Pixalate yesterday launched the OpenEPG Index 1.0, an industry-first public ranking of streaming TV content built from real-world open programmatic ad spend and audience reach data spanning both mobile and connected television, filling a gap that existing measurement frameworks have left unaddressed for years.

A measurement gap that has been hiding in plain sight

The OpenEPG Index arrives at a moment when streaming viewership has surpassed broadcast and cable combined, yet the tools advertisers rely on to understand where audiences are watching remain anchored to a narrower view of the landscape. According to Pixalate, the inaugural index covers 5,108 unique shows across 224 streaming channels in all 210 U.S. Nielsen Designated Market Areas, drawing on data from January through May 2026. The underlying mapping infrastructure, called OpenEPG 1.0 Analytics, has independently catalogued 12,875 unique television shows across 318 channels to date.

That scale matters because it is achieved without requiring publishers to share data directly. The system operates entirely from standard bidstream Bundle ID signals in the open exchange - no publisher opt-in, no custom data agreements. This structural difference sets it apart from legacy measurement frameworks, which depend on publishers agreeing to participate and therefore leave large portions of the ecosystem unmeasured.

Nielsen's public Streaming TV Top 10, the most widely cited benchmark in the industry, ranks on-demand content by minutes viewed through television sets. It does not account for mobile audiences, live sports programming, or FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) channels - three categories that, according to Pixalate's data, represent the majority of open programmatic streaming activity in the United States.

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How the index is built

The OpenEPG Index ranks shows by consumer reach, defined as share of voice of U.S. consumers reached across the open programmatic ecosystem. Each ranked show is measured across seven dimensions: consumer reach share of voice, programmatic ad spend share of voice, genre, device type (small screen mobile versus large screen CTV), platform operating system, U.S. market coverage, top daypart by platform, and IVT rate (the share of impressions classified as Invalid Traffic, under Pixalate's MRC-accredited detection methodology).

The technical process behind each data point involves three sequential steps. First, OpenEPG DB - Pixalate's independently built and continuously updated programming map - normalises more than 37,000 open-market Bundle ID variations, including non-standard identifiers, to clean canonical parent app identities across six operating systems. For single-channel apps, the app identity resolves the channel directly. For multi-channel aggregators, channel signals embedded in the bundle metadata identify the specific channel being delivered. Second, the standardised app identity and resolved channel are used to map the channel's schedule at the exact timestamp of the impression, resolving which program - and in some cases which episode - was airing at that moment. Third, OpenEPG layers impression volume, share of voice by market and daypart, and show-level IVT scoring onto the resolved program, producing a filterable output across three dimensions: what aired, where it ran, and how it performed.

The six operating systems covered at launch are Android, iOS, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Tizen, and Apple tvOS. Coverage spans 318 digital and FAST channels and 210 U.S. media markets.

Mobile accounts for 70% of streaming audience reach

One of the central empirical findings of the May 2026 dataset concerns the relative size of mobile versus connected television audiences in open programmatic streaming. According to Pixalate's January-to-May 2026 data, small screen(mobile) platforms drove 69.5% of total audience reach, while large screen CTV accounted for the remaining 30.5%.

The platform breakdown within those categories reveals a further asymmetry. On mobile, Android and iOS run nearly equal in audience share - 37% versus 33% of total reach - but Android carries a substantially heavier ad load. According to Pixalate, Android users encounter more streaming ads per capita than viewers on any other operating system. On the large screen, Roku holds 15% of total reach and Amazon Fire OS holds 11%, giving the two platforms a combined 26% of the total. Samsung and Apple tvOS each register below 3%.

The advertising spend distribution largely tracks the reach figures. Android accounts for 43% of estimated open programmatic ad spend, iOS for 27%, giving mobile a combined 70% of spend. Roku holds 14% of large-screen spend and Amazon Fire OS holds 12%. Samsung at 3% and Apple tvOS at 1% complete the picture.

"Most streaming today happens on the apps and devices legacy public rankings were never built to measure - single-network apps, FAST channels, and live sports watched on phones and Connected TVs," said Jalal Nasir, CEO of Pixalate. "That leaves the industry blind to both a massive invisible audience and a vast landscape of invisible content. The OpenEPG Index brings both to the surface by show, channel, device, and U.S. media market."

Sports on mobile, reality and news on the big screen

What audiences watch differs sharply by screen size. The May 2026 data shows that nearly half of small-screen mobile streaming TV estimated unique reach - 46% - went to shows in the Sports genre. Leading titles on mobile included Yahoo Sports Daily, The Ariel Helwani Show, Indoor Football League, and Best Of Yahoo, all carried on Yahoo! Sports Network. Being Mary Jane on BET led the combined small-screen rankings by both ad spend share of voice (7.8%) and consumer reach share of voice (10.9%), with New York as the top U.S. market.

On the large screen, the genre hierarchy flips entirely. Reality programming led large-screen CTV streaming with 38% of estimated unique reach in May 2026, followed by News at 26%. The Food Network dominated the large-screen top ten, with Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives ranking first (4.6% ad spend SOV, 5.4% consumer reach SOV), followed by Beat Bobby Flay, Guy's Grocery Games, The Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman, and Alex vs America. CNN Newsroom placed fifth overall at 3.4% ad spend SOV and 2.6% consumer reach SOV. Hardwood Classics on NBA ranked fourth with 2.4% ad spend SOV and 2.7% consumer reach SOV.

Live sports on the large screen was driven heavily by international football competitions, including English Championship Soccer, Bundesliga Soccer, and the UEFA Champions League.

The local dimension confirms the pattern. According to Pixalate's May 2026 rankings, Sports was the number one small-screen genre in 38 of the top 40 U.S. markets. News was the number one large-screen genre in all 40. National panel-based rankings do not produce market-by-market genre breakdowns at this level of granularity.

IVT rates visible at the show level

Beyond audience measurement, the index surfaces invalid traffic rates at the show level - a capability not available in existing public streaming rankings. MRC-accredited SIVT detection means the IVT figures reported in the index follow a standardised methodology, not a proprietary definition.

In the May 2026 small-screen rankings, IVT rates among the top ten ranged from 6% (Being Mary Jane) to 14% (Yahoo Sports Daily, The Kevin O'Connor Show, Andy & Ari On3, Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Best Of Yahoo). Indoor Football League on Yahoo! Sports Network registered 13%. The Ariel Helwani Show and Boomerang came in at 12% and 8% respectively.

On the large screen, IVT rates were considerably lower across the board. Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives registered 3%, as did Beat Bobby Flay and Guy's Grocery Games. Hardwood Classics on NBA recorded just 2%. CNN Newsroom and Latest Local News on WPXI Pittsburgh both showed 5%. The Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman, and Alex vs America each came in at 1% to 2%.

The ability to compare IVT rates across shows within the same channel - or across channels within the same genre - creates a new pre-bid planning layer for DSPs and agencies. According to Pixalate, different shows within the same app can present different brand environments, and show-level IVT data makes it possible to include or exclude specific programs from a private marketplace package based on fraud risk rather than app-level averages.

What is left out of existing benchmarks

The contrast with existing public streaming rankings is structural, not just a matter of data coverage. The OpenEPG Index includes consumer reach measurement and mobile small-screen tracking, OS-level breakdown, long-tail FAST app coverage, live sports, local U.S. market breakdowns, daypart breakdowns, and MRC-accredited IVT rates. Legacy public streaming rankings - including Nielsen's weekly and monthly reports - cover large-screen CTV and include consumer reach for some dimensions, but exclude mobile small-screen, long-tail FAST apps, live sports in full, local market breakdowns, daypart data, and any IVT measurement.

The underlying mechanism that creates the coverage gap is publisher opt-in. Incumbent measurement frameworks depend on publishers agreeing to share content data, which leaves most of the open ecosystem unmeasured. Because the OpenEPG Index is built from open-exchange bidstream signals using Bundle IDs, it captures the full spectrum of FAST channels, news apps, sports apps, and single-network applications - including the long tail that opt-in measurement cannot reach.

CTV's ongoing measurement challenges have been well documented at PPC Land. The problem of show-level visibility in open programmatic environments is distinct from the attribution gap that has occupied much of the industry conversation, but the two problems share a common root: fragmented signals, absent publisher cooperation, and no standardised mechanism for connecting ad delivery to content context.

The question of who is measuring what in streaming has also become harder to answer. Nielsen's methodology disputes in early 2026 illustrated how the same viewing landscape can produce materially different numbers depending on panel weighting and household categorisation. Pixalate's bidstream-based approach sidesteps those disputes by deriving audience reach figures directly from impression-level data rather than modelled projections.

Nielsen's Gracenote launched Content Connect in December 2025, providing agencies and DSPs with standardised program-level metadata for CTV campaign execution. That product requires publisher participation to function. OpenEPG does not. The two approaches address adjacent problems and serve different parts of the ecosystem.

Viant's $40 million acquisition of TVision in April 2026 was motivated in part by the same structural problem: the need for independent, cross-platform measurement that does not depend on what platforms self-report. TVision's panel sits inside homes; OpenEPG operates inside the bidstream. Both address the same trust deficit from different angles.

Availability and update cadence

The free public rankings are updated monthly and available at pixalate.com. Full rankings - including reach breakdowns by U.S. media market, genre cuts, IVT rates, and the complete dataset - are available inside the Pixalate Analytics Dashboard. Pixalate says it will continue scaling the underlying mapping criteria, with more streaming channels, content networks, and platforms added in subsequent monthly updates.

The OpenEPG 1.0 Analytics product, which powers the index, is currently in beta for DSPs, SSPs, and ad buyers looking to bring linear TV-style measurement, analytics, and fraud prevention capabilities to their CTV operations.

FAST channels have been growing rapidly - up 42% globally since mid-2023, reaching 1,610 active channels - and the programmatic infrastructure to measure and monetise them has lagged behind distribution growth. Pixalate's bidstream-based mapping addresses that lag directly, at least on the open exchange side of the ecosystem. Earlier Pixalate device spoofing research from Q4 2023 documented how the absence of show-level verification in programmatic CTV creates conditions for fraud, finding that 52% of programmatic ad traffic attributed to Roku devices actually originated from other devices.

The IVT rates now visible at the show level inside the OpenEPG Index reflect a related problem. Without show-level data, buyers cannot identify where within a channel's schedule invalid traffic is concentrated. An app-level IVT rate that looks acceptable may mask individual shows with rates several times higher, running in dayparts that attract less scrutiny.

What this means for the marketing community

The launch matters to ad buyers, DSPs, and SSPs for concrete operational reasons. Pre-bid planning at the show level becomes possible using show-level, channel-level, and content-rating segments derived from open-exchange signals. Post-bid analytics can surface which show ads ran against, not just the intended app. Screen size verification allows confirmation of whether impressions delivered on large-screen CTV or small-screen mobile. Brand safety controls can now be applied to the specific show an ad runs against rather than the app it ran in.

On the sell side, SSPs and publishers can use show-level data to defend CPMs with specific context - showing advertisers which programs and dayparts drive open-exchange demand against their bundle IDs rather than presenting only app-level aggregates. Individual shows inside aggregator apps that drive outsized programmatic activity can be identified and priced accordingly.

CTV CPMs fell 25.8% year-over-year in April 2026, according to DataBeat's May 2026 Programmatic Trends Report, even as overall programmatic CPMs climbed 33.9%. The divergence between CTV and other formats is partly a measurement and transparency problem: buyers who cannot verify what content they are purchasing against cannot price that inventory with confidence. Show-level data of the type the OpenEPG Index supplies is one structural component of rebuilding that confidence.

IAB Europe documented in April 2026 that 15% to 25% of total global ad spend is lost to fraud, with CTV and mobile in-app environments disproportionately affected. Global invalid traffic rates doubled between Q3 2023 and Q3 2025. The OpenEPG Index, by surfacing IVT at the show and daypart level using MRC-accredited detection, gives buyers a granular tool for identifying where that fraud is concentrated before committing spend.

Pixalate was founded in 2012 and has been recognised by UNICEF as a key innovator for children's online privacy. The company holds MRC accreditation for the detection and filtration of Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT), the more complex category of invalid traffic that requires advanced methodology to identify.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Pixalate, a global ad fraud and privacy compliance platform founded in 2012 and MRC-accredited for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic detection, headquartered in McLean, Virginia with offices in London, Dublin, and Singapore.

What: The company today launched the OpenEPG Index 1.0, the programmatic industry's first public monthly ranking of streaming TV content based on open programmatic ad spend and consumer reach across both small-screen mobile and large-screen CTV. The index is free, updated monthly, and covers 5,108 unique shows across 224 streaming channels in the inaugural May 2026 dataset. It is powered by OpenEPG 1.0 Analytics, which independently maps 12,875 shows across 318 channels using standard bidstream Bundle IDs without requiring publisher opt-in.

When: The OpenEPG Index was announced on June 17, 2026. The underlying OpenEPG 1.0 Analytics platform launched on the same date. The inaugural data covers January through May 2026, with May 2026 as the primary reference month for the first rankings.

Where: The free public rankings are available at pixalate.com. Full rankings and analytics are accessible inside the Pixalate Analytics Dashboard. Coverage spans all 210 U.S. Nielsen Designated Market Areas across six operating systems: Android, iOS, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Tizen, and Apple tvOS.

Why: Legacy public streaming rankings rely on limited consumer panels or publisher-by-publisher integrations, leaving mobile audiences, live sports, and long-tail FAST channels unmeasured. According to Pixalate's January-May 2026 data, mobile (small screen) drove 69.5% of audience reach in open programmatic streaming TV - a segment entirely absent from existing public benchmarks such as Nielsen's Streaming TV Top 10. The OpenEPG Index addresses this gap by deriving show-level audience reach, programmatic ad spend, daypart data, and MRC-accredited IVT rates directly from bidstream signals, without requiring any publisher to share data.