Introducing TVision’s Top 5 Shows, Apps, Brands and Ads for 2021
Introducing TVision’s Top 5 Shows, Apps, Brands and Ads for 2021
December 21
The list recognizes the programs, apps and creative that broke through to best engage television-viewing audiences.
2021 was, in many ways, a transformational year in television. Pandemic challenges of 2020 gave way to new opportunities for the industry, including a much larger opportunity on CTV for new apps, ads and spectacular premium content. But broadcast and linear television continued to deliver the vast amount of TV viewing experiences and advertisers continued to invest there.
At TVision, we measure if TV viewers were in the room, and if they were paying attention to the content and ads. We’re honoring this year in television with our first ever TVision Top 5. These shows, apps, brands and ads best captured audience attention in 2021:
- The Top 5 Primetime Broadcast and Cable TV Programs for Ad Attention
- The Top 5 Apps for Ad Attention in 2021 Plus the Most Co-Viewed AVOD Programs of the Year
- The Top 5 CTV Shows of 2021: Share of Time Spent Viewing, Attention and Binging
- The Top 5 Brands and Ads that Captured Attention in 2021
- The Top 5 for 12 major industries including Auto, Consumer Goods, Cosmetics and Hygiene, Electronics, Entertainment, Food and Beverage, Health, Home and Garden, Legal, Financial and Insurance, Restaurants, Travel and Telecommunications.
The TVision awards go beyond audience size to uncover the shows and ads that are really engaging audiences, since we all know that ads work best if viewers are paying attention. The TVision Top Five puts a focus on:
- Viewer Attention We measure, second-by-second, whether a viewer is in the room, paying attention to the content on the screen. Some programs achieve higher viewer attention than others, in fact the most attentive shows deliver more than twice as much attention as the lowest performing shows.
- Ad Attention - A lot of factors go into an advertiser’s ability to capture attention. The media plan, the creative, contextual relevance, the app, network and daypart all play a role in keeping a viewer in the room with their eyes on the screen during commercial breaks.
- Creative Attention Score (CAS) This measures an ad’s ability to breakthrough and capture audience attention compared to other ads that ran within the same pod. It is a measure of the overall strength of the creative, as well as the media plan.
- Co-viewing Rate This metric helps us understand who is in the room watching the television and brings TV viewing measurement to the person-level. Co-viewing rate measures how often more than one person is in the room watching the program and it is an important indicator of true audience size.
- Binge Rate This metric identifies the number of times viewers watch three or more episodes of a program in a single viewing session.
- Share of Time Spent Viewing This metric helps identify the overall popularity of a program as it shows how much time viewers spend with the program compared to all content viewing.
Questions about how your ads or shows performed? Contact us.
More resources from TVision
Today TVision, the company measuring every second of TV and CTV viewer engagement, released the H2 2025 State of Streaming Report. The semi-annual State of Streaming Report is the industry's best resource for insight into attention and engagement with streaming apps, content and ads.
Today TVision, the company measuring every second of TV and CTV viewer engagement, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Viant Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: DSP), a leader in CTV and AI-powered programmatic advertising, in a transaction valued at $40 million. The deal, expected to close in Q2 2026, brings TVision's second-by-second, person-level attention data, co-viewership signals, and in-room presence measurement directly into Viant's buying platform.