apps and nearly 30% of homes use 10 or more apps.

Corroborating an earlier report from Nielsen, TVision says that YouTube has supplanted Netflix as the streaming app with the biggest share of time spent viewing, Netflix’s household reach dropped to 61% in the second half of 2022, from 66% in the first half 2022, but it still reaching more households than any other app, including YouTube.

In the report, NBCUniversal’s Peacock stacks up surprisingly well. According to TVision, Peacock has a 3.9% share of time spent viewing, which puts it ahead of Disney Plus, Paramount Plus and tied with HBO Max.

The report notes that Disney Plus and Netflix now offer advertisers new opportunities to advertise and connect with hard-to-reach audiences. The best combination for reaching CTV viewers is Netflix with the Roku Channel, which have an audience overlap of just 41.9%.

TVision is well known for measuring attention. By that metric, Netflix and YouTube TV are tops among streamers, followed by Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Peacock and Hulu.

TVision also noted that FAST apps including The Roku Channel, Tubi and Pluto increased their share of viewing in the second half of 2022 compared to the first half of the year. But the report says that in the second half, FAST viewers were older and paid less attention than CTV viewers historically.

The entertainment, legal, health and retail industries are responsible for the largest share of CTV ad volume. The government sector, spurred by election-cycle spending, and automotive advertisers dramatically increased their investments in the second half of 2022. ■

TVision said it introduced CTV Campaign Measurement, a new product that gives advertisers, media series and measurement companies a unified look at CTV ad campaigns.

CTV Campaign Measurement provides a view into where CTV ads ran and the quality and true reach of those impressions.  The data allow advertisers and other to compare the permanence and value of ads across CTV apps, including CtV walled garden.

“The existence of walled gardens and their siloed and app-specific reporting mechanisms has created a real challenge for advertisers seeking to understand true reach and impact of their campaigns,” explains Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “With our CTV Campaign Measurement advertisers are able to answer the important question: where did my ads run, and where did they work best?”

Also Read: iSpot Buys TVision Stake in $16 Million CTV Ratings Deal

Vevo is one of the TVision clients giving CTV Campaign Measurement a try.

“There is a dramatic difference in ad campaign impact when viewers actively engage with the content they are watching on the screen," explains Rob Christensen, senior VP, Global Advanced TV at Vevo." We want our brand partners to understand the true value of their investments in Vevo, and the best way to prove that value is with apples-to-apples comparisons of campaign performance across all TV platforms. TVision’s CTV Campaign Measurement allows us to deliver transparent insights to our advertisers.” ■

iSpot, which has built its TV-measurement business on big data, has bought a stake in TVision as part of a $16 million funding round, and will get exclusive access to person-level data on connected TV viewing from TVision's audience panels.

TVision is best known for measuring viewer attention, but the technology it uses to see how intently people in a household are watching a particular show or commercial, is also used to count how many people are watching to calculate co-viewing, and which members of a household are watching to generate demo information.

The investment, led by iSpot with longtime TVision investors SIG Capital, Accomplice and Golden Ventures also participating, comes at a time when CTV viewing is growing and marketers are shifting ad dollars to CTV to reach those viewers, but ad buyers say there is no reliable way to measure it.

The investment also comes at a time when TV measurement Goliath Nielsen is being challenged by high-tech alternatives — led by iSpot — that are using data from smart TVs and set-top boxes to better count viewers in a more complex TV landscape in which streaming and fragmentation are becoming a bigger factor. 

Also: Viewers Spending More Time with AVOD Than SVOD: TVision

“The $90 billion TV and CTV marketplace cannot transact on methods developed decades ago and expect to give today’s advertisers real visibility into how multiscreen TV drives their very modern brand KPIs. The industry needs ever-more investment in new technologies capable of capturing the reach, engagement, and audience insights that boost advertiser confidence in escalating their ad investment with multiscreen TV publishers,” Video Advertising Bureau president and CEO Sean Cunningham said. “We applaud the work iSpot and TVision have done to advance the industry and are encouraged by the investments each are making to develop more accurate and representative cross-platform measurement capabilities.”

iSpot CEO Sean Muller, who will become a TVision director, told Broadcasting+Cable that iSpot and TVision have been working together for three years. Earlier this year, iSpot got a $325 million investment from Goldman Sachs.

“We really wanted to expand our relationship and partnership with TVision,” Muller said.

“We also wanted to invest in panel technology, which we believe continues to be important for the industry,” Muller said. “We are a huge believer in big data as the front line of measurement and that continues to be the case. But we also believe in being able to get to the person level in the household to supplement that measurement.”

Together, iSpot and TVision will be able to bring a new standard and new currency to a TV world in which linear TV and connected TV are unified in the way they’re planned, bought and measured, Muller said. “This partnership can accelerate the process,” he said.

Before the upfront, there was much clamor about alternative measurement companies and new currencies. After the upfront, it looked like Nielsen remained dominant. But with Nielsen looking to roll out its new Nielsen One system later this year, the industry may get another chance to weigh its options.

"We really hope that people make further Investments in these new currencies and especially in the unification of linear and CTV because ultimately, it just helps the industry,” Muller said. “Come the 2023-24 upfront it's 100% new currency. We see 2023-24 as a pivotal year.”

The TVision panel has 5,000 homes and about 14,000 people. Panelists let TVision mount a camera-like device on top of their TV sets, enabling TVision to monitor who is in the room when the TV is on and precisely what they’re looking at. Originally TVision focused on measuring how much attention people were paying to specific elements of shows’ commercials but the company realized this asset could be used for other purposes, including measuring co-viewing.

“We believe our panel has a lot of potential to produce even more products,” TVision CEO Yan Liu told B+C. He said the TVision panel is more cost-efficient and user-friendly for panelists, who don’t have to push buttons to have their viewing registered as they do in Nielsen’s panels.

With iSpot’s investment, TVision might increase the size of its panel, but Liu said he doesn’t believe it has to be as big as Nielsen’s, which has 30,000 to 40,000 homes because TVision doesn't use its panel to measure all viewing. Viewing is measured using big data and TVision's panel is used to answer questions and calibrate that big data.

”The future of currency is combining big data sets with panel data,“ Liu said.

If big data can show how many households are tuned in, TVision's panel provides a view as to how many people in those households were watching and which members of the household.

“We already know who lives in the household,” Muller said. ”Using the TVision data we know The Voice on Tuesday night had an average of 1.35 viewers on a second-by-second basis in front of the TV and also gives us a distribution of the age and gender of those.“

That means ad buyers can get the demo data they've long depended on, particularly for CTV.

“Right now, there is no currency for CTV,” Muller said. “The publishers are essentially self-reporting in many cases. They're not even selling on people or co-viewing.

"We’re highly focused on unified measurement and the idea that CTV and linear should be transacted together,” he continued. “Unified measurement is going to much more granular demos across 900 different streaming publishers.”

Some media companies said they were encouraged by iSpot and TVision getting together.

“This partnership is a step towards accurately counting every individual in front of the TV screen,” said Andrea Zapata, executive VP, ad sales research, measurement and insights at Warner Bros. Discovery. “TVision’s modern measurement approach is more precise in identifying who is in front of the screen. With investments towards panel growth and the inclusion of multiple TV sets in a household, there is a real possibility of having a representative panel that relies less on additional panel(s) for calibration.”

NBCUniversal has been particularly aggressive in vetting potential alternatives to Nielsen and a big backer of iSpot.

“Combining iSpot's massive panel with TVision’s modern approach to counting real people helps advertisers measure co-viewing across linear and CTV with greater accuracy across households and diverse audiences,” said Kelly Abcarian, executive VP, measurement and impact at NBCUniversal. “A cross-platform currency, based on the exact ad and powered by fast and accurate co-viewing metrics, will also bring a completely new approach to valuing premium content.” ■

Viewers might complain about the barrage of political commercials on the way as Election Day approaches, but they seem to pay attention to them.

A new study from TVision found that when political ads appear, viewers stay in the room 22% longer than when other types of ad appear.

TVision also said viewers' eyes stay on political ads 15% longer than ads for other products or services.

Overall, in terms of attention, political ads get a 38.7% score, while all other ads get a 37.4% score.

That would seem to be good news for candidates and PACs that are expected to spend $2.1 billion on linear TV and $300 million on CTV advertising.

Also: Scripps Leads New Station Group Aiming To Bring Political Ads to CTV

Another interesting finding is that folks who identify themselves as independents pay the most attention to political ads compared to other ads. 

Independents pay the most attention to the political ads they see on CNN at 42.1%. Independents’ attention registers 39.2% on both Fox News and MSNBC. 

Republicans pay the most attention to political ads on Fox News. Democrats pay the most attention to political ads on MSNBC, the study found.

On CTV,  the youngest voting-age viewers pay considerably more attention to political ads than other ads. Among 18 to 24 year olds attention increases 12% for political ads, the biggest jump for any demo other than those 55 and up. 

TVision reviewed viewer engagement with TV advertising on Linear and CTV for people 18 years of age and up between January 1 and August 29, 2022. TVision’s panel includes approximately 13,000 viewers across the United States and they self-report political affiliation. ■

E.W. Scripps’ Scripps Networks division said it will use TVision’s viewer attention data to highlight the engaged audiences of its over-the-air channels during upfront presentations.

“We already know that our viewers are watching our programs live almost 100% of the time and that our commercial retention is just as high, but those numbers only tell part of the story,” Michael Teicher, chief revenue officer at Scripps Networks, said. “Upfront buyers want to know who is paying attention to the ads on our network and how that compares to our competitors. TVision’s eyes-on-screen attention data shows that our networks consistently outperform the industry averages. The data allows us to confidently sell Scripps Networks inventory to brands that want to reach highly-engaged audiences who are then more likely to purchase our ad partners’ products and services.”

The Scripps Networks entertainment channels include Ion, Grit, Bounce Laff, TrueReal and Defy TV.

TVision’s Attention to Duration Index shows that the Scripps networks average 50% higher than other linear networks for keeping its viewers in the room and engaged with ad content. 

Also: Scripps Looks Ahead to 2022 After Q4 Earnings Drop to $40 Million

Ion, Ion Mystery, Laff, Grit TrueReal, and Defy TV all have among the highest indexes among cable entertainment networks. African-American targeted Bounce indexes 7% higher than the networks it competes against.

“Scripps Networks is rightfully proud of its ability to deliver attentive audiences to its advertisers — we all know that ads work best when people pay attention,” Yan Liu, CEO of TVision, said. “By incorporating attention insights from our platform into their Upfront positioning, Scripps is able to differentiate its inventory in a competitive market and prove out their premium value.” ■

Men paid more attention to the commercials that aired during Super Bowl LVl than to the game between the Rams and the Bengals, according to research from TVision Insights.

Among men, attention to commercials registered a 126.7 index number, compared to 125.7 for the program. Men also paid more attention to the ads than women viewers did, by 126.7 to 120.3. (One hundred represents the normal amount of viewer attention.)

TVision also said that more viewers streamed the Super Bowl than ever before, with 33.65% watching the game via connected TV or other devices. That’s up 64% from last year game.

Also: Super Bowl Commercial Prices Increase 5%, SMI Reports

The commercials that generated the most attention were The Cable Guy spot for Verizon, the LeBron James ad for Crypto.com, the Super Charged Seth ad for Wallbox, the G.O.A.T. spot for Disney Plus and the NFL’s “Live Ball” spot.

TVision noted that the halftime show featuring hip hop legends Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent and Kendrick Lamar captured more attention than ever before.

Also: AMC Networks Runs Super Bowl Spot With Highlights from AMC Plus

The attention index for the halftime show was 141.2, compared to 110.1 last year and 123.2 for 2020.

Viewers in the 25-34 and 35-49 age ranges paid more attention to halftime than to the game itself. ■ 

T-Mobile's TVision virtual pay TV business lasted only six months, shut down last April after the wireless carrier made some cataclysmically bad miscalculations about what it could do with its program licensing agreements. 

However, TVision Hub, the eponymously named streaming dongle that T-Mobile sold along with the short-lived vMVPD service, lives on. In fact, it's now been upgraded from Android TV to the new Google TV OS. 

As first discovered by 9to5 Google, T-Mobile is now advertising the device, manufactured by SEI Robotics, on its web portal, providing it free to its 4G and 5G fixed wireless customers. T-Mobile is also selling its next-generation TVision Hub for $50, the same price the first iteration sold for. 

Notably, Google also sells its 14-month-old Chromecast with Google TV for $50. But Google's first device featuring Google TV lacks an Ethernet port, which the TVision Hub has.

T-Mobile pivoted to marketing Google's YouTube TV  and Philo vMVPDs when it scuttled TVision in April, so it has a device to help its fixed wireless customers stream that video when they sign up. 

As more people stream their television programming, the use of ad-supported video has surpassed the use of the higher profile subscription video services.

Time spent on AVOD increased 9.3% from the first quarter of 2021 to a 38% share for  the third quarter of 2021. During the same time period, SVOD’s share of viewing decreased by 8.6% to a 32% share, according to a new The State of CTV report from TVision Insights.

TVision said this is important to advertisers and media buyers, who have been concerned about being able to reach consumers if they cut the cord and shift to ad-free services like Netflix and Disney Plus.

“Questions of whether consumers would embrace ad-supported streaming television largely dissipated as viewers now spend more time with AVOD than SVOD, and dMVPD providers also represent a growing share of streaming viewing time,” the TVision report said. “It became clear during the Upfronts in Spring that advertisers and media sellers were ready to move on CTV in a big way - as CTV advertising became a real component of both advertisers media strategies and media sellers inventory offerings.”

Unfortunately for advertisers, attention rates are lower on CTV than on linear TV at this point in time. But TVision said there are remedies for those who want to reach streaming viewers.

“Our data suggests that as advertisers make increasing investments in CTV, they can work to optimize their media plans to increase attention. Overall, CTV ad attention rates are lower than linear TV advertising norms. Advertisers can find more engaged viewers by optimizing for frequency, ad length, content alignment and more,” the report said.

As more streaming services enter the field, Netflix’s share of viewing fell to 22% in the first half of 2021 from 27% in the first half of 2020, TVision said. While Netflix is still No. 1, YouTube is getting closer.

Among the streaming apps, Amazon Prime Video moved up to No. 4 (behind Hulu) from No. 5 and Sling jumped to No. 5 from No. 8. Disney Plus moved up to No. 6 while YouTube TV fell back to No. 7 and HBO Max fell from sixth to eighth. Peacock jumped three spots to No. 11 and Apple TV Plus moved up nine slots into the top 20 at No. 19.

Ranked in terms of attention, HBO Max was No. 1, followed by YouTube TV, Discovery Plus, Peacock and Prime Video.

“Streaming-only viewers are more likely to be younger, but seniors are cutting the cord as well now, too. Advertisers should embrace CTV to reach these viewers,” the report said.

TVision measures TV and CTV engagement for every second of programming and advertising. The data for this report was collected from Jan. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021, from 5,000 homes across the United States. All data is weighted to represent the country. ■

More and more households are streaming, and ad-supported video is showing some of the biggest gains, according to a new report from TVision.

TVision found that in the first quarter 84.4% of U.S. households were able to watch programming on connected TVs, up from 82.4% in the third quarter of 2020 and 80.3% in the first quarter of 2020. 

Also Read: TVision Launches Person-Based Advanced Audience Projections

The time spent watching AVOD grew by 200% from May 2020 to May 2021, according to TVision. During the same period, time spent with SVOD climbed 100% and time spent with linear viewing dropped by 13%.

The number of apps per TV is falling, TVision found. In the first quarter, the average TV had 6.9 apps, down from 7.1 in the third quarter of 2020 and a peak of 7.6 in the second quarter. But the number of apps remains higher than the 6.3 found in the first quarter of 2020.

Also Read: Seven Is Enough: Number of Streaming Services Used By U.S. Consumers Drops For The First Time

TVision said the drop might indicate that viewers have found their favorites after seeking out new options at the beginning of the pandemic.

Netflix was installed in 85.4% of homes with more than seven apps and in 22.3% of the homes with just one app. Hulu was second in both categories. In homes with 7 or more apps Amazon Prime was tied for second, followed by Disney Plus and HBO Max. HBO Max was third in homes with just one app, followed by Disney Plus and Prime Video.

TVision focuses on viewer attention and found that SVOD commands the most attention from viewers, with a 106.5 attention index. MVPD app have a 106.3 index, with linear at 100 and AVOD at 92.5.

The top apps for commercial attention were fuboTV, Tablo, CBS All Access (now the ad-supported tier of Paramount Plus), Xfinity and AT&T TV Now. TVision notes that attention is normally lower for sports than for other programming genres. “It is possible that fuboTV delivers high attention because its viewers are intentionally seeking this content and therefore are more attentive, engaged fans,” TVision said.

The AVOD programs that delivered the highest attention were Hulu’s Letterkenny, Paramount Plus’ Star Trek: Discovery, Hulu’s The Hardy Boys, Hulu’s The Sister and Hulu’s A Teacher.

Peacock had the most binged AVOD show with Punky Brewster and the most co-viewed show with John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise.

TVision noted that while Netflix’s practice of dropping all the episodes of a  series at one generates more episodes viewed per viewers close to the release date, but over the longer run, shows released weekly drove longer-term viewer engagement.

While CTV is growing as a commercial media, some marketers have questions about how the measure CTV commercials and benchmark their performance against competitors.

TVision launched a planning tool for CTV.

“CTV advertising is no longer just an experiment, but a critical element of media campaigns and it needs to be measured effectively,” explains Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “With the major apps controlling the performance data that they share, it has been hard for marketers to standardize measurement across apps and linear TV. Our CTV Planning tool is the industry’s answer to the walled gardens, allowing for transparent measurement.”

TVision said its tool enables advertisers to evaluate viewer engagement across both linear TV and CTV. The tool provides attention and engagement insights into 130 channels, 16,000 hours of CTV content and more than 75,000 ads. 

“The opportunity to make an impact with CTV advertising is significant - it’s why brands are increasing budget allocation in this area,” said Mike Perlman, CRO of TVision. “But when it comes to effectively planning an ad campaign that spans CTV and linear, brands are hamstrung by a lack of transparency. Our CTV Planning tool solves this problem.”

The TVision study covered data collected from Jan. 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021 from 5,000 homes across the U.S.

Remember way back in around 2017 or so, how skinny bundles were supposed to be the cure to a mildly concerning phenomenon called cord cutting? They were going to provide a cheaper, slimmer online version of the traditional cable bundle, and it seemed like a smart way to keep a relationship with increasingly disaffected customers, paying something for traditional “TV.”

Virtual MVPDs, as the industry awkwardly calls them, even held the promise of offering new kinds of TV programming bundles, better targeted to specific niches of viewers, like those who loved lifestyle and reality shows but didn’t care about sports. 

So how’s that going these days? The question arose again this past week, after T-Mobile summarily shuttered its five-month-old skinny bundles, collectively called T-Vision, and swapped in partnerships with two incumbents, Philo and YouTube TV.

One can’t help wondering what new CEO Mike Sievert’s brain trust was thinking as they prepared to launch T-Vision last year. Days after launch, media partners roasted the wireless carrier over which tier their networks got position, with conglomerates like Discovery unhappy with confined of their channels to the $10-a-month “Vice” tier. 

T-Mobile backed off quickly, but that unforced error called into question the venture’s economics, and whether T-Mobile even knew how to run a TV service. 

That was certainly a good question to ask regardless. It’s not like wireless carriers have had unbridled success running content services and aggregators. Just look at Verizon’s ill-fated forays with Go90, AOL, Yahoo, Huffington Post and Tumblr. 

Similarly, AT&T just unwound part of its ill-fated $49 billion acquisition of satellite service DirecTV, selling a minority stake to TPG at a  sharply discounted enterprise valuation of just $16 billion. Presiding over a two-thirds plunge in value in less than six years is some kind of achievement, but not one you’d think anyone wants to replicate. 

Of course, we’re still waiting to see how the $85 billion Time Warner deal works out for AT&T. HBO Max had a crummy launch last year, further complicated by the early days of the pandemic, but seems to be finding its feet. 

But it may take years before HBO Max makes money. In the meantime, AT&T must keep building out an extraordinarily expensive 5G wireless network while paying down $150 billion in debt. 

So, the best thing to say about TVision is that T-Mobile quickly killed off a bad idea, and signed deals to offer discounted services from two companies that actually know what they’re doing. 

The YouTube TV deal expands an existing relationship with Google, knitting T-Mobile further in with one of the world’s largest advertising and technology companies. 

The Philo deal is new, sending bargain-hunting customers to a small, smart and nimble indie that’s kept its main tier trim and affordable, just like what skinny bundles originally were supposed to be. 

But T-Mobile’s smart pivot still doesn’t paper over the bigger problems facing the skinny bundle business.

Cord cutting accelerated during the pandemic, plunging pay-TV household penetration rates to 1990s levels. And that plunge accelerated despite the addition of several million skinny bundle subscribers. Advertisers followed eyeballs, especially on in-app advertising on connected TVs, according to new figures from Google.

Those aren’t good trends for the future of traditional TV, even virtual versions of it. 

As analysts LightShed Partners pointed out in a January post, “Unless there is an ulterior motive to your vMVPD ambitions (such as YouTube TV’s goal of bringing more ad buyers into the YouTube ecosystem or Hulu Live’s goal of inflating ESPN’s subscriber base), it is increasingly clear that a standalone vMVPD is simply a bad business.”

To begin with, any chance of rebuilding the channel bundle from scratch—that long-ago dream—is now largely gone. Big media companies have used their leverage through broadcast retransmission agreements and the most sought-after cable networks to force vMVPDs to look more like MVPDs, with all the lesser channels most audiences don’t care about. 

Worse, prices are creeping up, undercutting skinny bundles’ other main attraction. Networks keep raising prices, and service providers can’t afford not to pass along the costs to consumers.

Prices for the leading services now sit around $65 a month, with largely similar collections of channels. Worse, for the services that feature some sports networks (none have all of them), prices are about to get a lot higher as new rights deals roll in. 

The lone exception is Philo. As LightShed suggested, the company “has stuck to its unique offering of general entertainment networks, without any expensive sports networks (no retrans, no national or regional sports networks) at a $20/month price point.”

But the discipline shown by Philo’s operators is uncommon. Most of Philo’s competitors have been force-fed a fattening, expensive diet of unnecessary channels, made worse by those sports programming costs. 

And all of this is happening amid the greatest threat to all MVPDs, traditional or virtual: the flight of the best content from networks on the traditional bundle to streaming apps owned by the same companies or their big tech competition. 

Netflix this week signed a whopping $450 million deal for two sequels to the hugely successful Knives Out film from last year. Apple paid a record amount for Sundance darling CODA two months ago. Amazon has been splashing large checks around too.

And as competition hits new levels, NBCUniversal may pull its licensed shows on Netflix and HBO Max early, to put them on Peacock, Bloomberg reported. 

That potential move suggests the urgency with which media companies are moving to get distinctive, differentiating shows onto their own streaming services, rather than just counting the easy money of licensing revenue. 

If companies are willing to do that to lucrative deals with outside partners, think how aggressively they’re likely to be harvesting the most attractive shows from within their own corporate families. 

And more generally, that’s the long-term challenge of the now-mesomorphic bundles amid a step change in the ways we watch television. The literal bottom line:  If big streamers are giving you more high-level shows, with more flexibility and roughly the same price or less, why would you bother with a skinny—or even a pudgy— bundle at all?

In years to come, T-Mobile’s decision to shut down its Tvision linear TV service just five months after launch may be cited as the canary in the coal mine, signaling an even more rapid decline for traditional linear pay TV than we’ve come to expect.

Yes, there were problems--T-Mobile somehow forgot to ask companies like Discovery if it could put their various networks on the lower priced version of the app (something even the most junior lawyer should have flagged for them.) MobiTV, who built the underlying platform for the app, went bankrupt last month, which did not help much, either.  

So much for that $325 million Layer 3 purchase.

And of course 5G, or fixed 5G to the home to be exact, the original raison d’etre behind TVision, has yet to materialize in a major way and probably won’t any time in the foreseeable future.

But mostly, the reason TVision failed is that nobody needs yet another full on linear pay TV service, virtual or otherwise.

With nine multi-billion-dollar Flixes up and running, along with about as many FASTs and dozens of niche services, consumers are figuring out that there’s more and better programming on streaming than on traditional cable … all for considerably less money. 

So the push is going to be to move away from traditional pay TV, not towards it.

That said, there are several things still keeping consumers from making that move.

The first is inertia: while many viewers are indeed unhappy with their current pay TV packages, many are not. All the talk about the “massive wave of cord cutting” causes us to forget that something like 75% of U.S. households still subscribe to pay TV.  While that’s not nearly as many as subscribed five years ago, it’s still nothing close to a “massive wave” and many of those viewers are quite happy with what they’ve got.

That satisfaction is in no small part due to some smart moves on the part of their providers: companies like Comcast have integrated Netflix—and most recently, Disney Plus—into the main menu of their program guides,  so consumers don’t have to go “off premises” to watch them, lulling them into complacency.

That said, inertia can only take you so far. And as production picks back up, and the buzz about what to watch increasingly becomes about what’s on streaming, viewers who were previously thrilled to have hundreds of cable channels to click through are going to be feeling major FOMO about all those streaming channels they don’t have.

Then there’s news and sports.

RIght now, there’s no real way to watch CNN unless you have a pay TV subscription. Yes, many of the FASTs have a CNN channel with fairly recent clips on it, but it’s not the live version.

Tubi and Amazon have both been working to curate news offerings--both have gone heavy on local news by working with players like Hearst and Tegna. And apps like Haystack also offer local news, but it’s not the full four affiliate local news play that many viewers, older viewers in particular, are used to.

That should change over the next year or two as more local broadcasters make the move to streaming, at least for their news channels, and AT&T finds a buyer for CNN who can then figure out streaming distribution. (As for the other national cable players, Fox has an outlet in Tubi and MSNBC has one in Peacock. But oddly enough, only Paramount Plus, which has the CBSN national feed and local affiliate feeds has been actively promoting their national news chops.)

Sports is an even bigger hurdle, at least for now, and the result is that sports fans are reluctant to cut their ties with cable lest they be left unable to watch their favorite teams.

That is changing though, slowly but surely.

The NFL’s new 11-year deal gave Thursday night rights to Amazon and allows NBC, CBS and ABC to stream the games they have the rights to, even the Super Bowl. So Peacock, Paramount Plus and ESPN Plus are in luck.

That still leaves RSN (regional sports network) fans who may have some salvation coming next year when Ballys and Sinclair launch apps for the former Fox RSNs, which, thanks to the Ballys sponsorship, should be fairly reasonably priced. But that’s just 19 markets, not the whole country, so a lot of fans will still be tied to cable. For now, anyway.

Which brings us back to T-Mobile and TVision.

T-Mobile likely gave up on TVision because they realized there wasn’t a market for a full-bore pay TV service anymore. That after a nice run-up, the vMVPDs had sort of stalled out; they were the nicotine patches of the pay TV world, the fix that viewers needed before they fully weaned themselves off the 500 channel universe. (It’s not just coincidence that two of the most successful vMVPDs offer close to 100 channels each.) 

T-Mobile probably also realizes that if anyone was going to try giving up pay TV, it was the people paying for it monthly, not the ones with the two-year, triple-play deals.

Which is not to say that pay TV is going to implode tomorrow. Or even next year or three years from now. Just that T-Mobile’s surrender is TV’s Stalingrad, the moment the tide turned inexorably in the opposite direction.

That was fast.

TVision, T-Mobile’s vaunted “uncarrier” reinvention of the pay TV business, is exiting the market, literally just six months after it launched. 

T-Mobile announced Monday that it will “wind down” TVision’s Vibe and Live tiers on April 29. As part of a newly announced broad-ranging deal with Google, the wireless company has tapped Google’s virtual MVPD, YouTube TV, as its official premium pay TV service. T-Mobile will also promotionally bundle another vMVPD, Philo.

Also read analyst Alan Wolk's take on the surprise shuttering: T-Mobile’s Surrender Is a Landmark Defeat for Traditional Pay TV

TVision Live and Vibe customers can get $10 a month off the $64.99-a-month YouTube TV and the $20-a-month Philo services for as long as they are T-Mobile customers. 

In addition, TVision Live customers will get a month free of YouTube TV, plus a month gratis of the $11.99-a-month YouTube Premium. Vibe customers get a free month of Philo. 

In a note to customers from T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, the company conceded the announcement “may surprise some people.” (You think?)

But a lot has changed since early November, when T-Mobile began offering a virtual pay TV service built on a diversity of tiers and hardware options, some of them proprietary. The TVision service was ultimately intended to underpin T-Mobile’s fixed 5G offering. 

“Innovation seldom follows a straight line,” Sievert said. “Since launching the TVision initiative, we’ve learned a lot about the TV industry, about streaming products, and of course, about TV customers.”

For starters, T-Mobile learned that there’s a reason the linear pay TV companies it has mocked for so many years are weighed down so much by their programming contracts. T-Mobile launched trying to simultaneously market a super-skinny, $10-a-month entertainment-only, Philo-like “Vibe” tier, next to a more robust, more traditional looking trio of “Live” bundles. That revolutionary approach didn't end well. 

Almost immediately, programmers including Discovery pushed back, demanding that their networks not be confined to to just Vibe. 

T-Mobiile undoubtedly avoided lawsuits by adding 33 Vibe networks to its base Live bundle at no extra costs to customers. But it seemed to sink its economic model in the process. The writing on the wall was clear in February, when the company didn’t mention its TVision product even once during its second-quarter earnings call. 

The next shoe dropped in early March, when MobiTV, the provider of the video software on which TVision is based, announced its bankruptcy … and that its largest customer, T-Mobile, was giving it $15.5 million in bailout money. 

And then there’s the whole notion of fixed 5G being a legit competitor to cable. The fast-rising usage of wireline networks, post pandemic, has revealed that wireless companies might not have the network capacities to come through on this challenge to cable’s wireline market share. And if you want to bundle video to the limited number of fixed 5G customers you do obtain, there's no shame in bundling a third-party vMVPD vs. rolling out your own expensive proprietary TV service.

“With our TV software provider encountering some financial challenges and with our broader, strategic partnerships with Google and Philo, we saw an opportunity to deliver unique value to our customers and strengthen the TVision initiative with the best partners,” Sievert said. 

For T-Mobile, Monday's announcement puts a coda on bold proclamations made back in December 2017, when the company first touted its entry into the pay TV business with the acquisition of concierge cable provider Layer3 TV for $325 million. 

The hottest new “TV” company out there just might be a mobile phone provider. More interestingly, it’s not long-time telecom giant AT&T, which bought what’s now called WarnerMedia for $85 billion back in 2018, and has launched streaming service HBO Max. 

No, the potential new video contender is “Uncarrier” T-Mobile, which is coming off a remarkable 2020, where it finally completed a $37 billion merger with Sprint after two years, three attempts, a court challenge and much other drama.  

That would have made 2020 monumental enough in the 13-year history of the Deutsche Telekom U.S. subsidiary. But there’s plenty more going on. 

As part of the Sprint deal, for instance, T-Mobile is selling low-end provider Boost Mobile (along with spectrum and other assets) to Dish TV, which hopes to transform from bargain-rate satellite TV company to replace Sprint as the nation’s No. 4 wireless service. 

Also last year, “New T-Mobile” issued the 2020's largest bond sale, $19 billion, to finance part of the Sprint acquisition. Separately, T-Mobile announced an expected $6 billion in merger savings and named a new CEO to succeed the flamboyant John Legere (with a new CFO on the way). 

New T-Mobile’s new CEO, Mike Sievert, said the company would immediately begin “lighting up” more components of its 5G network, which already covers about 200 million Americans. 

T-Mobile also has surprised observers by quickly adding loaned spectrum to its network under a federal effort to make underutilized bandwidth available to wireless providers amid the pandemic. 

Oh, and there’s that COVID-19 pandemic, which promises to complicate a great many companies’ plans for months or years to come. The continued lockdown and potentially lengthy recession likely will depress consumer appetite for expensive 5G-enabled phones, or the data plans for those networks.

In that regard, T-Mobile may be well positioned. Under terms of the Sprint merger, it already had committed to not raise prices for three years, and not to charge more for 5G access. For bargain hunters wanting to upgrade, it may be the place to go.

As it is, analysts estimate that T-Mobile already typically charges 10% - 20% less than industry behemoths Verizon and AT&T. That may be a big advantage in the 5G rollout, especially if a COVID-19 recession proves durable and deep.

T-Mobile claims its low-band Extended Range 5G network already covers more than 1.6 million square miles and 280 million people in 5,000 cities and towns. The initial network is on the 600 MHZ band, and will expand to its big supply of  2.5 GHz spectrum during the Sprint consolidation. The company also touts its Ultra Capacity 5G (mid-band and mmWave), which reaches 106 million people in 2,400 cities and towns.

Overall, the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint gives the combined company 140 million connections, putting it between AT&T (166 million subscribers) and Verizon (122 million) in market share. 

Magenta Haze

Amid all this, T-Mobile is continuing to get involved in the distribution of streaming video of various sorts. 

For several years now, T-Mobile has given subscribers a free year of Netflix as part of its most popular multiline plans. And before the merger, Sprint gave its customers free Hulu. 

Now, new customers are getting Netflix Basic for free.

T-Mobile also launched its own take on a not-very-skinny bundle, or virtual MVPD, about a year before the merger. 

TVision, which is based on the same SEI Robotics HDMI dongle used for Dish Network’s Android TV-powered connected TV product, AirTV Mini, offers 154 channels (in my zip code, before 275 add-ons), 1 terabyte of DVR storage (about 400 hours of recordings), integration with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, and access to streaming services and social media. All that costs $90 for the base package, before all those add-ons. 

TVision doesn’t break much ground compared to other increasingly pudgy and pricey bundles of traditional TV channels delivered over broadband, such as Hulu + Live TV and Google TV. 

Also Read: T-Mobile’s TVision: It’s the Video Multitool that Wireless Rivals AT&T and Verizon Lack (Review)

What is different, however, is what T-Mobile promises that TVision will become.

“Though currently on wired broadband, we’re planning for a 5G future where wireless broadband will replace home internet,” the company said on its TVision website. "That means millions across America will finally free themselves from expensive, unreliable cable companies once and for all.”

“Fixed wireless” is what the phone companies call the wireless 5G modems they want to place in customers’ homes to supersede the cable companies’ hard-wired broadband systems. 

With 5G, analysts estimate that T-Mobile will be able to realize speed gains of perhaps eight times today’s broadband within a couple of years. Within six years, when T-Mobile plans to finish building out its network, 5G speeds could hit 15 times the current speed of broadband. 

That kind of speed and low latency could be a game-changer, enabling everywhere access to everything from augmented/virtual reality experiences to cloud-based video-game streaming to interactive online video, especially if it’s overlaid with data services for pursuits such as sports gambling. 

And, as the pandemic is showing, the potential for living-room-based performances, classes, talk shows and more of increasing sophistication and production values are likely to create new kinds of content opportunities. 

Fixed wireless in the home, even in homes in the relatively remote communities where some portion of the population is likely to move in coming months, could make all that possible. 

Also Read: Fixed and Dilated

The FCC approved the T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint in part because it could help drive 5G adoption, but also because the agency said it could help bridge the digital divide for households not currently served by cable, or unable to afford their neighborhood’s only provider.  

Offering most of the goodies of traditional TV with more flexibility on price/delivery pipe/location is one way T-Mobile hopes to entice new customers. It also may help justify the expected $40 billion investment T-Mobile will need to build out its 5G network. 

Though Verizon is likely to have an early advantage in the 5G rollout, thanks to a couple of Qualcomm technologies, some analysts suggest T-Mobile may be better positioned over the long run.

The key will be getting all the Sprint spectrum fully deployed, according to Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone of Lightshed Partners. Once in place  as soon as next year, that plentiful spectrum should provide T-Mobile with a significant advantage.

“We believe T-Mobile will ultimately execute on this opportunity, but the integration of Sprint, clean-up of the 2.5 GHz spectrum, and changing management team could create a bumpy ride over the next six months,” Piecyk and Galone wrote in a recent report. “The closing of the deal will be a positive catalyst, but what follows next is less certain.”

Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritsche suggested in a report that T-Mobile is more vulnerable to a recession’s depredations, because its business is almost all wireless, and thus more dependent on subscriber growth to drive service revenues.

Over the past five years, T-Mobile stock rose an estimable 176%, thanks to growing subscriber and revenue numbers under Legere, who remains on the company board. It’ll be difficult to match those gains going forward, at least for a while. 

The mobile market has matured. Most users have “unlimited”data plans, and they’re upgrading handsets less frequently. The pandemic isn’t translating to more mobile usage as homebound customers watch more streaming video over WiFi on bigger screens. The burgeoning recession definitely won’t encourage splurging.

More importantly, T-Mobile is navigating a 3D chess version of corporate transformation. It’s negotiating a leap to powerful new distribution technologies amid significant political crosswinds, merging complex tech systems, breaking in new top executives, and doing it all amid a world-changing pandemic and recession. 

Amid all that, can a remade T-Mobile also become a media power, providing millions of people with fast, cheap, and powerful bandwidth and entertainment wherever they are? Can it be more than just a third-string mobile carrier with a garish brand color and equally noisy (if effective) CEO? 

That’s T-Mobile’s next challenge after a prodigiously transformative April. It should be a remarkable year to come.

The day after the Super Bowl is a big day for TV research companies looking to measure the impact and popularity of commercials that aired during the big games.

Different companies single out different ads, depending on what they’re looking for and the methodologies they use.

For example, analytics software company EDO said the ad for Dexcom with diabetic Nick Jonas was the commercial that best engaged consumers.

EDO said the Dexcom ad drove 11 times more consumer search than the media ad in Super Bowl LV. Dexcom, a first time Super Bowl advertiser was helped by the absence of a number of prominent brands that sat out the game, EDO said.

Another research company, TVision, which measures attention and engagement, said that the ad with the highest Creative Attention Score was for State Farm with Drake from State Farm joining Jack from State Farm (as well as Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rogers.

The other commercials with top 10 Creative Attention Scores were for Tums, Zyrtec, Reddit, Skechers, Neutrogena, Geico, Verizon, Disney Plus’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, YouTube TV and M&Ms.

TVision said ads in the fourth quarter had the highest overall Creative Attention Score, followed by the post-game show.

EDO’s ranking are based on how effectively they drive consumers to search online for the brand or product in the minutes following the ad airing.

“The Super Bowl is the most powerful event on TV for advertisers because, on top of the huge audience, the average viewer is 4.6 times as likely to search for a brand advertised during the game compared to everyday primetime TV,” said Kevin Krim, president & CEO of EDO, Inc. “But the ads that drive watercooler talk because they’re funny or heartwarming are not necessarily those that actually drive viewers to engage with the brand.”

Read Also: Paramount Plus Gets Big Chunk of Super Bowl Promo Time

Here’s how the Top 10 ads stacked up according to EDO: Dexcom was followed by Inspiration4, Jeep, Cadillac Lyriq, Disney Plus’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Dr. Squatch, Paramount Plus, Mountain Dew Major Melon, Bud Light and the M. Night Shyamalan film Old.

EDO also gauged the star power of celebrities who appeared in Super Bowl commercials.

Its top 10 in engaging consumers were Gwen Stefani in Finding the Right One for T-Mobile, Blake Shelton in Finding the Right One for T-Mobile, Ashton Kutcher in It Wasn’t Me for Cheetos; Mila Kunis in It Wasn’t Me for Cheetos, John Travolta in Keep Growing for Scotts Miracle-Gro, Bruce Springsteen in The Middle for Jeep, Shaggy in It Wasn’t Me for Cheetos, Nick Jonas in The Future That's Available Now for Dexcom, Jason Alexander in The Jason Alexander Hoodie for Tide, and Cardi B in Shameless Manipulation for Uber Eats.

TVision also noted that 20.5% of households with Roku or Chromecast devices streamed the game, including 5.5% of viewers described as “heavy” NFL viewers. Of the viewers who chose to stream the game, the vast majority were viewers of NFL games throughout the season.

How relevant has T-Mobile’s TVision pay TV platform become just three months after its relaunch? Let’s just say neither T-Mobile executives or investment analysts mentioned it once during Thursday’s fourth-quarter earnings call. 

The complete silence followed T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert’s concession last month at another investor event that TVision is “neither a massive cost center or a massive profit center.” He seemed to dismiss the service as an add-on to soon-to-expand fixed 5G home internet offerings. 

How did T-Mobile go from declaring an “Uncarrier” revolution on pay TV to … just ignoring the whole thing?

In December 2017, when it announced its purchase of Layer3 TV, the wireless company promised to “fix the pain” of pay TV, plying its maverick Uncarrier brand to hidden fees, contracts and ever-spiraling program licensing costs. 

Also Read: T-Mobile’s TVision: It’s the Video Multitool that Wireless Rivals AT&T and Verizon Lack (Review)

It took T-Mobile nearly two years to reinvent the Layer3 TV business and technology model with a new virtual, Android TV-based platform that stood out from other vMVPDs based on how it bundled its networks. 

But T-Mobile’s content partners, notably Discovery, pushed back almost immediately at having their channels confined to the $10-a-month “Vibe” tier, but left out of the pricier, more traditionally robust, sports-inclusive “Live” bundles. 

T-Mobile seems to have avoided some court dates by quickly pivoting its strategy, adding 33 networks that had previously only been available in the super-skinny Vibe tier to the three Live packages, and not upping the consumer price for any of them. 

But in the process, it just may have sunk the TVision business model. 

T-Mobile not only failed to mention any TVision subscriber growth, or strategies for enabling such expansion, it also didn’t disclose any timeline for when the service might be available to consumers outside of T-Mobile’s wireless subscriber ranks. 

Does T-Mobile still even want the service to grow, given the hit TVision margins probably took when the wireless company tweaked its bundles?

For T-Mobile, which reached 102.1 million customers in the fourth quarter, the fixation remains the proliferation of 5G. Net customer additions during Q4 totaled 1.7 million, the 24th consecutive quarter in which T-Mobile has led the U.S. wireless industry in customer growth.

Lately, the company has been using the draw of unlimited 5G service to sustain that growth. And that’s not coming inexpensively, either, with T-Mobile conceding Thursday that 5G users consume 15% more data vs. legacy 4G LTE customers. 

So how is T-Mobile’s long-awaited “Uncarrier” revolution of pay TV service going a little more than 60 days after launch?

Meh.

“It’s neither a massive cost center or a massive profit center,” said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, speaking Wednesday at the Citi 2021 Global TMT West Conference.

The virtual pay TV service, branded TVision, is fulfilling its role as an option for T-Mobile to offer TV service to customers who purchase 5G fixed broadband service. For now, it remains confined to T-Mobile customers, as well as those belonging to recent acquisition Sprint. 

Also Read: T-Mobile’s TVision: It’s the Video Multitool that Wireless Rivals AT&T and Verizon Lack (Review)

Sievert, along with T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray, spent the bulk of Wednesday’s discussion focused on 5G rollout and wireless customer growth initiatives. 

Absolutely no tidbits were offered in terms of TVision customer growth or usage.

TVision offers three traditional-looking mid-range vMVPD bundles, starting at $40 a month, along with a somewhat revolutionary $10-a-month bundle featuring a smattering of popular entertainment networks. Almost immediately following its launch of the service at the beginning of November, T-Mobile was challenged by its program licensing partners, namely ViacomCBS and Discovery, for its method of dividing channels among its tiers.

Some didn’t like the way they were confined to the $10-a-month tier. 

T-Mobile’s answer was to offer any customer signing up for the three bigger “Live TV” tiers access to the cheaper, super-skinny “Vibe” channels.

The question is, how much did this undermine the TVision business model? 

iSpot said it can now  provide media buyers and advertisers with the age and sex demographic information used for transactions in addition to its measurement of cross-screen audiences and business outcomes.

Co-viewing information is also part of iSpot’s new capabilities.

While media planners are increasing building campaigns based on specific target audiences--such as truck buyers--most deals are still done based on which age bracket the viewers are in and whether they’re male or female.

Related: iSpot Measuring Addressable ads under Project OAR Specs

Being able to apply the same age and demo information used for buying linear to the fast-growing connected TV ad market should help media buyers shift dollars to CTV, according to iSpot CEO Sean Muller.

Related: Nielsen Sets Major Changes in Program, Ad Measurement

Ratings leader Nielsen this week announced its plan to offer a unified ratings system called Nielsen One that offers cross-platform ratings for content and impress-level date for individual commercials. Nielsen will roll out its product in the fourth quarter of 2022.

iSpot gets household viewing information from a large-scale panel of millions of Vizio smart sets. It’s using data from Epsilon to identify who is in particular households and is working with TVision to figure out which member of the household is watching programming on a particular device.

As more consumers stream video content, the ad industry is looking for comparable ways to measure over-the-top viewing and traditional linear TV. 

“We’ve been doing unified cross-screen measurement for years,” said Muller. “Really what’s new right now is the introduction of person level measurement across both linear and streaming.”

Muller noted that ads on both linear TV and streaming are still bought based on age and gender demographics. 

“What the industry needs is one simple system that can count all that across linear and streaming using the traditional age and gender system, but then connecting it to outcomes,” he said. “That’s what iSpot’s able to do that nobody else can do today.”

Most of the spending on connected TV and streaming is coming from TV budgets and TV buyers and not from digital ad budgets. With linear ratings down, advertisers are looking to follow consumers to streaming platforms. “That is why this release is so critical for dollars to flow between linear and CTV,” Muller said.

The person-level reporting is integrated into iSpot’s measurement offering inside the platforms of measurement partners such as The Trade Desk, which brands can purchase with campaigns on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis to verify the incremental reach provided by CTV investments across TTD’s portfolio. The measurement capability also is powering TV ad insights for Neustar, Oracle’s Moat, OpenAP and  Cox Media’s Gamut. 

Related: Apollo's Gamut to Use iSpot Unified Measurement

“Because we were using measurements that spanned OTT and linear, we could analyze how responses compared side-by-side,” said Diana Boyles, VP of marketing at HomeAdvisor, which has used iSpot's new capabilities. “We learned that when someone sees a linear and OTT ad, there is a greater likelihood of responding. Moreover, we saw that people exposed only to OTT ads were very likely to convert. We were able to prove that we were reaching a net new audience for our brand that was performing very well. Last year we tested seven new streaming partners using iSpot Unified Measurement, and ended up more than doubling our spend on streaming.”

Beset with complaints from programmers for the way it’s organized channels across tiers for its new TVision virtual MVPD, T-Mobile has announced that all 33 channels available in its $10-a-month “Vibe” package will now also be available in its “Live” tiers, which start at $40 a month. 

T-Mobile buried the announcement under a litany of holiday deals, but really this seemingly unsustainable scheme amounts to a quick fix.

Also read: Discovery is in Dispute With T-Mobile Over TVision

Programmers including Discovery and ViacomCBS had complained in recent weeks that T-Mobile was violating their program licensing agreements, positioning their channels in the low-end Vibe tier, but not the three fatter Live packages. 

“We’re in active discussion with them to quickly resolve that issue. We don’t believe they have the right to do what they’re doing right now,” Discovery CEO David Zaslav told investors earlier this month. 

NBCUniversal, meanwhile, complained that its contract called for its local broadcast stations to be carried across TVision tiers. 

T-Mobile introduced a radically revamped pay TV platform at the beginning of November, replacing the legacy TVision service that was based on its $325 million purchase of Layer3 TV in early 2018. 

Under former CEO John Legere at the time, T-Mobile loudly declared that it was going to disrupt the U.S. TV distribution business in the same “Uncarrier” style that it used to affect the U.S. wireless industry. 

Also read: T-Mobile’s TVision: It’s the Video Multitool that Wireless Rivals AT&T and Verizon Lack (Review)

But last week, T-Mobile announced the shuttering of the legacy TVision product Layer3 was based on, rendering the expensive acquisition essentially a write-down—and exposing T-Mobile as perhaps biting off a little more than it can chew in terms of trying to reinvent the video business. 

What was particularly notable about the new TVision was the differentiation of the Vibe tier, which bundled 33 entertainment channels that weren’t available in other TVision tiers, at an unbeatable $10 price.

Now that T-Mobile has to pay the freight for these networks for more of its customers, it’s hard to know how sustainable the program licensing economics will be for the company, and whether it can continue to offer Vibe at $10 a month. (Guess: It's probably not sustainable at all.)

The Live packages, meanwhile, start at $40 a month for 30-plus channels, with the base including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Disney, ESPN, FS1, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox Business Network, TBS, TNT, as well as local ABC, Fox and NBC stations in many bigger markets. These Live bundles will now swell to a base of nearly 70 channels, also seemingly unsustainable at $40 a month.

Notably, vMVPD market leader Hulu just raised the price of its live-streamed bundle, which includes around 70 channels, to $64.99 a month, matching the price point of the No. 2 service YouTube TV.

TVision, which measures TV commercial engagement, said it has begun projecting audiences at the personal level for advanced advertising players including Oracle Data Cloud, Xandr, VideoAmp and iSpot.

TVision said the companies it works with can combine its Advanced Audience Projections with their own census data to project individual behaviors across similar homes, allowing them to more precisely target campaigns.

“Incorporating TVision data into our data-driven advertising platform maximizes the value we can drive to media owners and media buyers,” said Jason Burke, VP, strategy at AT&T’s Xandr unit. “This powerful big data set allows for planning, optimizing and measuring person-level association of premium video viewership, which is a critical element of TV advertising.” 

Also Read: TVision Launches CTV Ad Measurement Platform

The AAP data set can be used for TV attribution at the person level, reach and frequency analysis, co-viewing valuation and cross-platform measurement.

"Person-level data is a key component to measuring ad performance as we work to help advertisers understand true reach, and attention for their TV ads. With TVision AAP we are able to add a deeper layer of insights to our already robust measurement offering," said Robert Bareuther, senior VP, business development at iSpot.tv.

“With TVision AAP we can deliver the granular and actionable insights on audience attention and viewing patterns to complete the cross-platform picture our customers are asking for. By meeting this critical market need, we can now provide a more comprehensive and individual level view of consumers and how they engage and respond to ads across all of the touch-points in their day,” added Kevin Whitcher, VP of new product development at Moat by Oracle Data Cloud. 

Also Read: As Viewing Rose, Attention Fell, TVision Report Finds

TVision provides TV buyers and sellers with detailed, granular data TV viewing behaviors, including attention and engagement via its software as a service platform.

“Households do not view ads. People view ads. But previously our industry has only been able to measure TV ad reach at the household level. AAP solves this problem,” said Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “The industry is now able to support various data applications such as TV attribution, reach and frequency optimization at the individual level, in a manner similar to digital.”

As the drum-tight pay TV market tries to make room for yet another skinny-bundle competitor, two virtual operators, Sling TV and Philo, seem most exposed. 

And executives for these embattled incumbents have taken notice. 

“It’s a very competitive product,” said Erik Carlson, CEO of Sling TV parent company Dish Network, speaking during Friday’s third-quarter earnings call. “it’s something that they’ve been working on a while since they acquired Layer3 TV. And we’re just looking forward to try to compete against them.”

“I think the offering from T-Mobile is really interesting,” added Philo CEO Andrew McCollum, speaking Monday during Questex-produced virtual conference the StreamTV Show. 

Also Read: TVision: The Video Multi-Tool T-Mobile’s Wireless Rivals Lack

For Philo, the “interest” lies in TVision’s “Vibe” tier, which packages over 30 entertainment-oriented cable networks, much of the selection overlapping with the $20-a-month Philo, for just $10 a month.

“Comparing the prices directly isn’t fair,” McCollum pointed out, noting that TVision Vibe customers have to pay $5 a month for a DVR while Philo offers one for free. And Vibe’s DVR is capped at 100 hours of HD recording vs. unlimited storage for Philo. 

“Also, you only get two streams instead of three” with Vibe,” he added, “and it’s not available on Roku. It’s only available on T-Mobile postpaid.” 

McCollum also pointed out T-Mobile’s early carriage kerfuffles with Discovery Networks, ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal over channel positioning, Discovery, for instance, is miffed about being relegated to Vibe and not included in the more traditional-looking, $40-a-month TVision Live bundle, which looks a lot like the $30-a-month Sling TV package, right down to the exclusion of CBS local channels. 

NBCU, conversely, isn’t happy about being left out of Vibe. 

“They seem to be in hot waters with their programming partners, so maybe the approach they took wasn’t calculated right…” McCollum said. 

McCollum revealed Monday that Philo has reached the 800,000 paid subscriber mark. Dish said Friday that Sling TV added 203,000 customers in Q3, marking a return to growth for the vMVPD after recessionary Q1 and Q2 periods. 

T-Mobile’s reinvention of its TVision pay TV platform falls short of the promises
made several years ago when the self-proclaimed “Uncarrier” declared disruption on the pay television business.

But while TVision may not represent a wholesale reinvention of the model, it is an elegant, versatile video platform, a multi-tool that gives T-Mobile a number of different ways to bundle TV/video as it begins to ramp up fixed 5G internet service in homes over the next few years.  Importantly, none of its major U.S. wireless competitors — AT&T, Verizon Communications or even Dish Network — have anything as good lined up. 

Classifying TVision is tough. It can be a skinny-bundle linear pay TV service, with its own Android TV “set-top”; it can be a robust standalone virtual MVPD app, playable on virtually any device other than Roku; or it can be a super-cheap, ultra-skinny bundle app, a la Philo and the erstwhile AT&T Watch, one with an even bigger grab bag of cable channels, for less money. 

At the heart of the TVision service is the TVision app, which is essentially a virtual MVPD.

Four-Tier Package

The TVision pay TV service has four tiers, including the 30-channel Live TV package for $40 a month, the 40-channel Live TV Plus bundle for $50 and the 50-channel Live TV Zone for $60. 

The base Live TV app includes local ABC, Fox and NBC stations, but no CBS. ESPN, FS1 and FS2 and TNT/TBS provide sports. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel provide news. 

The Live TV Plus upgrade adds additional sports channels (BTN and more ESPN networks) and networks like Disney Channel. Going full monty to Live TV Zone adds NFL Network, Redzone and a few regional sports channels. 

Each of the Live TV bundles includes a cloud DVR, capable of recording 100 hours worth of HD shows. 

In addition to the CBS absence, ViacomCBS cable channels such as MTV, Comedy Central and BET aren’t included in any of the three tiers. Neither is AMC. 

Notably, ViacomCBS channels and AMC are included in the entirely different Vibe tier, a $10-a-month super skinny bundle that includes a compelling grab bag of around 30 entertainment-oriented cable networks. 

TVision also lets users subscribe to premium networks through its app like Starz, Showtime and Epix.

But using the app in iOS on both an iPhone 11 and new iPad Pro, MCN found TVision far faster to load — and faster at pretty much everything — than the comparably priced Sling TV. We also found the configurable program guide far more straightforward and easier to navigate.  

If all T-Mobile wanted to do was bundle a live TV app with its wireless services, it might make more sense to market a third-party app, as Verizon does with YouTube TV.

But TVision has another gear. 

Hubba Hubba

While its platform runs on a wide variety of devices, T-Mobile gives customers the option of paying a one-time $50 charge for an HDMI dongle and remote called TVision Hub. (You can also get the pricey Apple TV 4K for $100 if you sign up for TVision by Dec. 31.)

As Android TV-powered OTT devices go, the Hub isn’t super-exceptional. It lacks search-and-recommendation features that are at the heart of TiVo’s similarly profiled Stream 4K device, for example. 

But what Hub does nicely is split the lentil between full-contract, full-fee traditional pay TV services and more simple, economical and versatile live streaming apps, turning TVision into a system that feels a little bit like one of those thin-client Android TV video systems offered by cable companies. 

That experience starts with a full-featured remote control that not only has dedicated buttons for OTT services like Netflix, but also a program guide button that takes users directly to the linear programming grid. It also has a full alpha-numeric keypad. 

The remote provides an excellent hybrid experience, combining the streamlined elegance and simplicity of an OTT device remote, complete with the requisite skinny profile. It also incorporates the more robust functionality of pay TV remotes, complete with programmable buttons that let you turn the volume up and down and the TV on and off. 

The responsiveness of the Hub dongle — manufactured by Shenzhen SEI Robotics, the same company that makes Sling TV’s AirTV companion device — felt more like a traditional pay TV set-top than an OTT service.

Notably, SEI Robotics also makes Dish Network’s AirTV device, which is the hardware complement to Sling TV. MCN also has tested the first generation of this Android TV-powered AirTV device. Using it with Sling TV, it functions nowhere nearly as smooth or fast. And that’s before you get to the clunky Sling TV app. 

Our only quibble with TVision Hub hardware is the device’s WiFi reception, which isn’t as good as that of the Roku-powered, 55-inch TCL smart TV the device was connected to. 

Discovery CEO David Zaslav said that it is currently in a dispute over how Discovery’s channels are being offered on T-Mobile’s new TVision pay-TV service.

Sources familiar with the situation said ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal have similar concerns.

Four of Discovery’s most popular networks--Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV and TLC--are being offered as part of a $10 a month Vibe skinny bundle, but are not included on higher priced packages with more channels. T-Mobile unveiled its revamped T-Vision last month.

Speaking on Discovery’s earnings call with analysts Thursday, Zaslav said T-Mobile was violating its distribution agreements with Discovery.

“We were very surprised with how T-Mobile decided that they were going to bundle our networks, particularly because we have a clear agreement where our networks are required to be carried on all their basic tiers OTT offerings,” Zaslav said.

Also Read: T-Mobile’s TVision: It’s the Video Multitool that Wireless Rivals AT&T and Verizon Lack (Review)

“So let’s just characterize it this way: We’re in active discussion with them to quickly resolve that issue. We don’t believe they have the right to do what they’re doing right now. And they know. It’s very clear to them and they’re focused on it,” he said.

For ViacomCBS, its BET and MTV channels are part of TVision's Vibe tier. But the company's other networks, including the CBS Broadcast Network, is not. 

NBCU's deal calls for NBC stations to be included in all packages, a source familiar with the situation. TVision's low-priced bundle breaches that agreement.

"The pricing structure for TVision would be quite different if they were abiding by their agreement," one observer noted.

In response to what Zaslav said, a T-Mobile spokesman provided a statement.

“TVision is off to a great start! The Un-carrier has always been about listening to customers and solving their pain points, and that’s what we’re doing with TVision. And clearly, the TV business has a lot of pain points to solve! We also want to be a great partner to media companies. We are of course complying with our content agreements, and we are absolutely open to evolving our services to make them even better for consumers. We are just getting started,” the statement said.

ViacomCBS and NBCU declined to comment. 

The dispute with T-Mobile comes as Discovery is getting closer to announcing details of its own direct-to-consumer streaming package that will include all of the Discovery brands.

Zaslav has said Discovery is looking to work with partners to distribute what is likely to be called Discovery Plus, so it would probably want to resolve its dispute with T-Mobile quickly.

T-Mobile’s reinvention of its TVision pay TV platform, which debuted Sunday, falls short of the disruptive promises made back in December 2017, when the self-proclaimed “Uncarrier" bought Layer3 TV, the cable company which, until now, had served as the foundation of TVision.

But while TVision may not represent a wholesale “Uncarrier” reinvention of the pay TV model, it’s a rather elegant, entirely versatile video platform, a multitool that gives T-Mobile a number of different ways to bundle TV/video as it begins to ramp up fixed 5G internet service in homes over the next few years. 

Also read: T-Mobile Unveils Revamped TVision Pay-TV Service

Importantly, none of its major U.S. wireless competitors—AT&T, Verizon, or even Dish Network, for that matter—have anything as good lined up to complement their respective fixed 5G offerings.

Many Things to Many Different Users

Classifying TVision is tough: It can be a skinny-bundle linear pay TV service, with its own Android TV “set-top;” it can be a robust standalone virtual MVPD app, playable on virtually any device save Roku; or it can be a super-cheap ultra-skinny bundle app, a la Philo and the erstwhile AT&T Watch, one with an even bigger grab bag of cable channels, for less money. 

TVision doesn’t do anything new. But it does a lot of things well. And T-Mobile can package it in a variety of ways. 

And if you’re looking to replace linear pay TV with a less expensive no-contract, no-fee app-based service, it’s a pretty decent option. 

At the heart of the TVision service is the TVision app, which is essentially a virtual MVPD. And save for the least expensive of the four TVision tiers, it’s not an exceptional vMVPD, but it is competent.

The TVision pay TV service has four tiers, including the 30-channel Live TV package for $40 a month, the 40-channel Live TV Plus bundle for $50, and the 50-channel Live TV Zone for $60. 

The base Live TV app includes ABC, Fox and NBC locals, but no CBS. ESPN, Fox Sports 1 & 2, and TNT/TBS provide sports; CNN, MSNBC and Fox News provide news and propaganda. 

The Live TV Plus upgrade adds additional sports channels (BTN and more ESPN networks) and networks like Disney Channel. Going Full Monty to Live TV Zone adds NFL Network, Redzone and a few regional sports channels. 

Each of the Live TV bundles includes a cloud DVR, capable of recording 100 hours worth of HD shows. 

In addition to CBS, ViacomCBS cable channels like MTV, Comedy Central and BET aren’t included in any of the three tiers. Neither is AMC. 

Notably, ViacomCBS channels and AMC are included in the entirely different Vibe tier, a $10-a-month super skinny bundle that includes a compelling grab bag of around 30 entertainment-oriented cable networks. 

TVision also lets users subscribe to premium networks through its app like Starz, Showtime and Epix. (T-Mobile is branding this as “Channels,” a la Amazon Prime Video Channels, but it’s really just bundling premium network add-ons like virtually any other pay TV service.)

At this point, the tech press has pointed to Vibe—which offers the least expensive live-programming bundle in the streaming business—as the only exceptional aspect of TVision. 

But using the app in iOS on both an iPhone 11 and new iPad Pro, I found the TVision far faster to load—and faster at pretty much everything—compared to the other vMVPD I use regularly, the comparably priced Sling TV. I also found the configurable program guide far more straight-forward and much easier to navigate.  

If all T-Mobile wanted to do was bundle a live TV app with its wireless services, it might make more sense to market a third-party apps, as Verizon does with YouTube TV. Why mess with all that expensive program licensing and what amounts to a zero-sum business?

But TVision has another gear. 

Hubba Hubba…

While its platform runs on a wide variety of devices, T-Mobile gives customers the option of paying a one-time $50 charge for an HDMI dongle and remote that it calls TV Hub. (You can also get the pricey Apple TV 4K for only $100 if you sign up for TVision by Dec. 31.)

As Android TV-powered OTT devices go, the Hub isn’t super-exceptional. Notably, it lacks innovative search-and-recommendation features that are at the heart of TiVo’s similarly profiled Stream 4K device, for example. 

But what Hub does nicely is split the lentil between full-contract, full-fee traditional pay TV services and more simple, economical and versatile live streaming apps, turning TVision into a system that feels a little bit like one of those thin-client Android TV video systems offered by cable companies. 

That experience starts with a full-featured remote control, that not only has dedicated buttons for OTT services like Netflix, but also a program guide button that takes users directly to the linear program grid. It also has a full alpha-numeric keypad. 

The remote provides an excellent hybrid experience, combining the streamlined elegance and simplicity of an OTT device remote, complete with the requisite skinny profile. It also incorporates the more robust functionality of pay TV remotes, complete with programmable buttons that let you turn the volume up and down and the TV on and off. 

The responsiveness of the Hub dongle—which is made by Shenzhen SEI Robotics, the same company that makes Sling TV’s AirTV companion device—felt more like a traditional pay TV set-top than an OTT service.

It’s notable that SEI Robotics also makes Dish Network’s AirTV device, which is the hardware compliment to Sling TV. I also have the first generation of this Android TV-powered device. Using it with Sling TV, it functions nowhere nearly as smooth or fast. And that’s before you get to the clunky Sling TV app. 

My only quibble with TVision Hub hardware was the device’s WiFi reception, which isn’t as good as the Roku-powered 55-inch TCL smart TV I had the device connected to. I had numerous buffering incidences. Admittedly, however, I live in Mid-City Los Angeles and have 200 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 broadband Service from Charter Spectrum. And as a typical Spectrum customer, I have no mesh WiFi or signal extension of any kind— “here you go” might as well be Charter’s mantra in regard to the in-home WiFi experience. And my connection speeds have been gesticulating wildly between 30 Mbps and 150 Mbps, with everyone in the neighborhood—and in my home—streaming video.

The Door Is Open

This unsatisfying internet experience, which I pay $75 a month for, is complimented by my $30-a-month bill for Sling TV, and all its clumsy technology. I also pay $164 a month for four lines of Sprint 4G LTE wireless service, which is in the process of being rebranded by new owner T-Mobile. Notably, I also pay $14 a month for Netflix, which is given to free to T-Mobile customers. 

The possible synergies of becoming a full T-Mobile family are intriguing.

What if you told me that I could upgrade my four wireless lines into a 5G plan, and also get fixed 5G wireless at a speed of around 940 Mbps in my house, all for under $200? Would that make me a T-Mobile customer today?

You throw in a robust pay TV service, with ample news and sports, that also lets me watch on any device in the house?

Sign me up, Uncarrier.

TVision is jumping into the fast-growing CTV arena with a platform that measures attention and engagement across streaming apps.

The platform operates tag-free and enables marketers to measure and optimize campaign effectiveness across streaming applications. Advertisers can also use it to measure their own campaigns as well as track competitor’s campaigns.

“The market is increasingly interested in allocating budget to CTV advertising, but marketers are challenged with measuring the effectiveness of these ads,” explains Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “New approaches to TV advertising require new approaches to measurement.”

TVision’s CTV Ad platform empowers advertisers to more effectively allocate, plan and report on their streaming ad campaigns. Leading brand advertisers are already using the TVision CTV Ad platform to review and optimize their campaigns.

Using the TVision platform advertisers and media buyers can understand the relative performance of CTV inventory across multiple applications beyond the siloed data reported by individual streaming applications.

TVision also said its platform looks at  ad performance with individuals--not households--and at the content and daypart level, in order to optimize for reach and frequency.

“The current CTV ad measurement approach relies on tagging, is heavily siloed, and reporting is limited to individual brand performance,” said Jay Altschuler, a TVision advisor who previously worked at Samsung. “TVision’s CTV Ad platform allows marketers to evaluate campaign performance in its entirety.”

Dwayne Benefield, who captained the pioneering Sony PlayStation Vue virtual pay TV service until its shuttering in January, has resurfaced at T-Mobile, under of the title of VP of entertainment.

Benefield made somewhat of a surprise appearance Tuesday morning, when T-Mobile posted a prerecorded video presentation for press of its revamped TVision pay TV platform. Benefield made an appearance, alongside T-Mobile CEO Mike Seivert and several other executives involved in the video launch. 

Also read: T-Mobile Unveils Revamped TVision Pay-TV Service

On his LinkedIn profile, Benefield says he’s been with T-Mobile since March, “Leading strategy, growth and customer engagement for Entertainment products and services.”

The services he helps create, Benefield adds, “Will leverage T-Mobile’s national wireless network, retail footprint and award-winning customer care to deliver uncarrier entertainment experiences to consumers rapidly moving to streaming media.”

T-Mobile has finally unveiled the anticipated relaunch of its TVision pay TV platform, which the so-called "Uncarrier" hopes will one day be the video compliment to its fixed 5G offerings.

The new app-based service, launching Nov. 1, will be initially offered to post-paid T-Mobile wireless customers. It’s a multi-pronged offering, built around an umbrella “TVision” app, somewhat similar in architecture to Apple TV. 

Also read: Former Sony PlayStation Vue Chief Benefield Quietly Resurfaces at T-Mobile

The TVision app is supported by iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV (or the new Chromecast with Google TV). Roku, the top connected TV device ecosystem, does not support TVision. There was no mention of support for the major gaming platforms, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation, either. 

Users can also opt to purchase T-Mobile’s $50 TVision Hub, an Android TV-powered HDMI dongle that uses the same hardware as Dish Network’s AirTV. TVision Hub includes a full-featured remote control built for TVision services, but T-Mobile doesn’t seem entirely wedded to selling its own hardware. Notably, it’s offering an $80 discount on the Cadillac of OTT devices, the Apple TV 4K, to those who sign up for premium iterations of TVision pay TV service. 

Also read: FCC Docs Take the Wraps Off TVision

As for those core pay TV services, subscribers can choose between three “TVision Live” tiers:

> The base TVision Live TV offering delivers more than 30 channels, including ABC, FOX, NBC, ESPN and TNT/TBS, in addition to a 100-hour cloud DVR, for $40 a month.

> TVision Live TV Plus adds more than 10 additional channels, including the NFL Network, ESPNU, SEC Network and Golf Channel, for $50 a month.

> TVision Live Zone tacks on another 10-plus channels, including NFL Red Zone, for $60 a month. 

Those who sign up for TVision Live TV Plus or TVision Zone by Dec. 31 can buy an Apple TV 4K from T-Mobile for only $99. 

TVision also offers a $10-a-month skinny-bundle that includes 30-plus entertainment channels—AMC, BET, Discovery, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, MTV and TLC--but no sports or news. It's much like virtual MVPD Philo TV, which offers 60 channels for $20 a month.

Notably, while offering MTV in Vibe, T-Mobile doesn’t have a carriage agreement with ViacomCBS as of yet to include CBS in its TVision Live core offering. 

None of the TVision-branded virtual pay TV services require contracts or include added fees.

In addition to its vMVPD services, the TVision app will house TVision Channels, which will enable users to subscribe in-app to programming services including Starz, Showtime and Epix. The service is similar to Amazon Prime Video Channels, which disaggregates third-party streaming services all the way down to billing. 

T-Mobile, which brands itself in the competitive U.S. wireless business as the iconoclastic "Uncarrier," started its TVision product in 2018, shortly after it purchased startup cable company Layer3 TV. At the time of the $325 million Layer3 purchase, former T-Mobile CEO John Legere said the acquisition would foundation a new kind of "Uncarrier" TV service that would meet the app-based consumption habits of modern TV consumers, sans contracts and fees. 

But for the past two years, TVision existed as largely a rebranded version of Layer3, available in finite number of  markets and built around traditional pay TV hardware, not apps. 

T-Mobile ultimately envisions TVision to be the video compliment to fixed 5G services. 

Oracle Data Cloud said it is adding attention data to its Moat Reach production, which offers real time audience measurement across digital and TV advertising.

With the TVision data, Moat Reach can tell advertisers how many people in the room are watching their commercials, whether they are co-viewing and how much attention is being captured.

Marketers can use those insights to better understand how much of their cross-platform ad spend is reaching the right audience with an impression they actually see to iterate and optimize their campaigns in the future.

“We are excited to work with Moat Reach to combine our person-level, second-by-second TV attention data with their digital attention metrics. Attention is the most valuable resource to measure campaign engagement, and Moat Reach, with TVision data, allows brands and advertisers to drive the most value from their ad budgets,” said Yan Liu, CEO and co-founder of TVision.

“This is a first, but vitally important, step to allowing TV and digital media to be compared on a level playing field, making sure that marketers know that ‘Reach’ really means ‘reached,’ whether the ad played to an empty room or to a room full of friends,” said Kevin Whitcher, VP of new product development at Oracle Data Cloud in a blog post.

“Working together, Moat Reach and TVision are cutting through the cross-channel confusion to better measure results at the person-by-person, second-by-second level that helps marketers understand whether people truly saw their ad across TV and digital,” Whitcher said. “Together, we are transforming cross-platform measurement and helping marketers reduce waste and increase advertising effectiveness within TV.”

Television viewing soared as people stayed indoors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, but the attention they paid to what they were watching fell, according to a first-half report from research company TVision.

TVision found that while, for example daytime TV usage jumped by 77%, viewability decreased by 1.5% and viewer attention dropped by 3.7%.

Linear TV’s share of screen time shrunk during the first half of the year, while average daily consumption of streaming services like Netflix doubled. Those services already scored high in co-viewing and individual viewer attention.

“Ad wear-out is a real thing,” the report said. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic provided a rare opportunity to study the controversial topic of ad wear-out. Almost overnight, a large pool of ads with essentially the same message appeared across multiple brands and on multiple networks. Although the ads initially outperformed the average, TVision’s analysis showed that viewer Attention decreased by 13% over 10 weeks — again, irrespective of the brand, according to the report. “To retain viewer attention, marketers need to refresh their creative more frequently.”

In particular, TVision noted that as the quarantine wore on viewers went from being engaged by ads with COVID-19 messages to tuning them out, with attention dropping by 13% from the week of March 1 to the week of May 17.

TVision said the top show for ad viewability in the first half was HGTV’s House Hunters International. It was followed by CBS’s FBI, Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, HGTV’s House Hunters, TLC’s My Feet Are Killing Me and CBS’s Carol’s Second Act.

In terms of ad attention, CBS’s Young Sheldon made the biggest bang, followed by CBS’s The Unicorn, Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New Jersey, CBS’s FBI and ABC’s The Connors.

Among streaming shows, Netflix series 100 Humans season one, Fauda season three, Brews Brothers season one and Unorthodox season one scored the highest.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power season five had the highest binge rate, followed by Hulu’s Letterkenny season three and Netflix’s  The I-Land season one and Blown Away season one.

Ads that broke through with the highest Creative Attention Scores in the first half were for Colgate, Progressive, BlueCross BlueShield and Coca-Cola.

Campaigns for Bausch & Lomb and Samsung uniquely scored among the leaders in both attention and viewability.

With live sports being benched by the pandemic, ESPN rushed to get The Last Dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls on the air. TVision said that was a good deal for sponsors, including State Farm, Facebook and Manscaped because ad attention was above average for each of the episodes.

TVision also released data for July. The top cable shows for ad viewability were TLC’s Counting On, USA’s Chrisley Knows Best, BET’s American Soul, HGTV’s House Hunters International and National Geographic’s The Incredible Dr. Pol.

Among broadcast shows, the leader in ad viewability were ABC’s NBA Countdown, ABC’s United We Fall, CBS’s The Greatest #AtHome Videos, ABC’s Holey Moley II: The Sequel, The CW’s Whose Line Is It Anyway and CBS’s Tough As Nails.

The OTT shows generating the highest attention indexes were Marcella Season 3 on Netflix, Expecting Amy Season 1 on Netflix, The Last Dance on Netflix, Absentia on Amazon Prime Video and The Twelve on Netflix.

The top ad was Yoga for Skrizi, based on TVision's Creative Attention Score.

TLC, which has been gaining viewers during the pandemic, has been taking advertisers along for the ride, according to new data from TVision.

Counting On, one of TLC’s series, had the highest ad viewability rate on TV in July, indicating that viewers pay attention to the ads in the shows. 

Also scoring high viewability rates were Chrisley Knows Best on USA, American Soul on BET, House Hunters International on HGTV and The Incredible Dr. Pol on National Geographic.

Because of their dedicated viewership, cable series tend to rank higher in viewability than broadcast shows. 

In July, the top broadcast show was NBA Countdown on ABC, serving basketball fans glad to see the season resume. Also ranking high in ad viewability were United We Fall on ABC, The Greatest #AtHome Videos on CBS, Holey Moley II on ABC, Whose Line Is It Anyway on the CW and Tough as Nails on CBS.

Among the over-the-top shows scoring the highest Attention Indexes were Marcella on Netflix, Expecting Amy on HBO Max, The Last Dance on Netflix, Absentia on Amazon and The Twelve on Netflix.

The most co-viewed OTT shows were The Floor Is Lava on Netflix, Into the Unknown on Disney Plus, In the Dark on Netflix, Mr. Iglesias on Netflix and Hello Ninja, also on Netflix.

The most binged OTT shows were all on Netflix, with The Twelve, The Umbrella Academy, In the Dark, F Is for Family and Dating Around scoring high.

The top ad overall in terms of viewability score was Skyrizi’s Yago ad. The top scoring ad among women was the CDC’s Geri M: Texting Tip spot and the top ad among men was Refuse to Compromise for Nissan.

In December 2017, T-Mobile purchased Denver-based video startup Layer3 TV for $325 million and loudly proclaimed it would apply its disruptive “uncarrier” wireless strategy to the pay TV business.

Since then, not much has changed for the erstwhile Layer3 TV service. It was rebranded to “TVision” and the top Layer3 executives have moved on. Founder and CEO Jeff Binder, who was initially put in charge of T-Mobile’s video operation following the acquisition, left in May 2019. Lindsay Gardner, chief content officer for T-Mobile, is leaving at the end of this month.

The $90-a-month TVision service hasn’t expanded beyond the limited number of major markets — including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — where it already was when T-Mobile made the Layer3 deal.

But government filings are offering glimpses of what’s happening next with TVision.

Federal Communications Commission filings have recently been unearthed that reveal a revised TVision CPE platform, based on the same SEI Robotics HDMI dongle that’s used for Dish Network’s Android TV-powered connected TV product, AirTV Mini.

The remote control is the same, too, featuring buttons dedicated to the Google Play store, YouTube and Google Assistant — all linchpins of the Android TV platform.

Meanwhile, in its product marketing and its SEC filings, T-Mobile describes TVision as the pay TV service that it will roll out alongside fixed wireless 5G services.

“TVision Home is being purpose-built for the 5G future,” T-Mobile says on its website, when you click on the 5G Vision link situated on the main menu tab of the TVision landing page. “We’re getting ready for a world where 5G replaces home broadband and TVision Home will replace your cable TV — and launching a complete, high-end home TV service is a key part of that strategy.”

Following the April closure of its $26 billion Sprint acquisition, T-Mobile last month told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a filing that its “significantly enhanced spectrum position” will enable it to accelerate plans for its 5G fixed-wireless play.

“The enhanced in-home broadband opportunity, along with the acquisition of certain content rights has created a strategic shift in our TVision Home service offering to developing a video product which will be complementary to the in-home broadband offering and which we believe is necessary to enable higher penetration into the in-home broadband market,” T-Mobile said in the filing.

The revelation of additional FCC documents has shined more light on the Android TV-based CPE that T-Mobile might soon be deploying for its revamped TVision pay TV service.

An FCC filing from Chinese vendor SEI Robotics reveals that the newly revised TVision might be based on an HDMI dongle similar to the one SEI Robotics supplies to Dish Network for the satellite TV company’s AirTV Mini Android TV-powered product.

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

How similar? The user manual included in the filing is for the $80 AirTV Mini (see image below).

Also read: T-Mobile’s TVision Now Underpinned by Android TV?

Last week, 9to5 Google unearthed a January T-Mobile filing that revealed a new TVision-branded remote control, one that indicates that the revised service will be based on Android TV.

T-Mobile acquired Denver-based startup pay TV company Layer3 TV for $325 million at the beginning of 2018. With the imminent departure of T-Mobile chief content officer Lindsay Gardner, Layer3 TV’s top executives have all moved on. T-Mobile rebranded the Layer3 TV service as TVision some time ago, but it has not expanded the $90-a-month, 154-channel service beyond its limited footprint of New York, L.A., Chicago and several other big cities.

TVision’s tech platform has reportedly been revised, and T-Mobile is said to be ready to nationally deploy its revamped TVision service as part of fixed wireless 5G service when the disruption of the pandemic lifts. 

The revelation of additional FCC documents has shined more light on the Android TV-based CPE that T-Mobile might soon be deploying for its revamped TVision pay TV service.

An FCC filing from Chinese vendor SEI Robotics reveals that the newly revised TVision might be based on an HDMI dongle similar to the one SEI Robotics supplies to Dish Network for the satellite TV company’s AirTV Mini Android TV-powered product. 

How similar? The user manual included in the filing is for the $80 AirTV Mini (see image below). 

Also read: T-Mobile’s TVision Now Underpinned by Android TV?

Last week, 9to5 Google unearthed a January T-Mobile filing that revealed a new TVision-branded remote control, one that indicates that the revised service will be based on Android TV. 

T-Mobile acquired Denver-based startup pay TV company Layer3 TV for $325 million at the beginning of 2018. With the imminent departure of T-Mobile chief content officer Lindsay Gardner, Layer3 TV’s top executives have all moved on. T-Mobile rebranded the Layer3 TV service as TVision some time ago, but it has not expanded the $90-a-month, 154-channel service beyond its limited footprint of New York, L.A., Chicago and several other big cities. 

TVision’s tech platform has reportedly been revised, and T-Mobile is said to be ready to nationally deploy its revamped TVision service as part of fixed wireless 5G service when the disruption of the pandemic lifts. 

T-Mobile’s TVision pay TV service is indeed alive, and might soon roll out based on an Android TV platform, paperwork filed with the FCC reveals.

The filing to the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology reveals a TVision-branded remote, equipped with dedicated “Android home” and “Google Assistant” buttons, as well as button shortcuts to Netflix and YouTube. (9to5Google originally reported on the FCC filing.)

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

The filing removes some mystery surrounding TVision, which is itself built on the backbone of T-Mobile’s $325 million purchase of pay TV service Layer3 TV back in January 2018.

Also read: T-Mobile’s TVision Home Cast Into Uncertainty Amid Chief Content Officer’s Departure

Since taking over Layer3 TV and rebranding it TVision, T-Mobile hasn’t expanded it beyond its initial markets—New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Philly and Washington, D.C.

T-Mobile says the service will be deployed as the bundled video compliment to the so-called Uncarrier’s fixed 5G wireless play, which T-Mobile adds, will reach 90% of the U.S. by 2024.

Light Reading reported earlier that a recent reengineering of the TVision tech has been completed. And it’s only the pandemic that’s delaying broader national rollout of TVision. Light Reading also reported that T-Mobile was partnering with MobiTV, maker of a proprietary app-based video delivery system, for its revised TVision tech.

However, outside of supporting integration with Google Assistant smart devices, neither the current iteration of TVision, or the reports of its reimagining, have referred to an Android TV play.

Certainly, there are other moves afoot in regard to TVision.

This week, T-Mobile’s Chief Content Officer, Lindsay Gardner, who came over in the Layer3 TV purchase, confirmed to Next TV that he’s leaving the company at the end of this month. It’s rumored that the Denver-based Gardner might be circling back with Layer3 TV’s original investors on a new project. (Light Reading was the first to report this, too.)

Layer3 TV founder and CEO Jeff Binder had been initially put in charge of TVision, but left the company back in May 2019. He’s now running a Denver-area firm called Harvard Venture Partners.

In the limited markets in which TVision is currently available, T-Mobile is offering a $90-a-month base tier of 154 channels, 1 terabyte of DVR storage (about 400 hours of recordings), integration with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, and access to streaming services and social media.