FAST vs. Netflix: Older viewers choose free streaming, advertisers follow
Los Angeles — At the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) conference, one statistic really popped: Americans between 50 and 64 years old are the most avid viewers of free ad-supported TV (FAST).
According to Nielsen’s Brian Fuhrer, this age group watches more FAST content than any other — and viewers 50 and older now spend more time on FAST platforms than on Netflix. The shift first occurred in the spring of 2024, and it has held steady since.
“We don’t see any slowdown in the future as more and more people have adopted this,” Fuhrer said during his presentation.
FAST platforms like The Roku Channel, Pluto TV and Tubi are not just attracting eyeballs — they’re commanding attention. New research from Roku, Magna and TVision shows ads on free streaming services receive nearly the same amount of attention as those on subscription streaming platforms. The viewability rate for ads on FAST platforms was 74%, one point lower than that of subscription services. And both had a visual attention rate of 50%.
TVision conducted the research in 2024 with a panel of 15,000 people who opted in to vision tracking while watching TV.
“If you really start to look at attention, which gets closer to ROI, then [FAST] can be a great buying point,” Angelina Marmorato, vice president of data and platform sales at TVision, told The Current. “And with the CPM differential, it’s an excellent value.”
Indeed, FAST CPMs average around $10, compared to $30 for major subscription streamers.
FAST’s top platforms are also outperforming some big names in paid streaming. The Roku Channel (2.8% of total viewership) and Tubi (2.1%) both beat Paramount+ (2.0%), Peacock (1.4%) and HBO Max (1.3%), according to Nielsen.
“With the rise of premium content on free streaming has come the equalization in attention paid between free and paid streaming TV,” said Zoe Zirlin, ad research manager at Roku, during her presentation.
One of FAST’s biggest moments came earlier this year when Tubi streamed the Super Bowl to 13.6 million viewers — the most streamed Super Bowl of all time. CEO Anjali Sud called it “a watershed moment for Tubi and a big milestone for live sports and free ad-supported streaming.”
Fixing measurement challenges fast
Comscore reports a 43% year-over-year increase in total hours watching FAST content in 2025 compared to last year.
Still, the measurement of all that viewership is highly fragmented. Brian West, senior vice president of data and measurement strategy at NBCUniversal, called it “a huge challenge.”
“It’s a great representation of the fragmentation of both distribution and content,” West said during his presentation. “We have a lot of experience measuring fragmented content, and we have a lot of experience measuring fragmented distribution. But combining those both together makes this one a particular challenge.”
TVision’s Marmorato noted that the sheer volume of FAST content — over 1,600 channels, up 42% since 2023, according to Gracenote — makes measurement costly and complex. Each piece of content must be fingerprinted to track attention accurately.
“Frankly, it just costs us a lot more money to fingerprint that huge catalog,” Marmorato said. “And right now, there’s not the same kind of financial and capital behind as channels to do that type of research.”