By Nicole Nixon, Head of Product Marketing at Nano Interactive
Picture a typical UK family on a weeknight. The evening might start as everyone gathers for their favourite on-demand drama, after which some members drift to YouTube on their phone, and others finish by catching up on their favourite reality show on their tablet, while the main TV is flicked onto the news.
The remote barely moves, yet the household has passed through three or four services, each with its own content, ad breaks and idea of who is watching.
For viewers, that journey feels pretty effortless. But for advertisers, there’s a lot to unpack, because a single household can appear as several separate audiences, and the same ad can follow it from one service to the next.
We know that viewers have embraced streaming, and many respond to the ads they see. But the rapid growth of the channel which gives viewers such a flexible viewing experience today has resulted in the fragmentation of the signals which sit behind it, so it’s easy for brands to get things wrong.
Here, we look at how the living room has changed, why the programme is now as important as the person watching it, and what happens when advertising outstays its welcome.
The living room has quietly changed
While the TV set still dominates as the preferred way we like to watch TV, with 93% of viewing happening at home on the main TV set, streaming has become the default. Nano’s CTV Insights UK 2026 report found it is now the primary viewing route for 60% of people in the UK. Some 71% stream on at least four days a week, and more than half of viewing days involve sessions of two hours or more.
What has changed is everything behind the screen. The average household uses 3.5 streaming services, and while 20m+ households have access to at least one of the top three SVOD platforms, no single provider comes close to covering the market. CTV combines the impact of television with the audience intelligence of digital, but that fragmentation means its reach is often inefficient.
The programme is as important as the person
Take that household again. The same two adults might watch a film together, then one settles in for the football while the other picks up a box set. Their ages haven’t changed between programmes, but their mood and receptiveness to advertising almost certainly have.
That’s why CTV targeting can’t stop at demographics. Films have the broadest appeal, watched by 65% of viewers and giving advertisers scale, while documentaries and drama each attract around a third, offering more precision. Live sport skews heavily male (47% of men watch it, against 15% of women) and peaks among 35 to 44-year-olds, 71% of whom see it as a leading setting for discovering brands. Younger viewers lean towards reality and entertainment, and respond most readily to ads.
Knowing who is watching tells you who you can reach. Knowing what they’re watching helps explain why they may be receptive to a certain message, and could even indicate what mood state they might be in.
When advertising outstays its welcome
The encouraging news is that CTV audiences respond. Some 61% of viewers have taken action after seeing a streaming ad, rising to 87% among 25 to 34-year-olds. And 82% are happy to see ads in return for a cheaper subscription.
But tolerance shouldn’t be confused with relevance. Only 48% believe the ads they see reflect their household’s interests, and 73% notice when ads are mismatched to their life stage. Repetition does even more damage. Half of viewers say repetitive advertising has put them off a brand, and for 22% it has happened more than once.
If we think about our household, each service may cap frequency within its own walls, but nobody can easily see how often the same ad has appeared across all of them. Even the same episode can carry a different content ID from one platform to another. So a campaign can be highly targeted in theory and still feel repetitive to the person watching it. That makes frequency management part of the viewer experience, and potentially part of brand protection too.
From scale to quality
Now that viewers have made streaming their default, they move between services without a second thought, and are willing to act on an ad that feels right for them. The boom has already happened, and scale is no longer the dominant story.
What will decide CTV’s long-term potential is whether brands can win, and keep, that household’s attention. That means recognising how much the living room has changed, understanding the programme as well as the person, and making sure advertising doesn’t outstay its welcome.
More impressions won’t automatically produce more impact. But the right message, in the right context and at the right frequency, can turn the UK’s streaming boom into something viewers and advertisers both value.
Methodology: based on a nationally representative survey of 504 UK adults by Nano Interactive, August 2026. Download the full research at https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yV0S50.
