As streaming services fight for subscribers in an oversaturated industry, standing out can be difficult. There are so many options that it has become increasingly difficult to decide what streaming services to use. Some streamers are faring better than others, and among free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services, the Fox Corporation’s free streamer Tubi has come out on top for the month of February.
The streaming service debuted in Nielsen’s The Gauge Total TV and Streaming Snapshot for February. The Gauge, which monitors monthly TV and streaming usage in the United States, reports that Tubi had 1% of all TV watching minutes, above Pluto’s 0.7% ; other FAST streaming services fell below those totals and therefore were not listed.
“Within the streaming category, Tubi TV became the latest service to achieve a 1% share of TV usage, joining Pluto TV as the second free, ad-supported platform to be broken out from the “other streaming” category,” Nielsen noted in its release.
Despite this accomplishment Tubi still lags behind other streaming rivals. YouTube and Netflix had the most TV viewing minutes with 7.9% and 7.3%, respectively. Other streaming services listed were Hulu (3.3%), Prime Video (3.0%), Disney+ (1.8%), HBO Max (1.3%), and Peacock (1.0%). All other streaming services accounted for 6.8% of total TV viewing minutes.
Also of note during the month was the fact that viewing time via traditional broadcast and cable was down significantly 9.2% and 5.7%, respectively. The reason for that was the fact that the college football bowl season ended in January and the only NFL game in February was the Super Bowl. Therefore, sports viewing via broadcast networks declined a whopping 64.7%. This seasonal fluctuation has been part of the TV viewing calendar for years, but as the gap between traditional TV and streaming grows, the importance of sports becomes more pronounced on broadcast and cable.
With the gap left by sports being less important in February, the familiar, lean-back programming of FAST services like Tubi has seemingly filled the gap.
“Reaching 1% of total viewing minutes is a huge milestone for us because it validates we are driving massive viewership and our data-informed personalization and recommendations get the right content in front of the right people,” Tubi chief revenue officer Mark Rotblat said. “Advertisers can feel confident that our light ad loads, addressability and tools for cross-screen planning and measurement are built with their success in mind and they can shift a significant portion of their video investment dollars to a 100% addressable audience on Tubi.”
Tubi has had an excellent start to 2023. The streaming service added five brand new channels in January and struck a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery later in the month to offer several HBO and HBO Max series as part of WBD’s expansion into FAST channels.
In February, FOX reported that in the second quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, Tubi saw a 41% increase in watching time year-over-year. Undoubtedly contributing to the service’s record watching figures for the previous quarter was that English-language 2022 FIFA World Cup matches were available on-demand through the service.
Tubi
Tubi is a free video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 200,000+ movies and TV episodes - more than any other streaming service. Its ad breaks are shorter and less frequent than most free services. Fox executives have called their service “TV on steroids.”