The biggest threat to the TV advertising market is simply how much TV there is now

We’re watching more TV than ever. I’ve written it before, but for all the fuss about online video, Netflix, and how our viewing habits are changing, the market for TV ads is an undisrupted $78 billion behemoth, eclipsing the one for online video ads more than 15 times over.

That’s not to say that all is dandy for TV executives. But going off Nielsen’s State of the Media report on Advertising & Audiences released today, the biggest competition for television is television. The only force that seems to be upending the market for TV ads is the massive fragmentation of the audience.

Across the country, there are 318 million televisions and 243 million Internet-connected computers. The TV long ago reached its saturation point and the computer is close behind it. But the average American spends 175 hours each month with their TV, compared to just 18 hours combined with Netflix and Hulu. Despite the connected set-top box hype, across the entire nation penetration is so low that use averages out at just a little over an hour per person.

TV advertising is growing at a diminishing but still unhindered rate: 2.6 percent in 2013, down from 7.8 percent in 2010. But when you look at the drastic cratering happening in other parts of the formerly traditional advertising market, it’s difficult to consider that TV ads have peaked. Of course that hasn’t stopped some from doing exactly that.

The pain point for advertisers, the needle in the haystack of figures in today’s Nielsen report, is that last year there were 189 possible channels at our disposal. In 2008, there was only 129. Despite this, the amount of channels the average person tunes into has remained static at 17. We have a fixed amount of brain space to fit into our TV roster and 50 percent more channels to choose from: Starz, FXX, Revolt TV, Pivot, the El Rey Network…http://www.asi.eu.com/2014/05/16/the-biggest-threat-to-the-tv-advertising-market-is-simply-how-much-tv-there-is-now/