After a period of relative consistency, connected TV’s share of ad impressions has varied widely in recent months, according to Extreme Reach’s Video Benchmarks Report for Q1 ’20 and through May 11th. CTV ad impression share stayed in a tight range from 47%-51% for each quarter of 2019. But in January they dropped to 41%, in February to 35%, in March to 36% and in the first two weeks of April to 29%. However, in the period from April 15 to May 11, they rebounded to 42%.

In a briefing, ER executives noted that the big swings may be correlated to the impact of Covid-19 stay-at-home orders had on viewing behaviors. For example, with more family members under one roof, there may be more competition for the big screen, and usage of it may shift to ad-free services (reminder Netflix had a huge Q1 subscriber jump). This could help explain why mobile impression share increased to 33% in Q1 ’20 from 25% in Q1 ’19 and desktop surged from 17% to 23% in the same period, as other viewers used other devices.

And for sure over the past few months many categories of advertisers have pulled campaigns. ER observed that a significant number of its digital advertisers change plans quickly.

As a point of comparison, for the week of May 3-9, Innovid found CTV ads accounted for a 49% share globally, up from 43% in the April 12-18 week. Expanding beyond ad impressions, to streaming generally, Conviva found CTV had a 54% share of views globally and 62% share in the Americas in Q1 ’20. Overall, CTV has been on a strong upward trajectory over the past couple of years, as penetration of CTVs and OTT services have both soared.

As always, Extreme Reach’s Video Benchmarks Report also includes valuable data on impressions by media type, DTC brand spending, impressions by ad length, completion rates, invalid traffic and more. The report is free to download.