NEW YORK—A new report from the Video Advertising Bureau and TVision addresses the issue of whether premium video or YouTube performs better for marketers and comes to the conclusion that Premium Video consistently delivers stronger results.
To investigate the issue, the VAB commissioned TVision to provide custom research data—collected from July 2024 to June 2025—examining how audiences consume CTV content on Premium Video Platforms versus on YouTube. The researchers analyzed audience data across Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, Prime Video and 16 other platforms to better understand key audience and behavioral questions including co-viewing, attention and viewing session length. as detailed in the report.
"The data shows that Premium Video Platforms on CTV are much more likely to generate higher levels of co-viewing, enabling advertisers to get greater efficiency out of every CTV impression they buy," said Benjamin Vandegrift, senior vice president, measurement strategy and innovation, VAB. "While attention on YouTube tends to underperform, Premium Video Platforms deliver elevated attention across session durations, which unlocks deeper engagement and greater brand storytelling opportunities for marketers."
Key findings include:
- Premium Video Platforms consistently bring multiple viewers into the room delivering more ad exposures and more efficient impressions for brands, with co-viewing 33% stronger on Premium Platforms than on YouTube.
- Premium Video drives greater consistent attention across content duration than YouTube, with YouTube ranking 14th in sustained time spent with eyes on screen.
- Premium Video Platforms are 18% more likely to convert viewing time into meaningful attentive minutes across CTV viewership.
- Shorter viewing sessions on YouTube limit impressions opportunities, compared with longer form content across Premium Video Platforms—as YouTube ranks last in viewing session length.
- Premium Video Platforms have 49% longer viewing sessions than YouTube, maximizing the marketer opportunity for meaningful impressions.
"Attention and co-viewing are important factors in understanding the quality, impact and total reach of ad impressions. To maximize campaign performance, it is necessary for marketers to understand attentive engagement levels," explains Yan Liu, CEO, TVision. "The analysis presented in The Impression Gap delivers substantive clarity and context on the true value of streaming ad impressions."
The report defines and presents data points representing five key metrics—co-viewing percentage and session length along with the "presence to active," "attention to presence" and "attention to duration" indexes—which quantify the differences in audience behavior on Premium Video versus YouTube.
In the study, references to YouTube do not include data from the vMVPD YouTube TV.
Download the full report here.
