Among Samsung’s 50-million-plus smart TVs in the U.S., streaming now accounts for nearly 60% of media consumption, the Korean tech giant noted during a recent IAB 2020 NewFronts show.

When not streaming, consumers usually watched linear TV programming or content delivered via a set-top box or satellite.

With a market share of more than 20%, Samsung has been the world’s largest TV manufacturer since 2006. However, the company isn’t necessarily using its clout to push its own ad offerings, such as native ad units on its home screen or through its free streaming service called Samsung TV Plus.

Samsung said that current data trends point to the undeniable fact that TV viewing is rapidly moving online.

“I like to say that advertisers come for the data and then stay for the media and inventory,” Tom Fochetta, vice president of Samsung Ads, told Adweek.

“Once they figure out how they can activate and it’s meeting their KPIs, we keep these customers long term.”

The surge in overall streaming the past several months seems to have been largely driven by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

From January to mid-March, linear TV viewing rose 70% and streaming skyrocketed 132%, according to Adweek. From March 15 to May 10, streaming continued to enjoy strong growth at 127%, but the rate for linear TV viewing dropped to 47%.

Samsung noted that only 26% of its TV consumers account for 86% of all linear TV viewership.

“What this suggests, from an advertiser perspective, is a major challenge that they have one slice of the population that is highly accessible in a linear format,” Justin Evans, global head of analytics and insights at Samsung Ads, told Adweek.

“And they have another much larger chunk of the population that seems to be better accessed through streaming. We think it’s posing a challenge to advertisers who more assertively manage their linear and streaming together as a way to accomplish holistic reach.”

Samsung was quick to point out that not all streaming is ad-supported. At the end of 2019, 56% of streaming was done through ad-free services. On Samsung TV’s platform, though, 75% of steamers tapped into ad-supported services.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.