Developing
The release and its own chart disagree in places, and only percentages are published.
In 60 seconds
- Share of ad exposure time in August 2026: broadcast 43.2%, cable 34.5%, streaming 22.3% (16.1% twelve months earlier).
- Within streaming, YouTube has 44.4%, Tubi 11.6% and Hulu 8.5%.
- By owner, FOX leads with 10.5% and Google follows with 9.8%; by parent company NBCUniversal+Versant leads with 17.5%.
- Comscore's Kevin Burns says viewership is "no longer serving as a sufficient proxy for ad-addressable audiences".
Impact Layer
- What changed
- A new monthly ranking measures TV by ad exposure time and not by viewing time.
- Why it matters
- Ad exposure time is closer to what advertisers buy, and it shows streaming at less than half the share Nielsen's Gauge gives it for viewing.
- Who is affected
- TV and CTV media planners and measurement teams.
- Martech stack area
- Analytics, Advertising
- Stack impact
- Compare ad-exposure shares with viewing shares when you split TV budgets, and ask Comscore which devices and data sources sit behind the numbers.
- Business impact
- Moderate PPC Land notes the series cannot be compared directly with Nielsen's May 2026 Gauge (streaming 48.6% of viewing time) and finds inconsistencies in the release (a plateau near 19% versus a chart showing 16.1% to 18.5%).
- Related technologies
- What to watch
- Later monthly editions and a methodology disclosure.
On October 21, 2026 Comscore published the first edition of its monthly Score Report, covering August 2026. It ranks TV platforms by share of ad exposure time, according to PPC Land.
Key figures
- Broadcast held 43.2%, cable 34.5% and streaming 22.3%. Streaming was 16.1% twelve months earlier.
- Within streaming, YouTube has 44.4%, Tubi 11.6% and Hulu 8.5%.
- By owner, FOX leads with 10.5% and Google follows with 9.8%. By parent company, NBCUniversal+Versant leads with 17.5%. New York is the largest market at 5.6%.
Method
Share is an entity’s ad exposure time divided by all measurable ad exposure in the report’s universe, across 210 markets, including linear- and streaming-originated ads. Only percentages are published. Nielsen’s May 2026 Gauge, which uses a different method, put streaming at 48.6% of viewing time, so the two series cannot be compared directly.
Not stated
Which devices are measured, the data sources, exact reporting dates, how the universe is defined, absolute minutes or impressions, and how vMVPDs such as YouTube TV are classified. The release also attributes streaming’s summer gains to cable while the chart shows broadcast.
Our read
An ad-based view is useful. Wait for the methodology before you change a TV budget on it.
Sources
- PPC Land: Streaming gains 6.2 points of US TV ad exposure in a year, Comscore finds (opens in a new tab)
Source for the report's figures, methodology notes and inconsistencies.