July TV Planning: 3 Tips to Boost Campaign Performance

The Summer Shift in Viewing Habits

With audiences on the move, school out of session, and routines disrupted, July often comes with unpredictable viewing patterns. Historically, that meant a seasonal dip in traditional TV ratings. But now everything is different from what it was 10 and even 5 years ago.

Over the last decade changed not just what the audiences watch, but the way they do it. Now people take the trips not only with their suitcases, but with their favorite channels and TV shows. No matter where they go - another state or continent, all they need is a TV device, wi-fi, a login, and a password.

According to Nielsen's *The Gauge™*, July 2024 saw a rare 2.3% month-over-month increase in total TV usage and a 3.5% jump year-over-year. What drove this growth? Streaming reached a record 41.4% share of total TV viewing, its highest ever, driven by platforms like Netflix, Tubi, Disney+, and Max. Even linear TV benefited: Olympic coverage on both broadcast and Peacock lifted viewing across formats, with Peacock alone seeing a 33% jump in streaming share.

Streaming now dominates the summer, especially among children, teens, and families who lean into flexible, on-demand content. At the same time, sports remain a powerful anchor for traditional TV, capturing nearly 20% of total linear viewing among adults 25–54 in summer 2024.

Both traditional and streaming remain important components of successful TV strategies. So advertisers need tools that unify them, adapt to viewer behavior in real time, and make it possible to find and engage audiences anywhere, on any screen.

Summer TV Viewership Trends (June-July) 2015–2024 (Nielsen Data)

3 Smart TV Planning Moves to Make in July

1.) Embrace Cross-Channel Planning with Unified Audiences

Audiences don’t think in channels. They think in content.

Viewers don’t decide between watching “TV” or “streaming.” They open Netflix, tune into live sports, or catch a show on broadcast. But when advertisers treat linear and streaming as separate ecosystems, or worse, prioritize one while ignoring the other, they risk duplicated impressions, fragmented messaging, and missed reach.

Video landscape spans broadcast networks, cable channels, CTV platforms, apps, and devices like Roku, Fire TV, and game consoles. This fragmentation makes it harder to reach a complete audience using just one channel. While impressions may look strong on paper, over-relying on either linear or CTV alone often leads to redundancy, serving the same users multiple times instead of expanding reach.

That’s why unique reach is a better metric for success. It focuses on exposing your message to new viewers, not just the same households again and again. And to do that, brands must adopt cross-channel planning tools that unify audiences across all TV environments.

Simulmedia TV+: A Case Study in Smart Allocation

Let’s take a real-world example. Say you’re running a campaign targeted at adults aged 25–64 with household income above $75K, with a media budget of $300,000. Simulmedia’s TV+ platform uses real-time audience data to recommend the most efficient allocation between linear and streaming:

• 42% to Streaming/CTV ($125K)
• 58% of the budget to Linear TV ($175K)

Image source: Simulmedia’s TV+ Platform
With this budget split, you maximize reach to 12M unique viewers on CTV/Linear combined.

Image source: Simulmedia’s TV+ Platform

2.) Optimize Campaigns with Converged TV & AI

Converged viewing is the new normal. Audiences no longer distinguish between formats. They watch linear one moment, stream on mobile the next, and cast a show to their smart TV in the evening. For advertisers, this means the old approach, buying media in silos and optimizing in hindsight no longer works. That’s where converged TV and AI-powered planning come in.

Platforms like Simulmedia’s TV+ ingest real-time signals*,* weather patterns, breaking news, social trends, audience movement, and use predictive intelligence to shift spend and inventory proactively. This lets campaigns stay aligned with audience behavior without manual guesswork or delayed adjustments.

Besides that, AI-powered TV platforms, like Simulmedia’s TV+, offer:

• Automated media buying across linear and streaming
• Dynamic audience segmentation, tuned to real-world behaviors
• Smarter budget allocation, reducing wasted impressions
• Continuous optimization, not just post-campaign reporting
• Real-time frequency and reach controls across screens and services

Cross-publisher optimization is also a very important part of ad campaigns. Most platforms only optimize within their walled gardens, and that is the problem for advertisers, because they don't have cross-publisher visibility, and should work with a number of reports in different formats**.**

It is much easier and effective to work with platforms that are designed to optimize across multiple networks and streaming services. Advertisers receive all results in one report and can make improvements and changes to the whole campaign.

3.) Accelerate Speed-to-Market with Agile TV Buying

Speed and flexibility are just as important for better ROI as powerful software and creative ideas. Agile TV buying gives advertisers the power to respond in real time, adapt campaigns mid-flight, and capitalize on market dynamics as they unfold.

July’s viewership is shaped by everything from weather changes and vacation schedules to breaking news and major sports events. Waiting for post-campaign analysis isn’t an option when evening news could turn the world trends upside down. Agile buying strategies embrace that reality. Instead of locking up 100% of spend months in advance, marketers can reserve room to react - to shift budget, change creatives, or target different segments based on what’s happening now, not a few months ago.

Scatter buying, paired with programmatic technology, allows marketers to activate media closer to air dates with far more control. This includes:

• Faster creative swaps or geo-targeted versions
• Adapting to competitor launches or sudden consumer trends
• Tapping into live events and timely content across publishers
• Reacting to performance signals mid-campaign

Whether you’re running a short-term promo, launching a product, or shifting strategy mid-quarter, agility lets you move at the speed of your audience, not at the pace of your contracts.

Conclusion

July is the perfect testing ground for flexible, intelligent, and converged TV strategies. Today's TV is much more than sitting at home on your couch in front of the screen. It's changed, audiences watch in a new way, and advertisers who try to reach them with an old-style strategy lose. Marketers who adapt their planning can reach travelers, cord-nevers, and streamers more efficiently. TV consumption shifted, so it's time to adjust the strategy!