Rethink Reach to Unify Your Linear and Streaming Advertising Strategies

The post was created in partnership with Samsung Ads

Media advertisers have long measured audience reach to determine how many unique viewers saw their campaign or messaging. But in today’s landscape—where audiences split their time between linear TV and streaming—the challenge is no longer just counting impressions. It’s ensuring that reach is measured accurately across both environments, so marketers can understand their true audience and avoid wasted spend.

Reach, reconsidered

In May, streaming viewership outpaced the combined broadcast and cable numbers for the first time, according to Nielsen, representing 44.8% of all viewership. This shift spans all generations, creating more opportunities than ever to connect with diverse audiences.

However, as viewing habits evolve and new technologies emerge, brands must reassess how they define and measure reach as they optimize their budget across both linear and streaming campaigns.

While measuring true reach across screens can be complex, it’s also where the greatest opportunity lies. Marketers who unify their view of audiences—across both linear and streaming—can uncover new pockets of growth.

In fact, Samsung Ads’ report “Missed Reach, Found Revenue” found that TV advertisers are missing out on $141 billion in potential revenue annually due to siloed audience measurement. Closing that gap starts with rethinking reach as a dynamic, actionable metric that powers better outcomes.

Reach that performs, from eyeballs to impact

In today’s market, reach isn’t just about audience size—it’s about business impact. Modern marketers are redefining it as a performance metric, measuring not only how many people they connect with, but how effectively those connections drive engagement, conversions, and long-term growth.

Relying solely on broad exposure without targeting is not only an ineffective strategy—it also risks leaving opportunity on the table. The real advantage comes from understanding incremental reach: the additional, unique audiences a campaign engages beyond its existing base. For instance, imagine unlocking access to millions of net-new customers who had not previously seen your ads in either linear or streaming environments. That’s an opportunity any advertiser would want to harness.

By viewing reach through this performance lens, marketers can bridge awareness and action—building campaigns that not only capture attention, but convert it into meaningful results.

Streaming’s hidden reach opportunity

There’s no doubt that having fragmented audiences across multiple streaming options across multiple devices has complicated advertising. But the better way to think about it is that it’s expanded the opportunity for targeted audience insights. The key is leveraging tools that can unify your data for both linear and streaming.

For example, the average TV campaign misses out on 41% of its potential reach because of audience duplication (e.g., double counting ad-based video on demand (AVOD) and linear viewers), according to the Samsung Ads report. However, by streamlining data, brands can reallocate budget dollars that were being wasted on duplicate audiences and better manage their total audience reach.