The Video Advertising Bureau today released a new research report comparing audience behavior on premium video platforms against YouTube in the connected TV environment, finding that streaming services including Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, and Prime Video outperform YouTube across every key attention and engagement metric measured. The report, titled The Impression Gap, was produced in partnership with TVision and draws on custom data collected from July 2024 to June 2025 across 21 premium video platforms and YouTube.

The findings arrive at a moment when CTV advertising budgets are expanding rapidly. Co-viewing rates, session lengths, and eye-tracking-based attention data all pointed in the same direction: impressions bought on premium video platforms work harder for marketers than the same investment placed on YouTube.

The methodology behind the numbers

VAB commissioned TVision to provide the underlying data, which was gathered using a proprietary three-layer technology stack. TVision's sensor hardware uses person and facial recognition to determine who is in the room and whether they are actively watching the screen. An automatic content recognition (ACR) fingerprinting layer identifies what is playing. A separate digital meter handles device detection, identifying which streaming application is in use at any given moment. The combined system captures viewing behavior at a granular, second-by-second level across thousands of households.

The study spans 12 months - July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025 - and covers demographics from P2+ through P55+. Sessions on YouTube required a minimum of 30 seconds of viewing to be included; sessions on premium platforms required a minimum of five minutes. A new session was counted whenever a viewer stopped watching a specific application for more than 10 minutes. These methodological differences are important context for interpreting the raw session length comparisons, though the overall directional findings remain consistent across the five core metrics examined.

Co-viewing: YouTube ranks 18th out of 19 platforms

The co-viewing metric measures the proportion of total impressions where two or more viewers overlap in an active viewing session for at least five minutes. A co-viewing factor of 100 would mean two or more viewers are present for the entire session. Averaged across all 21 premium platforms, co-viewing reached 60% of total impressions. YouTube recorded 45%. That translates to a 33% gap in co-viewing strength in favor of premium video, according to the report.

Broken down by individual platform, YouTube ranked 18th out of 19 entries on the co-viewing chart. Spanish-language FAST platforms registered the highest co-viewing rate at 75%, followed by two other platforms at 73%. The lowest-ranked platform aside from YouTube was one SVOD service at 42%.

The demographic data adds another dimension. Among viewers aged 2 to 17, co-viewing on premium platforms reached 76% versus 59% on YouTube - a 29% advantage. The gap widened further for viewers aged 55 and over: 55% co-viewing on premium platforms versus 37% on YouTube, a 49% differential. Even among the 18-34 age group, often assumed to be YouTube's native audience, premium platforms recorded 65% co-viewing against YouTube's 48%.

Why does co-viewing matter to advertisers? Research cited in the report from Magnite's November 2025 study on streaming found that 43% of consumers say they are likely to discuss ads with others when co-viewing. A separate Thinkbox UK study found a 23% increase in ad recall when watching with others in the living room versus watching alone. The social context of shared viewing does not merely add a second body to the room - it amplifies the advertising signal itself.

"The data shows that Premium Video Platforms on CTV are much more likely to generate higher levels of co-viewing, enabling advertisers to get greater efficiency out of every CTV impression they buy," said Benjamin Vandegrift, SVP of Measurement Strategy and Innovation at VAB. "While attention on YouTube tends to underperform, Premium Video Platforms deliver elevated attention across session durations, which unlocks deeper engagement and greater brand storytelling opportunities for marketers."

PPC Land has tracked the CTV attention landscape extensively. Kargo's September 2025 research using TVision datafound that premium creative formats achieved 88% longer attention than YouTube's equivalent CTV placements. Teads' CTV HomeScreen ads separately recorded a 48% attention rate, surpassing YouTube skippable pre-roll by 16 percentage points in a study with MediaMento Institute.

Three attention indexes: presence, eyes on screen, sustained gaze

The VAB/TVision study constructs a three-part attention framework, each measuring a progressively more demanding form of viewer engagement.

The 'presence to active' index measures the percentage of time a viewer was in the room out of the total active viewing session, indexed to a CTV viewing norm where 100 represents average. Premium video platforms averaged 102 on this metric; YouTube scored 97. The five-point gap is comparatively small. On the platform-level chart, YouTube ranked 14th out of 19 platforms, with scores ranging from 116.6 at the top to 94.5 at the bottom.

The 'attention to presence' index narrows the focus further: it captures the proportion of time spent with eyes actually on screen while the viewer is in the room. Here the divergence grows. Premium platforms averaged an index of 108; YouTube scored 95, a 14% gap. YouTube ranked 17th on the platform-level chart, placing it below the top 16 premium video platforms and only two hybrid services. By demographic segment, the attention-to-presence advantage for premium platforms was widest among viewers aged 2 to 17, where the index reached 96 on premium platforms versus 82.5 on YouTube - a 16% difference. Among P55+ viewers, the gap was 10%.

The third and most demanding measure is the 'attention to duration' index, which tracks whether eyes stay on screen relative to the total session length, requiring a minimum 30 seconds of consistent viewing to register. Premium platforms averaged 110; YouTube reached only 93, a gap of 18%. The report frames this as premium platforms being 18% more likely to convert viewing time into meaningful attentive minutes. On the platform-level chart, the top performer registered 174.0 and YouTube ranked 14th at 92.6, behind services in nearly every category: SVOD, hybrid SVOD/AVOD, FAST channels, and vMVPD platforms.

Yan Liu, CEO of TVision, described the broader significance: "The analysis presented in The Impression Gap delivers substantive clarity and context on the true value of streaming ad impressions." The report notes that attention metrics improve ROI campaign forecasting by 38% compared to viewability, citing Dentsu's January 2024 research. Adelaide's 2025 Outcomes Guide found 41% higher brand lift from campaigns leveraging attention metrics. WARC's Guide to Attention from July 2024, using data from a Mars Essence Mediacom study, documented a 30% higher sales lift and a 10% ROI increase when media was optimized for attention.

Session length: YouTube finishes last across all app types

Session length is perhaps the starkest finding in the report. YouTube's average session length on CTV was 52 minutes. The average across the 21 premium platforms was 1 hour and 18 minutes - a difference of 26 minutes, or 49% longer sessions on premium platforms. YouTube ranked last among all 19 individual platforms measured. Looking at session length by app type, vMVPDs averaged 1 hour and 26 minutes, FAST channels averaged 1 hour and 24 minutes, hybrid SVOD/AVOD platforms averaged 1 hour and 11 minutes, and SVOD services averaged exactly 1 hour. YouTube's 52 minutes was the lowest figure across every category.

The session length distribution reveals a structural challenge for YouTube advertisers. According to the report, 75% of YouTube impressions fall within sessions categorized as "super short" (0 to 20 minutes) or "short" (20 to 84 minutes). Only 9% of YouTube impressions occur within sessions lasting more than three hours. The implication is that most YouTube advertising on CTV operates in fragmented, brief contexts, while premium platform advertising unfolds in longer, more sustained viewing environments.

The report also analyzes attention to presence across all four session length buckets - super short, short, medium, and long. In every bucket, premium platforms outperform YouTube. During super short sessions, premium platforms scored 114.3 versus YouTube's 96.1, a 19% premium. During short sessions, the margin is 13%. During medium sessions, 15%. During long sessions, the gap remains at 13%. The consistency of the attention advantage across all session lengths reinforces the point that the performance difference is structural rather than confined to particular viewing contexts.

The report carries a specific limitation worth noting: it was produced by VAB, whose members include premium video providers and distributors. TVision supplied the measurement data, but the framing and presentation were constructed by an organization with a commercial interest in the findings' direction. Readers evaluating the results should weigh that context alongside the methodology. The report also notes that references to YouTube do not include YouTube TV, which is a separate live streaming service and was classified as a premium vMVPD for purposes of the study.

That said, the measurement methodology itself - second-by-second person-level data from thousands of households over 12 months - is independent and technically rigorous. TVision has been used as the measurement source in other third-party research covered by PPC Land, including Kargo's August 2025 attention study and Kargo's September 2025 findings. TVision's methodology has also been integrated into programmatic measurement tools, including Wunderkind's CTV pause ad product launched in July 2025.

For marketing professionals allocating CTV budgets, the data raises questions about impression quality that extend beyond reach and cost-per-thousand comparisons. If a YouTube impression on CTV typically occurs in a 52-minute solo viewing session while a Netflix impression occurs in a 78-minute co-viewed session, the two impressions are not equivalent units. The report quantifies that difference systematically across five metrics for the first time at this scale.

"Attention and co-viewing are important factors in understanding the quality, impact and total reach of ad impressions. To maximize campaign performance, it is necessary for marketers to understand attentive engagement levels," Liu said.

Jason Jutla, Head of Practice for EMEA and UK at WPP Media, is quoted in the report linking attention measurement to media planning: "Attention gives us a unifier across the different channels that we operate in...which will help us from the planning phases all the way through to our optimization on an ongoing basis." Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen Research, frames the stakes in more direct terms in the report: "What people look at is strongly linked to what they buy. Attention is the missing link between exposure and effectiveness."

The broader CTV ad server landscape covered by PPC Land in November 2025 shows the infrastructure supporting premium video advertising is consolidating and maturing. Microsoft's August 2025 launch of Premium Streaming campaigns specifically included Netflix, Roku, Paramount, LG, and Samsung - but not YouTube - reflecting how platform-level distinctions are increasingly embedded in the tools advertisers use to plan and execute campaigns. Teads' deterministic CTV measurement launch in October 2025 similarly focused on premium streaming environments as distinct from user-generated content platforms.

The cumulative picture across multiple independent data points is that attention quality varies significantly by CTV environment, and premium video consistently comes out ahead - at least as measured by the metrics this report defines. What remains contested is whether the price premium for those environments justifies the attention premium. That calculation depends on campaign objectives, budget constraints, and how individual advertisers weight co-viewing reach versus raw impression volume.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), a trade organization whose members include premium multiscreen TV providers and distributors, released the report. TVision, an audience measurement firm, provided the custom research data. The findings are addressed to brand marketers, media planners, and agencies allocating CTV advertising budgets.

What: A 51-page report titled The Impression Gap analyzing CTV viewership data across 21 premium video platforms - including Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, Tubi, Pluto TV, Roku Channel, and others - compared against YouTube. The report quantifies five metrics: co-viewing rate, presence-to-active index, attention-to-presence index, attention-to-duration index, and session length. Premium platforms outperformed YouTube on all five, with co-viewing 33% stronger, session lengths 49% longer, and sustained attention (attention-to-duration) 18% higher.

When: The research data was collected from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. The report was released today, February 24, 2026.

Where: The study measured CTV viewing behavior in the United States across thousands of households using TVision's in-home sensor technology, including person recognition, ACR fingerprinting, and device detection.

Why: The report was produced to address a growing question in CTV media planning: whether impressions purchased across different streaming environments deliver comparable value. The VAB argues that as CTV advertising budgets grow, marketers need more than reach metrics to assess impression quality, and that attention-based measurement reveals a meaningful gap between premium video and YouTube that raw impression counts obscure.

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