Research firm Omdia on September 14, 2026 published consumer data showing that nearly three in four US television viewers regularly use their smartphones for other media while the TV is on, with the steepest rise since 2023 recorded among viewers aged 55 to 64. The findings, presented by Omdia's Global Head of Media & Entertainment María Rúa Aguete at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam, put short-form and vertical video at the centre of a contest for viewer attention that now runs across two screens in the same room.

In Short

Most people in the US who watch TV now also use their phone at the same time, and older viewers are catching up with younger ones. That matters to broadcasters, streaming services and advertisers, because a TV ad playing on the big screen may not be what anyone in the room is looking at. Omdia's view is that TV and phones now have to be treated as one viewing experience rather than two competing ones.

What the numbers show

Omdia released the findings through Business Wire at 10:59 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 14, 2026, under a London dateline, although the data itself concerns the United States. The headline figure is broad: nearly three in four US TV viewers regularly use their smartphones for other media while watching television, according to Omdia.

The more instructive data sits in the age breakdown. Omdia published three cohorts, each tracked from 2023 to 2026.

Among 55 to 64-year-olds, simultaneous media use rose from 42% in 2023 to 56% in 2026, according to Omdia. Among 45 to 54-year-olds, the share climbed from 62% to 73% over the same period. Among 35 to 44-year-olds, it moved from 69% to 76%.

Two patterns stand out. The first is that every cohort moved in the same direction. The second is the rate of change, which runs inversely to age. The oldest group recorded the largest absolute rise and, relative to its 2023 base, grew by a third. The 45 to 54 group grew by roughly 18% on its starting figure, and the 35 to 44 group by about 10%. The gap between the youngest and oldest published cohorts narrowed from 27 percentage points in 2023 to 20 in 2026.

That compression is arguably the more consequential finding for media planners. Older audiences have long been treated as the dependable core of linear television, the viewers most likely to sit through a commercial break with the set as their only screen. Omdia's figures suggest that assumption is eroding faster in that group than anywhere else in the data published.

An attention problem, in Omdia's framing

Omdia positioned the research as a question of where attention goes rather than whether viewers have enough to watch.

"We don't have a content problem. We have an attention problem," said Rúa Aguete in the release. "Three in four US TV viewers are using their phones while watching TV, and increasingly what they are doing is watching more video. The battle is no longer simply TV versus mobile. Both screens are on. The question is: which one has your attention?"

According to Omdia, competition for viewers' attention now extends beyond TV programmes and streaming services to the smartphone screen, with short-form video in particular drawing viewers even while the television stays on. The firm described short-form and vertical formats as playing an increasingly significant role, as viewers grow used to highly personalised, instantly accessible video on their phones. That, according to Omdia, adds another layer of competition for traditional television and streaming services.

The practical conclusion Omdia draws is that broadcasters, streaming platforms, advertisers and content owners face a need to treat TV and mobile as parts of the same viewing experience, since audiences increasingly move their attention between the two.

"The future isn't TV versus mobile. It's TV and mobile," added Rúa Aguete. "The companies that understand how audiences move between those screens, and how to capture attention on both, will be best positioned to win."

The findings draw on Omdia's latest research into changing video consumption habits, the attention economy, and the growth of short-form and vertical video, according to the company.

What the release does not disclose

The published material is short, and several gaps limit how far the figures can be pushed.

No sample size, fieldwork dates or survey method appear in the release. Whether the 2023 and 2026 figures come from the same panel design, and whether the questions were worded identically across waves, cannot be established from what Omdia made public. The trend lines are therefore Omdia's own comparison, not an independently verifiable one.

The age breakdown stops at 35. No figure is given for viewers aged 18 to 34, the group most commonly associated with phone use during television, and none for viewers aged 65 and over. The three cohorts published are also the ones showing change; whether the youngest adults have plateaued is not addressed.

There is a small wording discrepancy within the document itself. The opening paragraph refers to "nearly" three in four viewers, while Rúa Aguete's quoted remarks round the figure to three in four. The exact overall percentage is not stated anywhere in the release.

The definition matters too. Omdia describes the behaviour as viewers who "regularly use their smartphones for other media" while watching television. That is a narrower framing than some competing measures, which count any use of a second device, including texting or shopping. It is also broader than the claim that viewers are watching video on their phones: the release says "increasingly" viewers are watching more video, but provides no figure for what share of that phone activity is video.

Omdia is a research and advisory group, part of TechTarget, Inc., which trades as Informa TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT). Its commercial interest lies in selling research and advisory services to the industry rather than in any specific advertising inventory, which distinguishes this release from vendor studies that recommend products their authors sell. Even so, the release functions as a public summary of a paid research programme, and the full dataset was not included.

How the figure sits against other second-screen counts

Omdia's number is lower than several recent measures of simultaneous device use, which says as much about definitions as about behaviour.

A MiQ study drawing on 53 million households, published on April 22, 2026, put the share of consumers using a second device while watching television at 91%, with connected TV plus a mobile phone the most common pairing at 69% of respondents. In that research, 43% used the second device for social media, news or secondary video content, and 22% researched products related to what they were watching.

Microsoft Advertising, when it packaged cross-screen gaming inventory in September 2024, cited a figure of 85% of people using another device while watching TV.

The Video Advertising Bureau's June 2026 multiplatform report, compiling data from more than a dozen sources, drew on tvScientific research showing 83% of viewers text or message someone while watching television, 78% scroll social media and 74% search for something related to what they are watching. The same VAB compilation cited DISQO data finding that 53% of respondents took an action on a different device after seeing a TV ad, with 57% of those who specified a device reaching first for a mobile. According to that VAB analysis of MRI-Simmons data, watching a video clip ranked eighth among smartphone activities for all US adults at 71% in 2026, and fifth among adults aged 18 to 34 at 82%.

The measure has a long history. The second screen concept was quantified as early as August 29, 2012, when Google recorded 77% simultaneous device use during television viewing, and in April 2012, when Nielsen reported 88% of US tablet owners and 86% of smartphone owners using devices while watching TV within a 30-day window.

Read together, the figures do not contradict each other so much as measure different things. A survey asking whether a viewer ever uses another device will produce a higher number than one asking whether the viewer regularly consumes other media on a smartphone. Omdia's contribution is less the level than the multi-year age trend, which the other studies cited here do not break out in the same way.

The measurement gap buyers already face

For advertisers, the significance of a phone in the hand during a commercial break is measured in money. Television and CTV budgets are traded largely on impressions and household delivery, units that record whether an ad played, not whether anyone looked at it.

Panel data points to a sizeable gap between the two. TVision, which runs a passive in-home panel of 5,000 US households, found that only nine of more than 200 daily viewing minutes count as attentive advertising time, with 24 of those minutes representing ad opportunities. The company's sensors identify who is in the room and whether their eyes are on the screen. That work was announced on August 25, 2026, less than three weeks before Omdia's release.

Buyers are aware of the problem. IAB research published on July 14, 2026 found 43% of connected TV buyers had only limited or no confidence in where their ads ran, and named second-device friction among the obstacles to lower-funnel performance.

Attention also varies by platform. The Video Advertising Bureau and TVision, in a study covering July 2024 to June 2025 across 21 premium video platforms and YouTube, reported that premium streaming outperformed YouTube on eyes-on-screen and co-viewing measures. Co-viewing is a relevant variable here, because a room with several viewers and several phones complicates any attempt to credit a single impression to a single pair of eyes.

Attention-based formats have followed. WunderKIND Ads data measured by TVision showed that pause ads delivered nearly twice the attention time of standard 60-second CTV spots across 15 verticals, a result published in June 2026. In March 2026, Lumen Research extended eye-tracking attention measurement to Netflix ads in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The phenomenon has reached the content itself. In January 2026, actor Matt Damon said Netflix writers repeat plot points for viewers scrolling their phones, a remark that framed divided attention as a creative constraint as well as an advertising one.

Short-form video on both screens

Omdia's emphasis on short-form and vertical video matches what platforms have been building, often on both sides of the living room.

YouTube has pushed its short-form format onto the television. Kurt Wilms, the platform's senior director of product management for TV, disclosed in June 2026 that Shorts reached 2 billion hours of monthly viewing on television screens, and cited third-party research indicating nine in ten TV viewers hold a phone while watching. YouTube then dropped the shared Wi-Fi requirement from its phone-to-TV control feature, a rebuild of a companion feature first presented in May 2026 that surfaces the television video on the phone. The platform delivers more than a billion hours of daily viewing on TV screens.

Meta has approached the question from the opposite direction. Instagram for TV arrived on Amazon Fire TV on December 16, 2025, organised largely around vertical Reels, and on June 22, 2026 Instagram began testing a dedicated home for horizontal video on television, an acknowledgement that the 9:16 format does not sit naturally on a widescreen set.

On the phone itself, short-form consumption is close to habitual. A Media.net survey of more than 1,000 US consumers, released on November 18, 2025, found that 73% watch short-form video multiple times per day, with 32% watching multiple times per hour and YouTube Shorts named as the primary destination by 56%.

Outside the US, Magnite's Hong Kong survey of 920 adult streamers, published on August 27, 2026, put mobile reach at 83% against 67% for connected TV, with short-form vertical video reaching 97% of streamers. Magnite sells the inventory its research describes, a point PPC Land noted in its coverage.

Shoppable and interactive CTV formats are one industry answer to the split. KERV.ai and LG Ad Solutions extended their shoppable CTV partnership to Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand on August 25, 2026, part of a wider effort to close the gap between exposure on the large screen and action on the small one.

Why the age trend matters to planners

Much of the second-screen discussion has centred on younger viewers. Omdia's data shifts the focus. If the 55 to 64 cohort now matches, in 2026, a level the 45 to 54 group had not reached in 2023, then the audience segment that linear TV sales teams have relied on for undivided attention is behaving increasingly like its younger counterparts.

That has consequences for how reach is valued. A household-level impression on a large screen, bought at a CPM that assumes an attentive viewer, carries a different expected value if more than half of the room is also looking at a phone. It also carries implications for cross-device measurement, since a viewer holding a phone is simultaneously an audience for mobile video advertising, including the short-form formats Omdia singles out.

For publishers and streaming services, the same data points in two directions. Divided attention reduces the value of the large-screen impression, but it also means the audience is reachable on a second device during the same session, if the two can be connected. Omdia's release does not attempt to quantify either effect.

Omdia at IBC

The Amsterdam presentation continues Omdia's use of IBC as a venue for consumer and advertising research. On September 4, 2025, ahead of IBC2025, where the firm served as Official Research Partner for the third consecutive year, Omdia projected that retail media would exceed $300 billion by 2030, representing roughly 20% of global advertising revenue. Rúa Aguete, then described as Senior Research Director, fronted that forecast. The September 14, 2026 release identifies her as Global Head of Media & Entertainment at Omdia.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Omdia, the technology research and advisory group that is part of TechTarget, Inc. (Informa TechTarget, Nasdaq: TTGT), with María Rúa Aguete, Global Head of Media & Entertainment, presenting the findings. The data concerns US television viewers, and the implications fall on broadcasters, streaming platforms, advertisers and content owners.

What: Consumer research finding that nearly three in four US TV viewers regularly use their smartphones for other media while watching television. Simultaneous media use rose between 2023 and 2026 in all three published age groups: from 42% to 56% among 55 to 64-year-olds, from 62% to 73% among 45 to 54-year-olds, and from 69% to 76% among 35 to 44-year-olds. Omdia links the shift to short-form and vertical video competing for attention on the phone. The release discloses no sample size, fieldwork dates or figures for viewers under 35 or over 64.

When: Published on September 14, 2026, at 10:59 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, with trend data spanning 2023 to 2026.

Where: The data covers the United States. The release carried a London dateline, and the research was presented at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam.

Why: Television advertising is largely bought on the assumption that an impression on the large screen reaches a viewer. Omdia's data indicates that a growing share of that audience, including older viewers once considered the most attentive, is simultaneously consuming other media on a phone. That widens the gap between delivered and attentive impressions already documented by TVision and IAB research, and strengthens the case for planning and measuring TV and mobile together.