Live Sports Streaming and the 52.8% Incremental Reach Linear TV Leaves Behind
A media planner’s guide to reaching more households with live sports streaming
When you add live sports streaming to a media plan, how much of your advertising reaches households your linear TV campaign missed? Across 821.4 million Cast Iron Media impressions measured by iSpot in the first half of 2026, 52.8% reached households the advertiser’s own linear campaign had not reached. The results varied depending on how much linear TV advertising was already running. Our report shows how your client’s existing linear campaign can help you assess what streaming could add.
Download the report to learn:
How Linear Spend Shapes Reach
How much net-new reach streaming adds depends on how much linear TV your client is already running, not on their industry category.
How Co-Viewing Changes Impressions
Live sports are often watched in groups. If you count only one viewer per screen, you can undercount the impressions and scale your campaign actually delivered.
How Streaming Performs Across the Funnel
See how campaigns in auto, insurance and other categories used live sports streaming to drive both brand lift and lower-funnel results like visits and sales.
How to Set Up Measurement
Decide on your core measurement questions before the campaign starts, so you’ll have the data you need to adjust ad frequency and creative rotation as it runs.
Why your existing linear plan matters
An advertiser running a smaller linear campaign generally has more households left to reach. A larger campaign has already reached more homes, so streaming is more likely to reach some of them again.
In Cast Iron’s analysis, median incremental reach was 88.6% among advertisers with fewer than 50 million linear impressions. Among those with more than 1 billion, it was 31.3%.
Streaming reached households linear TV missed in both groups. But advertisers buying less linear TV saw less overlap between their streaming and linear audiences. Your client’s existing linear campaign can therefore help you assess how much additional reach streaming might deliver, though individual results will vary.
Download Live Sports Streaming and the 52.8% Incremental Reach Linear TV Leaves Behind to understand where live sports streaming can extend your client’s reach and how to evaluate its contribution.