Streaming video has long been dominated by ad-free subscription platforms like Netflix, but ad-supported services like The Roku Channel, Hulu, and Pluto TV are beginning to gain share. In January 2021, just over a third (34%) of US households that had video streaming capability used ad-supported streaming services, up 6 percentage points from January 2020, per Nielsen. That 34% can be split into the 26% who used ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) platforms, and 8% who opted for linear streaming. (For context, we estimate that average daily time spent with digital video was up 25.4% last year—so the Nielsen data indicates AVOD captured a larger share of that explosive growth.)
Plus, AVOD viewer growth is likely to continue into this year, as all three major drivers of its rise in 2020 are persisting in 2021. Those drivers are: