Your Competitors Are All Over Social Media. None of Them Are on Streaming TV. Yet.
Scroll through Instagram for five minutes and pay attention to the ads.
For example, if you're a homeowner, you're probably seeing three or four home improvement companies hitting you in rotation. Different names, different logos, roughly the same message, same format, same vague promise. Some are obviously AI generated and look even more…blah. You've seen so many versions of similar ads that your thumb moves before your brain even registers what it was for. You kept scrolling. They paid for that.
Now think about the last time you saw a streaming commercial on Hulu, Prime (or whatever streaming platform you’ve watched lately), from any of those same businesses.
Probably never. That gap, that silence on streaming, is one of the more interesting opportunities sitting in front of a lot of local businesses right now.
Social Media Ads Are Getting Crowded. Really Crowded.
Social media advertising works. That's not the argument here. But in most local business categories it's becoming a race to the bottom.
When everyone in a niche is running ads on the same platforms with roughly the same targeting, you're just not standing out from the competition. You're standing next to them, lost in a sea of ads in the scroll. Your potential customer has already scrolled past eleven versions of your ad before they ever get to yours. They've been targeted so many times by businesses in your category that they've developed a kind of immunity to it. The ad registers, the thumb moves, life goes on.
The platforms know this, which is part of why costs keep climbing. More competition for the same eyeballs means advertisers are paying more to get less attention from an audience that's increasingly good at ignoring you.
None of this necessarily means stop running social ads. It means think about what's happening on the screens your competitors haven't touched yet.
The Streaming Gap Is Real, and It Won't Last
Here's what's actually going on in most local markets right now. The businesses running targeted streaming commercials on platforms like Hulu, Roku, and connected TV are often the only one in their niche doing it.
That personal injury firm running on streaming in Nassau County? Probably the only one true local firm (I’m talking local, not the big national firms that are saturating the markets now). The HVAC company targeting homeowners in Westchester by ZIP code and household income on connected TV? Likely alone in that space. The dental practice reaching households with children in specific towns across the Hudson Valley? No competition on that screen.
The category saturation killing social media ROI simply doesn't exist on streaming for most local businesses yet. When your commercial runs on Hulu, your audience isn't mentally filtering out eleven other versions of the same message first. They're just watching TV, and then there you are.
Pretty different from what's happening on Instagram right now.
First-Mover Advantage Is Real. And Temporary.
This isn't like 10 years ago when streaming advertising was genuinely out of reach for local businesses. The targeting is sophisticated, the pricing is accessible, and production doesn't have to cost what it used to. The infrastructure is there. What isn't there yet, in most local niches, is your competition. Hint-hint!
But that's changing. The businesses paying attention are starting to move. And once a category gets crowded on streaming the way it's gotten crowded on social, the first-mover advantage disappears. The dental practice that's been running on connected TV for two years has built something the one that starts next year can't instantly replicate. Name recognition. Frequency. A viewer who's already seen them a dozen times and has a sense of who they are.
Brand recognition compounds. The businesses building it now on streaming are going to look very familiar to their local audience by the time their competitors show up.
Your Audience Is Already There
The people you're trying to reach are watching streaming TV right now. Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube TV, Peacock etc...the audience has moved and it's not moving back. They're just not seeing your commercial yet because you haven't made one.
Their attention is available. The targeting exists to put your commercial in front of exactly the right households, by ZIP code, income, homeownership status, search behavior, even language preference if you want to reach Spanish-speaking households specifically. The only thing missing is the commercial.
One thing people assume about streaming is that it's harder to act on than a social ad. With social, you tap the ad and you're directed right to website landing page (assuming it’s setup correctly)…which is great. In a TV or streaming commercial, in most cases there’s nothing to click.
A QR code in your commercial fixes that. Someone watching on a connected TV sees your ad, pulls out the phone that's probably already in their hand, scans it, and they're on your website just as fast as any social click. It's one of the more underrated tools in a streaming campaign, and the QR code itself can be tracked. Here's a full breakdown of how to use QR codes effectively in video.
Here's the Part That Might Surprise You
You're probably already spending money on social media ads. What if for not much more than you're already spending, you could have a professionally produced streaming commercial for your targeted viewers, and also gets reformatted for every social platform you're already using? And your website? Hmmm.
That's actually how this works. A broadcast-quality :30 commercial produced for streaming doesn't have to only live on streaming. We cut it down to a :15 for pre-roll for YouTube ads. Make versions for your YouTube channel and website. Create a vertical version for Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. The same asset that runs on connected TV in your target ZIP codes also becomes the video your social ads are built around...except now your social ads look like a real commercial instead of a phone video or low-effort AI creation of some sort, because they are.
This matters more than it sounds. When a potential customer sees your commercial on their TV one evening and then sees a version of it again on Instagram the next morning, they’re more likely to take notice. That's frequency working exactly the way it's supposed to. Brand recognition builds across both channels at the same time, and the businesses doing both are going to look a lot more established than the ones doing only one.
The Window Is Open
Most of your competitors are thinking social ads work ok (or ok-ish), we're fine with that. They're not wrong that social works. They're just not seeing what they're missing on the other screen, or the opportunity that opens up when you're the first in your category to show up there.
We produce streaming commercials for local businesses across the NY Tri-State area, Hudson Valley, Long Island, NJ, and CT. Our base commercial package starts at $3,000 and delivers a broadcast-ready :30 and :15, formatted for streaming, traditional TV, and social media. One production day, with a quick turnaround. For more info about pricing, read our article: How Much Does A Commercial Cost.
We also work with media buying partners who handle placement, targeting, rotation, and analytics, so the commercial actually reaches the right audience rather than just existing.
If you want to be the first in your category on streaming in your market, now is a pretty good time to do it. That distinction gets harder to claim the longer you wait.
Recommended Reading: How Streaming TV Advertising Works for Local Small Businesses
About The Author:
Mike Meyerson is the founder of Absolute Motion Video, a commercial video production company serving businesses across the NY tri-state area and Hudson Valley for over 25 years.
