Millions of Americans Streamed Election News for Free on the Roku Platform Breaking TV Streaming Records; Likely Voters Cut the Cord and Embraced AVOD - Seite 2

The majority of the households that streamed news across the Roku platform also skewed younger with nearly two-thirds (62%), including people in the coveted 18-49 year-old advertising demographic.

This data mirrors the broader election year trend reported by Nielsen, which found a significant change in how Americans consumed Election Day news in 2020. According to Nielsen, linear viewership dropped 35% on Election Day compared to 2016, while streaming increased by 499%.

“The desire to access live and breaking news is no longer holding audiences to traditional pay TV the way it once did,” added Hovey. “Millions of Americans have now discovered new ways to access quality news programming for free, which we believe will only further the migration towards a streaming-first television world”.

The election data comes on the heels of a Harris Poll survey of likely voters which found that while Americans don’t agree on many things, the one thing that brings Republican, Democrat and Independent voters together is their preference for streaming. Adults from all three political affiliations reported spending nearly twice as much time streaming TV as they did watching traditional pay TV. And for many, they are watching no traditional TV at all. The survey found that 45% of both Democrats and Republicans (and 44% of all likely voters) have either cut the cord or plan to in the year ahead. Independents are leading the charge away from linear television with more than half reporting that they have either already cut the cord or they are planning to this year.

Looking ahead to the State of Georgia run-off elections in January, 1 out of 5 Georgian voters surveyed by The Harris Poll reported being unreachable on linear television today because of cord cutting, with another 24% saying they plan to cut the cord in the coming months. The implications for political campaigns, and marketers more broadly, seeking to reach targeted audiences is clear.

“Streaming is fundamentally altering many of the norms advertisers have come to expect the past few decades,” said Alison Levin, VP of Global Ad Revenue and Marketing Solutions. “The 2020 elections highlighted the broad implications of the move to a streaming-first world, where in the not-too-distant future, the majority of voters – and for that matter the majority of consumers – will no longer be reachable on traditional pay TV. Campaigns have adapted to the technology and trend shifts just as major brands have done with the 2020 election season, signaling a real shift by advertisers to embracing the full funnel capabilities of streaming advertising.”