New research from consumer insights platform Attest finds that many of the assumptions underpinning media planning simply don’t reflect how people are actually consuming content today.
Based on nationally representative surveys of 1,000 UK and 1,000 US adults, alongside five years of tracking data in each market, Attest’s 2026 media consumption report reveals that presumed ‘safe bets’ in media buying don’t hold up to scrutiny when it comes to factors such as ad avoidance, video length, platform loyalty and premium audiences.
New Digital Age spoke with Nick White, Head of Strategic Research at Attest, to learn more…
Why did Attest commission this research?
We’ve got five years of quarterly tracking, so we have a strong understanding of what’s happened in the past. We wanted to build on that and understand what’s going to happen in the future.
We’re seeing that every brand at the moment is finding it harder to know where their audience actually is, because attention is ultimately scattered across multiple platforms. We wanted to understand what happens when things are so fragmented.
There are a lot of assumptions that people fall back on TV, so we wanted to understand whether that hypothesis was correct. If it wasn’t true, where were people moving towards with their media budgets?
So it was about building the bigger picture from our tracking, but we also had an inkling that something significant was going on within the media landscape.
What for you were the headline findings?
One of the four key headlines is that creator platforms have overtaken TV. YouTube, TikTok and social video together are ultimately being streamed more than live TV and subscription combined. In terms of platforms specifically, YouTube is the main one that people are watching, but they’re not necessarily watching it on their phone. They’re watching it on their TV.
Another major headline is that full attention on TV has more or less gone. Only 13% of people are looking at TV only. While that’s on, people are on their social feed. The traditional TV reach that media owners are claiming might still be there, but you’re not necessarily getting the engagement within it.
Our research suggests that ads are reaching more people than people would really expect. That’s mainly because of live TV events and, also, the ad-supported platforms – YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime and so on. Lots and lots of people are using the ad-supported function, across a broad range of age groups and household incomes. There’s still lots of contact with advertising across multiple different platforms.
Importantly though, everyone hits a wall when it comes to the amount of advertising they want to see. When we look at live TV, 15 minutes is around the peak frequency that people would be okay seeing advertising. On social video it goes down to 12, so there’s less tolerance for advertising on social platforms than there is on live TV.
Did any of the findings surprise you?
One of the surprising findings is that Facebook is where people feel most hooked, not TikTok. There’s an assumption at the moment that TikTok has that broader hook across all generations, but there are differences.
The older generations are the majority of the population at the moment, and that’s ultimately why Facebook is skewing to be the channel that people are most hooked on. If we looked specifically at Gen Z, that’s where TikTok comes in.
Another surprise is that the ad-supported tiers aren’t necessarily just a budget audience. Netflix and Prime ad-tier users tend to peak amongst those earning £50,000 to £100,000, and around 50% of people who are on £100,000-plus also use the ad tier on YouTube.
A final point of interest is the scepticism of AI advertising amongst Gen Z. This group is the most comfortable with AI in their general life, but actually they are the least tolerant of it within advertising. 33% would disengage with a piece of advertising if it was AI-generated. Only around 20% of other generations say they would turn off.
Did the research uncover any other notable trends?
The fact that ads aren’t necessarily skippable doesn’t mean that they’re watched. When people can’t skip an ad, only a third carry on watching it as intended. The rest do something else; they might start scrolling their phone or mute it.
Brand advertisers should look at consumer multitasking as an opportunity, rather than a problem. When advertising comes on, people are eating and drinking while they’re watching TV. A quarter are shopping online and one in five are actually Googling or using AI assistants.
There’s an opportunity to engage people outside of the TV or streaming platform they’re using. You can get someone to use their phone to create user-generated content, do a competition, scan a QR code, and so on. They’ve got their phone in their hand while they’re watching TV, so there are opportunities to use that.
Another big trend is that social search and AI search are really starting to take ground away from Google. 75% of Gen Z will check a social platform before buying, whereas when you get to the oldest group it’s 24%.
When it comes to AI search, it’s much more to do with income. People who are on a higher income are much more likely to use AI search than those on a lower income.
What other sorts of support are your clients asking for right now?
Within the media space, it’s very much to do with creator content. A lot of brands want to understand which types of creators they should partner with, which would have the best impact on their brand, and whether it’s going to make people more likely to buy the brand.
They’re also trying to understand what channels they should be positioning their brand on. A lot of them are taking the media consumption report and running their own research to make sure they fully understand how it’s relevant to themselves.
Generally speaking, our customers are being asked to do a lot more than they have been in the past, with less time and less resource. We all know that the industry is moving very quickly because of AI. Research budgets are being cut and some organisations are making cuts as well. We’re here to be the sounding board and the consultative side of what our customers need to do.
We’re refining briefs, making sure they’re answering their research objectives and analysing their data correctly. It’s all helping them get to the answers quicker, but then they have more time to have strategic conversations with their stakeholders rather than wasting time on the nitty-gritty of the research management.
You can read the UK version of the research here and the US version here.
