Nielsen has launched The Media Distributor Gauge, a new, cross-platform view of total TV consumption across broadcast, cable and streaming, aggregated and ranked by media company.
According to Karthik Rao, CEO of Nielsen, its needed to help creators, advertisers and the industry at large to understand what and where audiences are watching. “The Media Distributor Gauge is a perfect complement to The Gauge and serves as the first convergent TV comparison of its kind. Together, these reports paint the most complete picture of TV viewing today, which is critical as we head into the Upfront.”
In its first report, 14 media companies achieved a 1.0% or greater share of total TV usage. As the top performer in April, Disney accounted for 11.5% of TV viewing, with 42% of its share attributable to viewing on Disney+ and Hulu. YouTube was the No. 2 overall company with a 9.6% share of TV in April, followed by NBCUniversal at 8.9%, Paramount at 8.8%, and Warner Bros. Discovery at 8.1% to round out the top five. Netflix was sixth with 7.6% of TV, and the second-highest streaming distributor reported.
Streaming viewership declined 1.9% from March to April, prompting the category to lose just 0.1 share point to account for 38.4% of total television. Amazon Prime Video saw the largest increase among streaming services this month with a 12% monthly increase for 3.2% of TV (+0.4 percentage points.). Prime Video’s April success was driven by its original series Fallout, which also topped all streaming titles this month with over 7 billion viewing minutes. YouTube, despite a 3% monthly decline in viewing, added a 15th month to its streak as the top streaming platform in The Gauge with a 9.6% share of TV in April.
Cable was the only category in The Gauge to escape decline as it achieved a second consecutive monthly increase in share, moving up from 28.3% of TV in March to 29.1% (+0.8 percentage points.) in April.
Broadcast viewing was down 3% in April, which equated to a 22.2% share of TV (-0.3 percentage points).
