Political Ads Score Higher 'Viewability,' 'Attention': TVision

• by Wayne Friedman , September 26, 2022

The "viewability" and "attention" metrics of political advertising continue to score better results compared to other TV advertising, according to TVision, a company using "eyes-on-the-screen" technology for TV measurement.

When it comes to "in-view" TV watchers -- viewing when someone is in the room while the ad is airing -- political advertising gets 25.3 seconds of "viewability" versus 20.7 seconds for non-political TV advertising.

For the more specific "attention" measure -- viewers who are not only in the room, but have eyes on the screen for two or more seconds -- political advertising achieves a 17.1 second average, versus 14.0 seconds for non-political messaging.

People 55 years and older post the highest attention numbers for political advertising -- a 43% score versus 38% for all other advertising.

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TVision says that increasingly, a variation is seen with young viewers, 18-24, who are watching political advertising on connected TV platforms -- versus all other advertising on those platforms.

They have a 12% higher attention score for political ads compared to all other TV ads they watch -- a 34.5% number (for political ads) versus 30.8% for all other advertising.

But this is not the case for younger viewers 18-24 who watch political advertising on linear TV -- posting virtually identical numbers for political and non-political messaging, at 32.5% and 32.1%, respectively.

Looking at categories of TV viewers, the research found that independent-leaning voters have slightly higher TV "attention" scores versus Republicans and Democrats when it comes to political TV advertising.

TV viewers who call themselves politically independent have a 40.6% "attention" score for political advertising -- higher than the 39.3% level for Republicans, and 38.9% for Democrats when it comes to political ads airing so far this season.

TVision compiled this TV advertising viewer engagement study for linear TV and CTV among people 18 years and older between January 1, 2022 and August 29, 2022.

TVision's panel includes about 13,000 U.S. viewers who self-report their political affiliation.