At a festival in Miami, a YouTube executive was due to appear alongside the head of Adelaide, a company that sells attention measurement, that is, an estimate of whether viewers actually notice an ad. Both Google and an association of premium publishers had attention on television measured, and each measurement came out in favour of whoever commissioned it. Google commissioned its measurement from Adelaide itself. The session in which the two were due to speak was called “You're Not Buying Attention. You're Buying the Illusion of It.” Both measurements compare YouTube with streaming services.

In a 2024 meta-analysis for Google, YouTube Select came out best on the TV screen, 19% ahead of the nine largest streaming services, including Netflix. It is an offering that lets an advertiser place ads with the top 1% of creators and with the most popular content, including content from the major American sports leagues.

Google had only the best of YouTube measured, whereas the publishers measured the whole app. The American association, whose members are providers and distributors of premium video, commissioned the data from the measurement firm TVision. The association pitted premium streaming services, from subscription to free streaming, against YouTube. The February 2026 report gave premium services 18% higher attention than YouTube.

The report's framing and the presentation of its results come from an organisation with a commercial interest in how they turn out, the trade site PPC Land pointed out in its analysis of the report. According to the site, watching on YouTube counted towards the study from thirty seconds, while for premium services it counted only from five minutes. The report advises advertisers to reconsider how much advertising they buy on YouTube and how much from premium services, for example the streaming services of television companies.

In Czechia, a camera above the TV measures attention

The Czech attention measurement by the media group Omnicom Media now also includes advertising on YouTube watched on television. A camera above the screen in Czech households assesses second by second whether the viewer is looking. The group showed the first results to its clients in September 2026 at Spojka Karlín. The hall was full. An agency from the same Omnicom group operates the MediaGuru site, which wrote about the measurement. “For now, we are keeping the specific figures and benchmarks for our clients,” Zuzana Horáková, technology director at Omnicom Media, told it at the beginning of September.

The figures from TVision, which also measured for the publishers, came out in June 2026 and concern YouTube on television. In its measurement, a camera in American households tracks whether viewers have their eyes on the screen. According to those figures, viewers more often played creators' channels. But Hollywood studio videos had higher attention.

YouTube recommended that brands work with creators and athletes in a LinkedIn post summarising two sessions of the festival. At the festival in Miami, YouTube was a founding sponsor, according to the organiser. The post opens by asking whether brand marketing with creators still relies only on the thirty-second ad spot.

Sport from creators is supposed to bring 35% higher attention on the living-room screen than traditional prime-time broadcasting, YouTube writes in a post from October 2026. The post does not say who measured the figure. The bullet point containing it has no link. The post's last bullet point warns that a high share of completed ad views masks wasted spend, and advises steering investment by proven ad returns and sales results.

By Tereza Tiller