The Shows, Brands, and Ads That Captured Attention in July 2021

The month of July featured one of television’s biggest and most anticipated viewing events - the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. This was billed as the first “streaming Olympics” with viewers tuning in on Peacock and NBC’s traditional broadcast channels.

And while significant attention was paid to both the ads and the athletes in the Games, other television programming and advertising made waves as well, such as Ted Lasso, and Johnny Test on CTV. On broadcast and cable traditional summer programming kept viewers engaged, including reality TV competition programs like perennial favorite The Bachelorette on ABC.

TVision’s monthly reports focus on the performance of episodic television on broadcast, cable, and CTV. We also cover the top brands and ads. Here are the gold medal finishers and top performers across TV, CTV, and brands for 2021.

Note, if you're looking for a more in-depth analysis of CTV content, be sure to check this month's CTV blog.

A quick summary of how TVision uses cutting-edge technology to uncover second-by-second, person-level TV engagement data. Brands can improve the impact of every ad by optimizing media placements and creative for attention and engagement. To learn more about our data and how to best leverage it, contact us.

Top CTV Programs, by Share Time of Spent

Share Time of Spent ranks shows by the proportion of time viewers spent tuned to the content. For this report, we are specifically looking at time spent with new, original, episodic CTV programming.

Virgin River pulled an impressive 17% of time spent with new, original, episodic content. In fact, when we ranked the list to include all content, not just new seasons, they still maintained their #1 rank - capturing over 10% of ALL time spent with original, episodic content in July. Also notable, Loki prevented a Netflix clean sweep of the Share of Time Spent category. Loki's share dropped slightly from June, but the series continued to keep viewers tuned in - even though new episodes ended midway through the month.

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Top TV Shows, by TV Ad Attention

TV Ad Attention measures how effectively an ad or ads held viewers’ Attention while they aired. It is measured as the percentage of all ad impressions in which the viewer was looking at the TV screen for two or more seconds.

The CW's Kung Fu was number one for broadcast Ad Attention in the month but was still beat out by the three cable shows: History's The Machines that Built America, A&E's Fasten Your Seatbelt, and CBS's Grownish all delivered over 50% ad attention - making them a great opportunity for marketers looking to reach engaged audiences.

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Top Brands for TV Ad Attention

Brands that capture attention with their ads see 3x higher brand recall, than advertisers with low attention campaigns. The higher rates of brand recall can transfer to greater purchase intent and in-store visits, so attention is a critical metric for TV advertisers