Your Next Customer Is Watching Streaming TV Right Now. Is Your Business On It?
Does your business need a TV commercial?
If your instinct is "probably not", “no one really watches cable anymore (or commercials)” or "we could never afford that," you're not alone. Most small and mid-size businesses have been conditioned to think TV advertising is for national brands with seven-figure budgets, or it’s just a low-budget looking commercial on the cable news channel that they’ll glance at for a minute while standing in line at the bagel shop. So instead, they run social media ads. They post videos on Instagram. They try a Facebook campaign for a month to "see how it does." Sure, it’ll probably work…a little. Usually the results are underwhelming. And then they do it again next month because it feels like the only option available to them.
It isn't. And the math might surprise you.
What You're Actually Getting for Your Social Media Ad Budget
Social media advertising isn't a waste, it’s a service we offer our clients. Done right, it has a role in any complete marketing strategy, and we'll come back to that. But for many local businesses, it has quietly become the default, not because it's the best tool for the job, but because it feels accessible and familiar.
Here's the reality of what social media advertising actually delivers. Your video ad appears in someone's feed while they're scrolling. They can keep scrolling. They can tap past it in half a second without noticing your brand at all. The ones who do stop and watch are often not in a buying mindset, they're in a browsing mindset. And the production bar on social media is low enough that most businesses phone it in, a shaky phone video, a stock photo with text overlay, something that looks like it was made in twenty minutes because it was.
Now consider what a business owner who is spending $500 to $1,000 a month on social media ads is actually getting: inconsistent results, limited reach, an audience that can and does skip or scroll past the ad, and media that often undermines the brand rather than building it.
For roughly another $1,000 a month added to that budget, that same business can be running a professionally produced commercial on Hulu, Roku, and connected TV platforms, delivered as a non-skippable ad to a targeted audience of households in their specific service area who have been identified as likely customers based on their actual online search behavior. No scrolling past it. No closing the app. The ad runs and it gets seen.
That's a fundamentally different category of advertising, and the gap in effectiveness is significant.
The Audience That's Waiting for You
Streaming now accounts for 47.5% of all U.S. television viewing, the highest share ever recorded, according to Nielsen's December 2025 data. Over 77 million American households have cut the cord entirely, with 80.7 million projected by the end of 2026. Cable TV penetration has collapsed from 88% of U.S. households at its 2010 peak to below 50% today.
Meanwhile, Hulu alone has 64.1 million subscribers in 2026, and 78% of them are on the ad-supported plan, meaning roughly 50 million households are watching Hulu right now and can see your commercial.
That is a massive, engaged, lean-back audience watching content on a 65-inch television in their living room. They are not scrolling. They are not multitasking through a feed while walking the dog or packing school lunches. They sat down to watch something, and your commercial could be part of that experience in a way that a social media ad simply cannot replicate.
If They're Searching for It, They're Watching It
Here's where streaming TV advertising gets genuinely powerful for local businesses.
The platforms your customers stream on, Hulu, Roku, YouTube TV, Amazon Prime Video, don't just know who's watching. They know what those viewers have been searching for online. That behavioral data is what makes Hulu local advertising fundamentally different from any other local advertising that has ever existed.
Someone in your service area spent yesterday afternoon Googling HVAC companies. That evening, they sit down to watch Hulu. Your commercial is the first ad they see, on a full-size television, non-skippable, at a moment when they're relaxed and receptive.
Someone has been searching for a personal injury attorney. They're watching a show on their connected TV. Your law firm's commercial runs. There's no search result to click past, no competing ad in the same scroll, just your message in their living room at exactly the right moment.
That's not luck. That's targeting. And it's available right now to local businesses in the NY Tri-State area at budgets that would have seemed impossibly affordable for television advertising just five years ago.
The Businesses That Should Be Running Commercials (But Aren't)
Let's get more specific. Here are the categories where streaming TV advertising consistently delivers strong results for local and regional businesses.
Attorneys and Law Firms: Legal is one of the most search-driven categories in existence. People don't browse for lawyers; they have a problem, search for help, and call one of the first names they recognize. A TV commercial for a law firm running on streaming platforms, targeted to households searching for legal services, puts your name in front of exactly the right audience at exactly the right moment. Personal injury, family law, estate planning, immigration: all categories where top-of-mind awareness directly converts to phone calls.
Dental Practices and Healthcare Providers: A dental practice can target households within a specific radius of their office, filtered by age bracket and family status. A pediatric dentist targeting families with young children within five miles of their location is a very different proposition than a social media ad running to whoever the algorithm decides to show it to. Healthcare video advertising on streaming reaches patients who are actively researching providers, on a platform where the ad cannot be skipped.
HVAC, Plumbing, and Home Service Contractors: These are pure search-intent businesses. Nobody thinks about their HVAC company until they need one. Streaming platforms identify homeowners who have been searching for HVAC repair, plumbing services, or home renovation contractors and serve your commercial to those specific households in your service area. Your ad reaches people with an active need, not just someone who happens to be scrolling Instagram.
Automotive Dealers: Streaming platforms can target households whose vehicle leases are ending, who have been cross-shopping specific models, and even have recently been pre-approved for auto financing. If you're an automotive dealer on Long Island or in the Hudson Valley, the dealers who figure this out before you do are going to have a meaningful advantage.
Funeral Homes: One of the most overlooked categories in local TV advertising. Families making end-of-life arrangements are often searching online under tremendous emotional pressure, and familiarity with a trusted local name matters enormously. A tasteful, professional commercial keeps your name available when it matters most, in a way that a social media post simply cannot.
Restaurants: If someone in your zip code has been searching for Italian restaurants or Sunday brunch spots, your restaurant commercial can find them. Restaurant commercial production that makes your food look the way it actually tastes, paired with streaming targeting, fills tables in ways that organic social posts and boosted Facebook ads consistently fail to deliver, and to be honest…I’ve see plenty of facebook ads with food shots that don’t exactly look appetizing.
Retail Businesses: Seasonal promotions, grand openings, new product launches…retail businesses have always benefited from television advertising but historically couldn't afford it locally. Retail video production combined with streaming's lower entry costs and precise geographic targeting has changed that entirely.
The Businesses Nobody Knows Are Local (But Should)
There's a category worth thinking about separately: businesses that offer something genuinely exceptional but that most potential customers don't know exists in their area.
A good example is Baboo Digital, a recent client based right in the middle of Long Island. Baboo specializes in large-format, high-end printing: entire wall-sized prints, custom framing, delivery, and professional installation. Their clientele across the Hamptons and the NY Metro area is wealthy, design-conscious, and willing to pay for quality. But most people looking for large-format printing assume they need to use an internet-only service, because they don't know Baboo exists locally.
An internet-only service can print a large image. It cannot frame it, deliver it, and hang it on your wall. Baboo can. That's a powerful differentiator, but only if the right people know about it.
A streaming commercial targeted to high-income households in the Hamptons, Westchester, and Manhattan, served to people who have been browsing luxury home décor and interior design online, changes that equation completely. Suddenly the people who most need what Baboo offers know it's right in their backyard.
This same principle applies across many categories: specialty medical practices, custom furniture and upholstery shops, art restoration studios, high-end catering companies, private schools, luxury pool builders, wedding venues, custom car shops...the list goes on. Any business where "I wish I knew you were here sooner" is the most common thing a new customer says, is a business that needs a commercial. You’ll now be hearing “I never knew you were local until I saw your commercial”.
It's Not as Expensive as You Think
This is the assumption that stops most local business owners before the conversation even starts: "we can't afford a TV commercial."
On the production side, a professionally produced :30 commercial, broadcast-quality, ready for streaming platforms, is more accessible than most business owners assume. We even have lower budget options where we don’t need to come out and do any filming. For a deeper drive into pricing, read our article: How Much Does a Commercial Cost
On the media buy side (your air-time), a meaningful local streaming campaign runs at monthly budgets that are genuinely comparable to what businesses already spend on social media advertising, often less than you'd think for a market like the NY Tri-State area.
The business owner spending $1,000 a month on Facebook and Instagram ads is probably closer to a streaming TV campaign than they realize. And the return, in terms of reach, impact, non-skippable delivery, and brand-building on the big screen, is in a different league.
Social Media's Real Role: Part of the Plan, Not the Whole Plan
To be clear: social media advertising isn't something to abandon. It has real value for retargeting, for keeping an engaged existing audience warm, for driving specific promotions to people who already know your brand. Those are legitimate uses.
The problem is when social media becomes the entire marketing strategy by default, not by design. A business running mediocre video content on Instagram and calling it a marketing plan is leaving a significant amount of potential growth on the table.
The complete picture looks like this: a professionally produced commercial that establishes your brand on the big screen, running on streaming platforms targeted to in-market households in your service area, with social media supporting and reinforcing that message to your existing audience. Creative that gets rotated to prevent ad fatigue. Multilingual versions if your market warrants it. All with advanced analytics that tells us what's working and what to adjust.
That's a marketing plan. The rest is just posting and hoping.
Ready to Find Out If a Commercial Is Right for Your Business?
If your business relies on people finding you when they need you, and if there are customers in your market who don't know you exist or don't think of you first, a well-produced streaming commercial is probably one of the highest-ROI marketing investments available to you right now.
Contact Absolute Motion for a free consultation. We'll tell you honestly whether a commercial makes sense for your business, what it would cost, and what kind of results you should reasonably expect.
About the Author:
Mike Meyerson is the owner of Absolute Motion, a commercial video production company based in Mahopac, NY, serving businesses throughout the Hudson Valley, Long Island, and the NY Tri-State area for over 25 years.
