In Times Of Stress, Americans Like Binging Comfort Food TV

Author: Alan Wolk. Source: Forbes

With most Americans sheltering in place, everyone is watching more TV than ever before.

This situation—stuck at home with nothing but time—would seem like a great opportunity to catch up on all those great streaming series you’ve likely missed, the ones you’ve been meaning to watch since last summer, but never quite got around to.

While that sounds great in theory, new data from Inscape, which tracks viewing on over 14 million smart TVs, shows that people are turning instead to the more tried and true.

This past weekend, the top three shows viewers have been bingeing are long-running network series: NCIS Los Angeles (#1), Homeland (#2) and Law and Order, SVU (#3). The weekend before, long-running sitcoms The Office and The Big Bang Theory rounded out the top five.

So what’s going on?

It seems that in a time of stress, people like watching what’s being called “Comfort Food TV”, shows that they’re familiar with, shows that don’t make them think too much, shows that allow them to escape from the current reality. That’s something many streaming shows, with antiheroes and complex, not easily resolved plot lines, can’t really offer.

There’s also the fact that the whole family is now home and watching TV together and so viewers are looking to find shows that everyone can agree on, and old favorites are an easy compromise vote.

Finally, there’s the fact that one of the great things about comfort food TV is that it doesn’t require your complete and undivided attention the way that many streaming dramas do.

Good News For The FASTS

The rise of comfort good TV is a very promising development for the FASTS, free ad-supported streaming TV services like Pluto, Xumo, Tubi and The Roku Channel.

Those services all carry a steady supply of classic sitcoms and movies and, in addition to being free, they have around half the ad loads of traditional broadcast and cable networks.

That’s great for consumers and it’s why VIZIO Ads, a new division of the TV manufacturer that sells ads on VIZIO’s WatchFree service is reporting a 19% week-over-week increase in the amount of AVOD (ad-supported video on demand, aka FASTS) for the previous week.

“We’re seeing a huge influx of people streaming ad supported content across apps and linear channels,” notes Mike O’Donnell, SVP of VIZIO Ads. “It’s a great time for discovery of new content but also the shows and genres people are familiar with are performing really well.”

The increase of viewership on the FASTS is good news for advertisers as well. For those companies with strong online businesses, DTC companies for example, this is a great time to advertise.

“Brands have to sort out some of the creative issues to make sure the right ad is considerate of the right times we are in, but there are a number of ad categories that understand now is a really good time to remind consumers of their values,” said O’Donnell.

Brands with long purchase cycles like automobiles can also benefit from advertising now. While consumers may not be heading down to their local dealership this month, car buying is usually a more considered process, so getting brand ads in front of viewers while they’re home and able to think about what kind of car they’ll eventually buy (and perform all the necessary research) is going to be a smart move.

The FASTS are also well positioned because unlike their cable and satellite competitors, they can offer addressable (targeted) advertising on every ad slot, allowing brands to reach viewers in their most desired demographics while rounding out their overall ad buys via something known as "incremental lift”—the ability to reach viewers who did not see the original linear TV ad buy or who are in demographics/geographies that the brand wants to double down on.

Plus, because there are fewer ads each hour, viewers are more likely to pay attention to them.

“Ad delivery on TV is up across linear, VOD and CTV,” said Stu Schwartzapfel, SVP of Media Partnerships at iSpot.tv, which measures TV ads across those formats. “Linear as a whole is compensating brands for the lack of sports with an abundance of viewers from people stuck at home. The day parts and shows and even formats are shifting but on the whole, TV is delivering more ads to more people than it did this time last year.”

iSpot data proves out the comfort food value. An analysis of the twelve days since the NBA suspended play on March 11th proves the point. Law and Order has delivered 2 billion ad impressions, Friends 1.9 billion and The Today Show 1.5 billion (on ten percent of airings).

There’s one other factor that makes advertising on TV a smart move right now too. People are used to seeing ads on the classic shows they’re watching. The shows are written for commercial breaks too—there are natural breaks in the action that accommodated the commercial breaks in the show’s initial run.

If the ads shown in those breaks are well-targeted and (more important) the number of ads is limited—Hulu’s decision to keep ad breaks to 90 seconds or less is a wise one—then consumers will pay attention. Or be far less likely to decide they’ve got five minutes to do something else and disappear into their phones or another room.

When Ad-Free Rules, Ads Become More Valuable

While all TV viewing is likely to increase during this period, stats from Inscape indicate that streaming will see more of an uptick than linear. While both saw an identical 10% lift in the amount of TV watched, OTT viewers watched an average of 34 minutes of TV, versus 19 minutes for linear viewers.

Since a goodly percentage of that viewing is likely to take place on ad-free services like Netflix, Amazon and Disney Plus, that makes the remaining OTT ads more valuable. It’s the old law of supply and demand: when demand remains constant and supply goes down, prices go up.

For brands that are spending money on TV advertising, mixing targeted addressable advertising on the FASTS with linear advertising on broadcast and cable could be the right way to reach the audiences they want at a time when those audiences are in the right mood to see ads.