Streaming platforms took 48.74% of estimated national TV advertising spend in the United States in the third quarter of 2026 while carrying 21.93% of ad impressions, according to iSpot's Q3 2026 TV & Video Ad Snapshot, released today. Linear television kept 78.07% of impressions and 51.26% of spend.

In Short

In the summer of 2026, US advertisers spent almost as much money on ads in streaming apps as on ads on traditional TV channels, even though traditional TV still showed nearly four out of every five ads, according to the measurement company iSpot. That means a streaming ad costs far more on average, and iSpot says that across 30 of its clients, people reached by streaming ads went on to do what the brand wanted, such as buying something, about five times as often. The money moved closer to an even split mostly because spending on traditional TV fell, not because streaming spending grew, and the conversion figures come from a small group of brands that iSpot picked.

What iSpot published

The eight-page report, branded as a quarterly snapshot, combines three of iSpot's data products: Competitive Intelligence data on ad occurrences and estimated spend across linear and streaming, Creative Assessment survey scores, and Outcomes measurement. It covers July through September 2026. The report page on iSpot's website carries no publication date.

The spend and impression comparison sets the top 50 consumer streaming apps against 187 top linear TV channels. iSpot does not list the apps or the channels in the report. Its glossary describes household TV ad impressions as exposures "captured across an industry-leading device footprint (smart TV and set-top box)", which are then "extrapolated and balanced with census data" to represent US households.

iSpot's landing page puts the finding in two sentences: "Linear still has the audience. Streaming now has nearly half the budget." The report itself explains the split as a matter of targeting. Linear is delivering more impressions "partly due to sports and news viewership remaining steady," it says, while "spend is nearly at parity on streaming vs. linear, as the ability to better target on streaming makes those platforms more enticing for brands over time."

iSpot sells the competitive intelligence, creative testing and outcomes products whose data fills the report, and the document closes with an invitation to book a demo.

Half the money on a fifth of the impressions

The gap between the two pie charts in the report is the central number. Streaming's share of spend is 2.22 times its share of impressions. For linear TV, the ratio is 0.66.

Put the two together and an average streaming ad impression cost roughly 3.4 times as much as an average linear impression in the quarter. That is a PPC Land calculation from iSpot's shares, not a figure iSpot publishes, and it is a blended average across very different inventory: a primetime NFL spot and an overnight cable rerun sit in the same linear bucket, and a premium connected TV placement sits with a free ad-supported app.

The impression share lines up closely with a different measure published last week. Comscore's first monthly Score Report put streaming at 22.3% of US TV ad exposure time in August 2026, up 6.2 points in a year, with broadcast at 43.2% and cable at 34.5%. Comscore measures time and iSpot measures impressions, and the two firms use different panels and device data, yet both land within half a point of 22%.

Viewing tells a different story. Nielsen's August 2026 Gauge put streaming at 49.6% of all US TV viewing, with YouTube alone at a record 15.8%. In Nielsen's Q2 2026 Ad Supported Gauge, streaming held 48.2% of ad-supported viewing. On those measures, streaming's share of TV ad spend in iSpot's data now sits close to its share of viewing, while its share of ad impressions remains less than half that. Lighter ad loads on many streaming services account for much of the difference.

Seven quarters of spend

The report's timeline chart tracks quarterly estimated spend on national linear and streaming from the first quarter of 2025 to the third quarter of 2026. It has no data labels. PPC Land read the values from the positions of the data points against the chart's axis, so the figures below are approximate, to the nearest $0.1 billion.

Quarter Linear (approx.) Streaming (approx.) Streaming share (PPC Land calculation)
Q1 2025 $12.4bn $7.5bn 37.8%
Q2 2025 $9.6bn $7.6bn 44.1%
Q3 2025 $8.9bn $7.7bn 46.6%
Q4 2025 $14.7bn $7.9bn 35.1%
Q1 2026 $12.4bn $7.8bn 38.6%
Q2 2026 $8.9bn $7.8bn 46.6%
Q3 2026 $7.9bn $7.5bn 48.7%

Two checks support the reading. The calculated Q3 2026 share, 48.7%, matches the 48.74% in iSpot's pie chart. And iSpot's own Q3 2025 linear report, as covered by TV Technology in October 2025, put national linear ad revenue at $8.77 billion, close to the $8.9 billion the chart shows for that quarter.

The pattern is plain. Linear swings with the calendar, peaking at about $14.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025 and falling to about $7.9 billion in the third quarter of 2026, its lowest point in the seven quarters shown. The peak was nearly 1.9 times the trough. Streaming barely moves: every quarter falls between roughly $7.5 billion and $7.9 billion.

Year over year, linear estimated spend in the third quarter fell by roughly 10%, from about $8.9 billion to about $7.9 billion. Streaming fell by roughly 3%, from about $7.7 billion to about $7.5 billion. Quarter over quarter, linear dropped about 11% and streaming about 4%. Combined, the two lines came to roughly $15.5 billion in the third quarter of 2026, against roughly $16.6 billion a year earlier.

So where did parity come from? Streaming's share of spend rose from about 46.6% to 48.74% in a year, but on iSpot's chart the move came from linear shrinking, not from streaming budgets growing. The report frames parity as streaming's targeting drawing money. Its own timeline shows streaming spend flat to slightly lower.

The quarter carried events that usually lift linear. The FIFA World Cup ran from June 11 to July 19, 2026, and iSpot counted more than 25 billion US household TV ad impressions across the tournament on FOX, FS1, Telemundo and Universo. Baseball and the start of the football season followed. Linear's third-quarter estimated spend still came in below the second quarter's.

Conversion rates: 3.49% against 0.69%

The outcomes section rests on a narrower base: what iSpot describes as "a representative cross-industry selection of 30 brands utilizing an iSpot pixel for outcomes measurement." All conversions were counted within a 14-day window after exposure. The brands are not named, and the report does not say how they were chosen beyond that description.

Across the sample, streaming ads produced an average conversion rate of 3.49%, against 0.69% for linear. That is about 5.1 times higher, a PPC Land calculation. Both channels "drove hundreds of millions of conversion events," according to iSpot.

Every one of the 30 brands had a higher conversion rate on streaming. Yet half of them, 15 brands, recorded more total conversions on linear. The two facts fit together: linear reaches far larger audiences at a lower rate, while streaming reaches smaller, selected audiences at a higher one. iSpot describes the approach in those terms: "These advertisers are utilizing linear for broader reach while taking a more targeted approach through streaming platforms at the same time."

Two outliers show how far targeting can push the rate. One brand's streaming ads drove a conversion rate of 23.4% in the quarter. Another passed 11% on 4,400 streaming impressions, which works out to roughly 480 conversions, a PPC Land calculation. iSpot calls the second case "a precisely targeted audience."

The definitions shape the result. iSpot's glossary describes a conversion event as "an action dictated at the brand level like add-to-cart, web checkout, build a car online, etc.," so one brand's conversion may be a sale and another's a page action. The conversion rate is "the percentage of users or visitors who complete a desired action out of a total impression-based audience." A narrow audience chosen because it is likely to buy will convert at a higher rate almost by construction. The report describes no control groups or holdouts, so it does not show how many of those conversions the ads caused.

Its wording on linear goes further than the data in the section: "Linear still drives significant conversions, but only by standard demographic cuts." That is a statement about how linear is typically bought, not a finding from the 30-brand sample.

The two halves of the report also cannot simply be multiplied together. A 3.4-times price premium against a 5.1-times conversion rate might suggest a lower cost per conversion on streaming, but the spend split covers the whole market iSpot tracks, while the conversion rates come from 30 of its clients. The report gives no cost per conversion for either channel.

iSpot's outcomes product has been moving into buying systems. In January, Roku became the first streaming platform to optimize campaigns using iSpot's outcomes data. In July, FOX expanded its measurement agreement with iSpot, citing 142.26 billion TV ad impressions over the previous year. Earlier, an iSpot case study credited Home Depot's ESPN college football schedule with a 42.2% in-store visit conversion lift against ads on other programming, a linear result.

The ten biggest spenders

Four insurers, two drugmakers' brands, a Lithuanian resale marketplace, a wireless carrier, a retailer and a fast-food chain made up the quarter's top ten by combined linear and streaming spend.

Rank Brand Linear Streaming Total (PPC Land sum) Streaming share
1 Progressive $125,483,839 $100,809,166 $226.3m 44.5%
2 Liberty Mutual $83,134,073 $128,692,627 $211.8m 60.8%
3 Vinted $46,307,735 $164,422,907 $210.7m 78.0%
4 Allstate $69,976,537 $56,389,177 $126.4m 44.6%
5 Foundayo $32,549,387 $72,298,567 $104.8m 69.0%
6 T-Mobile $61,907,284 $37,106,347 $99.0m 37.5%
7 Walmart $47,172,641 $49,785,916 $97.0m 51.3%
8 GEICO $58,496,577 $34,301,921 $92.8m 37.0%
9 ICOTYDE $51,630,745 $40,705,362 $92.3m 44.1%
10 Burger King $54,839,067 $36,404,649 $91.2m 39.9%

Together the ten spent about $1.35 billion, of which about $721 million, or 53.3%, went to streaming. That is a higher streaming share than the 48.74% for the market as a whole, by PPC Land's sums of iSpot's figures. Only four of the ten put more money into streaming than into linear: Liberty Mutual, Vinted, Foundayo and Walmart, the last by a margin of about $2.6 million.

Insurance and sports

Progressive, Liberty Mutual, Allstate and GEICO spent a combined $657.3 million, about 48.6% of the top-ten total. Their split was almost even, with $337.1 million on linear and $320.2 million on streaming. iSpot ties the insurers' spending to the quarter's sports calendar, writing that World Cup soccer, baseball and football "helped fuel big cross-platform investments from insurance brands, which typically emphasize sports for reach."

The four took different routes. Liberty Mutual was the only insurer to lean toward streaming, with 60.8% of its $211.8 million there. GEICO went the other way, with 63% on linear.

Vinted

Vinted's cross-platform spend "rose by nearly 7x quarter-over-quarter," according to iSpot, which describes the company as Lithuania-based and says it "leaned heavily on a large streaming budget." Its $164.4 million on streaming was the largest streaming outlay of any brand in the top ten, and 78% of its total, the most streaming-heavy split on the list. A rise of nearly seven times to $210.7 million implies second-quarter spending of a little over $30 million, a PPC Land calculation.

PPC Land has covered Vinted mostly as a European resale business, including its locker partnership with DHL in Germany. The iSpot figures place it among the largest US TV advertisers of the quarter. The report does not say what the campaign promoted or which streaming services carried it.

Two drugs, from $5 million to the top ten

The quarter's two largest pharmaceutical brands by total spend, Foundayo and ICOTYDE, "spent just over $5 million in Q2," according to iSpot. The sentence does not make clear whether that figure is per brand or combined. In the third quarter, they spent $104.8 million and $92.3 million, a combined $197.2 million.

Foundayo is Eli Lilly's oral GLP-1 drug, orforglipron, which the FDA approved on April 1, 2026, according to Drugs.com. iSpot attributes its increase to "its Q2 approval for oral GLP-1s and its Martha Stewart-led creative." Foundayo put 69% of its budget into streaming. ICOTYDE, the brand name for icotrokinra tablets, split 56% linear and 44% streaming.

ICOTYDE had already appeared in sports spending. A Video Advertising Bureau report on the World Cup, drawing on iSpot spend records, put ICOTYDE's tournament TV spend at $15.8 million across nine airings, naming Johnson & Johnson as the advertiser. The tournament straddled the second and third quarters.

Drug advertising on TV was already rising before these launches. VAB analysis of Nielsen data found prescription drug TV spend up 53% to $4.95 billion for October 2025 to March 2026, after the FDA sent more than 100 enforcement letters on September 9, 2025.

Humor leads the creative scores

"Ad reach is great, but Likeability is even better," the report says. Its creative section is built on iSpot's Creative Assessment, in which each nationally breaking TV and video ad is surveyed by more than 500 US consumers, balanced to the census. Likeability scores run from 1 to 950, and iSpot says a difference of 25 points either way is statistically significant. The report shows each ad's Likeability as a percentage, without stating the norm it is compared against.

iSpot picked the most likeable ad in four emotional categories:

  • Funny: GEICO, "Happy Wednesday Savings." Likeability +16.6%, purchase intent 43%. Characters were the single best thing for 30% of respondents. iSpot's own ad database lists the spot, in which a camel wanders an office on a Wednesday, as "Camel on Hump Day."
  • Nostalgic: Kit Kat, "Halloween Sounds of Kit Kat." Likeability +10.1%, purchase intent 63%. The product itself was the single best thing for 28%.
  • Heartfelt: USAA, "Worth Fighting For." Likeability +17.1%, purchase intent 56%. The message was the single best thing for 29%.
  • Exciting: Universal Studios Hollywood, "A Universe Found Nowhere Else." Likeability +15.5%, purchase intent 61%. Visual scenes were the single best thing for 27%.

Likeability and purchase intent did not move together. The Kit Kat ad had the lowest Likeability of the four and the highest purchase intent. The GEICO spot was the reverse, the second most liked and the least likely to raise purchase intent. Purchase intent here is a top-2-box survey measure: the share of respondents reporting an increased desire to buy or visit after watching.

Across the 500 most likeable ads of the quarter, 49.6% scored for humor. In insurance, humor-themed ads scored at least 100 points higher for Likeability, four times the 25-point significance threshold. Car brands including Toyota and Ford saw adventure themes "map to Purchase Intent." Among the largest quick-service restaurant brands, eight deal-themed ads scored above Likeability norms.

News: evening bulletins and cable attention

The report's genre spotlight is news, excluding morning shows. By share of household linear TV ad impressions within the genre, the top ten programs in the third quarter were:

  1. ABC World News Tonight - 6.54%
  2. Jesse Watters Primetime - 4.94%
  3. NBC Nightly News - 4.42%
  4. America Reports - 3.90%
  5. Special Report With Bret Baier - 3.50%
  6. CBS Evening News - 3.32%
  7. Dateline - 2.92%
  8. Outnumbered - 2.60%
  9. The Faulkner Focus - 2.45%
  10. CNN News Central - 2.43%

Five of the ten are Fox News programs, which together account for 17.39% of the genre's ad impressions. The three broadcast evening newscasts from ABC, NBC and CBS add up to 14.28%. CNN has one entry, in tenth place. "Evening news programs, in particular, are still powerful vehicles for ad reach," iSpot writes, adding that vitamins and supplements, insurance and investment services "still flock to news to reach leaned-in audiences."

The second chart ranks primetime shows on Fox News, MSNow (the former MSNBC) and CNN by how far their rate of ad attention ran above iSpot's norm. Life, Liberty & Levin led at +30%, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime at +23%, The Rachel Maddow Show at +12%, The Last Word at +9% and All In With Chris Hayes at +4%. iSpot's Attention Index compares an ad's interruption rate against its specific placement on a scale of 0 to 200, where 100 is average. Two of the five shows are on Fox News and three on MSNow. No CNN primetime program made the list.

Jesse Watters Primetime is the only program to appear on both charts, second for reach and second for attention.

Why it matters

For media buyers, the report puts numbers on a trade-off that has been discussed for years. Linear still delivers most of the impressions, and in iSpot's sample it still delivered more total conversions for half the brands. Streaming delivers fewer impressions at a much higher average price and, among iSpot's outcomes clients, a higher rate of action per person reached.

The spend chart adds a less comfortable point for sellers on both sides. Near parity in share has arrived while the combined estimated spend on the two lines fell by roughly 7% year over year in the third quarter, by PPC Land's reading of the chart. Linear lost money; streaming did not gain it.

The measurement picture is also converging. iSpot's 21.93% impression share, Comscore's 22.3% share of ad exposure time and Nielsen's 48.2% share of ad-supported viewing come from three companies using different methods, and they describe the same gap between where people watch and where ads run. In March, Nielsen's 2026 upfront planning guide put streaming at 66.7% of time spent with ad-supported TV among adults 18 to 49.

What the report does not show

The report does not name the 30 outcomes brands, give their categories beyond "cross-industry," or report cost per conversion. It does not list the 50 streaming apps or 187 linear channels, give the dollar values behind the timeline chart, or say whether political advertising, which typically rises ahead of US midterm elections in November, is included in the spend estimates. Nor does it say how the brand spend figures were derived; elsewhere in the report, iSpot labels its spend data as estimated.

Timeline

Summary

Who: iSpot, the US TV and video ad measurement company, with spend data on brands including Progressive, Liberty Mutual, Vinted, Allstate, Foundayo, T-Mobile, Walmart, GEICO, ICOTYDE and Burger King.

What: A quarterly snapshot finding that streaming took 48.74% of estimated national TV ad spend on 21.93% of ad impressions, that streaming ads converted at 3.49% against 0.69% for linear across 30 iSpot outcomes clients, that linear estimated spend fell to its lowest level in seven quarters while streaming stayed flat, and that humor drove the most likeable ads.

When: Released today, October 26, 2026, covering the third quarter of 2026, July to September, with spend trends from the first quarter of 2025.

Where: National US television, comparing the top 50 consumer streaming apps with 187 top linear channels.

Why: The figures show TV budgets reaching near parity between streaming and linear mainly because linear spend fell, at an implied streaming price per impression roughly 3.4 times linear's, while iSpot's outcomes data argues that targeted streaming audiences act at higher rates.