71.5% of US Viewers Bookmark Ads on Their Phones While Watching CTV

More than seven in ten US consumers — 71.5 per cent — have opened a browser tab or saved something on their phone while watching Connected TV specifically to revisit it later, according to a national survey of 500 consumers commissioned by Adwave, a self-serve advertising platform.

The survey, split evenly across four generations, reframes a behaviour the ad industry has long treated as a loss. Reaching for a phone during a commercial break is no longer a signal that the viewer has tuned out. More often, it marks the moment a viewer decides to look something up, save it, and return to it later. Adwave calls this habit mobile bookmarking.

How widespread is second-screening?

The numbers show a mainstream behaviour, not an edge case. Key findings from the research include:

• 80 per cent of respondents use a phone, tablet or laptop while watching streaming TV at least 'sometimes'.
• Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennial viewers second-screen 'always' or 'most of the time'.
• Around 1 in 7 people regularly watch CTV while using two other devices — so-called third-screening — rising to nearly 1 in 5 among Gen Z.

Second-screen use is now the default viewing condition for advertisers buying CTV inventory. The question is what viewers do with that second screen.

What does this change for advertisers?

The survey's most consequential finding concerns intent. When asked about the last business they searched for after a CTV ad, more respondents named a smaller or local business (39.5 per cent) than a well-known national brand (30.75 per cent). Unfamiliarity, not recognition, drives the search: the most-cited reason for looking up an advertiser was 'I hadn't heard of the brand before and wanted to know more', cited by 42.5 per cent of respondents.

That inverts the usual assumption that CTV ad effectiveness favours brands viewers already know. Adwave's data suggests the opposite — the unknown advertiser triggers the action.

The generational pattern reinforces the local-discovery angle. Bookmarking a local business or restaurant is most common among Gen Z at 52 per cent, falling to 39 per cent of Millennials, 35 per cent of Gen X and 23 per cent of Boomers.

Adwave CEO and Co-Founder David Naffis said: 'People assume a phone coming out during a commercial break means an advertiser has lost that viewer's attention. What this data shows is closer to the opposite. For a huge share of viewers, that phone isn't a distraction, it's a notebook. They're not tuning out an ad; they're queuing it up to look into later, and more often than not, it's a business they've never heard of before that they're curious enough to go find. That's a real opportunity for smaller, lesser-known advertisers, not just the brands people already recognise.'

Caveats on the data

The survey covers 500 US consumers, a modest sample for a national claim, and Adwave commissioned it to support its own commercial proposition in self-serve CTV advertising. The behavioural findings — the bookmarking and search rates — are respondent-reported, not measured from browsing or purchase data. Even so, the direction is consistent: the second screen is acting as a deferred-response channel for advertising rather than a leakage point.

For operators, streaming platforms and ad-tech vendors, the practical implication is that CTV campaigns from smaller and local advertisers may convert through delayed mobile follow-up rather than immediate response. Adwave's bet, and the bet of the self-serve advertising sector more broadly, is that this discovery behaviour will keep widening the CTV market beyond national brands.