Spain's connected-TV audience reached 35.4 million viewers in September, of whom 31.2 million could be reached through advertising, according to Smartme Analytics . The company's CTV Landscape report, dated October 15, places the commercial opening in the advertising-supported part of the audience rather than in a growing total: its July report also counted 35.4 million viewers.
Between those two observations, the supplier's reported advertising-reachable audience rose from 30.7 million in July to 31 million in August and 31.2 million in September. Total audience stood at 35.6 million in August before returning to July's level. The figures describe a market in which the people available to advertising and the people consuming connected television can follow different paths.
For Spanish measurement company Smartme, this distinction is the basis of a product sold to audiovisual advertisers and agencies. Its proposition combines information about television, platforms, devices and the same person's consumption across them. September's report also identifies 1.62 million viewers reached by CTV who were outside linear television's audience, making the question of duplication as relevant as the headline size.
Advertising access grows while the total stays near 35 million
The September report describes 31.2 million people as reachable through advertising within an audience of 35.4 million. Its headline summarises that relationship as approximately nine in 10 viewers. Advertising availability concerns the environments people use, including subscription options carrying advertising; it does not mean that one advertiser has already bought access to everyone counted.
The monthly sequence gives that observation a useful commercial context. July and September have the same reported total, with August slightly higher, while the advertising-reachable count advances in both steps. These are estimates of audience in Spain, expressed in millions of people. They are not the number of participants recruited into the measurement panel, nor a count of subscriptions sold by the streaming platforms.
Reported audience and audience reachable through advertising
Smartme’s three monthly publications place CTV/OTT audience close to 35 million people while its reported advertising-reachable count increases. Values are the supplier’s audience estimates for Spain.
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Do not add the series: advertising-reachable viewers belong to the environment studied. Millions are projected audiences, not panel size, subscriptions or impressions. Published counts are preserved; contradictory percentages in the July and August texts are not used.
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| Category | Total audience | Advertising-reachable audience |
|---|---|---|
| July 2026 | 35.4 million people | 30.7 million people |
| August 2026 | 35.6 million people | 31.0 million people |
| September 2026 | 35.4 million people | 31.2 million people |
This movement directs attention towards the composition of viewing. An audiovisual planner needs to know not only whether consumers use a platform but whether the relevant environment contains advertising. Smartme's product distinguishes environments with and without it, then relates platform consumption to the rest of each person's audiovisual activity. That produces a different planning question from asking which entertainment service has the most customers.
The reports also describe changes within the platform mix. August's account points to entertainment and fiction platforms recovering their usual role after the World Cup, while broadcasters and telecommunications providers, including atresplayer, Mediaset Infinity, Movistar+ and Orange TV, added viewers that month. These are provider observations about consumption, giving the sequence a content and distribution context alongside its aggregate audience counts.
The exclusive audience is smaller and commercially different
September's 1.62 million exclusive CTV viewers describe another cut through the audience. These are people whom linear television did not reach in the period covered by the report. Their significance for a media plan differs from that of a person consuming both linear television and connected platforms: CTV offers a route to someone outside the former environment.
July's report put exclusive CTV viewing at 1.8 million people. August described more than 1.5 million, without publishing the same exact count in its text. The two explicitly quantified observations, July and September, show that exclusive reach remains a smaller group within a much larger connected-TV audience. Its size also moves between reports, alongside the overlap with linear viewing.
Exclusive CTV viewers: two published counts
Smartme reports 1.8 million exclusive CTV viewers in July and 1.62 million in September. This group is outside linear television’s audience for the described period and belongs to the wider CTV total.
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August’s text reports only more than 1.5 million; that lower bound is not converted into an exact chart value. These are published audience estimates, not additional people to add to the CTV total.
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| Category | Exclusive CTV audience |
|---|---|
| July 2026 | 1.80 million people |
| September 2026 | 1.62 million people |
This is where the supplier's single-source approach enters the commercial mechanism. Smartme says it observes different media consumed by the same individuals, rather than treating every platform's audience as a separate collection of people. The resulting view can identify the intersection between environments and the audience found in only one. Reach and frequency planning then concerns people across channels, not the arithmetic sum of each channel's reported audience.
The report presents the exclusive group as an opportunity for incremental coverage. At the planning stage, that means a potential extension beyond linear television's audience. The actual contribution of a particular campaign still depends on its selected audience, placements and delivery. The published market audience describes where additional reach may exist; a campaign's own exposure measurement establishes which of those people it actually reaches.
The television screen still carries most of the consumption
September adds a device finding: depending on the platform, between 81.8% and 83.7% of consumption takes place on the television screen. This is a share of consumption, distinct from the millions of people in the audience figures. It locates most of the measured platform viewing in the living-room screen even as the provider measures an activity distributed across devices.
Smartme's CTV Landscape product page expressly separates television, smartphone, computer and tablet. It describes analysis by demographic characteristics and by behavioural groups, including low, medium and high television viewers. Platform, device and target therefore become three separate dimensions for examining where an audiovisual plan might find its audience.
That combination is more specific than treating digital video as one uniform inventory pool. A person can use a platform on a television or another device, while their exposure to linear television places them in a different behavioural group. Smartme's commercial offer lets planners examine those distinctions within its crossmedia view. The same platform name can consequently answer several different questions about screen, viewing habits and audience profile.
The product names SVOD, ASVOD, BVOD and AVOD alongside social platforms as parts of the audiovisual environment it covers. September particularly emphasises advertising-supported and hybrid models. For a brand selecting placements, the useful unit is the relevant combination of audience, environment and device. A large platform audience and a large advertising opportunity are related observations, with the advertising model supplying an essential part of the connection.
July's sporting event explains why the monthly mix matters
The July report situates viewing during a World Cup that continued until July 19. Smartme reports that RTVE Play and DAZN increased their reach during June and July compared with May, by 12% and 17% respectively. Its August account then describes those platforms returning towards their situation before the tournament. The provider's sequence follows a change in available content, with audiences moving through the places carrying it.
The same July report gives survey observations about changes to viewing routines. Among World Cup followers, 67.5% said they watched more television than usual during the tournament; the figure reached 84% among those aged 16 to 24. When a match coincided with their usual prime-time viewing, 65.7% put that content aside to watch the match. The report also records later catch-up or on-demand viewing, describing a rearrangement of consumption rather than its disappearance.
Smartme's own July study of the tournament adds the second screen. It reports that 76.2% of viewers used a mobile phone while watching matches. Messaging, Instagram and YouTube appear among those uses. The observation gives the planning problem a concrete form: a person watching a major broadcast may also be active in a digital channel during the same occasion. Separate channel totals do not explain that person's combined exposure.
The tournament study also describes how the supplier brings behavioural observation and declared response together. Smartme says it used automatic content recognition, or ACR, and digital tracking to register exposure to linear television, CTV and browsing in the same person. It complemented that observation with its own panel survey to measure advertising recall. The observed behaviour and the response to a survey perform different jobs within the analysis.
The tournament analysis separately reports that 38.1% of viewers spontaneously recalled a sponsoring brand. Coca-Cola, Adidas and Cerveza Victoria were the three sponsors most often mentioned without prompting. That question measures a response to sponsorship in a specific event. It adds a brand-memory observation to the behavioural account of where people watched, providing a way to discuss the effect of exposure beyond a channel's audience size.
Another question concerns discovery. Some 35% of viewers said the tournament had introduced them to brands they did not know; among people aged 16 to 24, the reported figure was 55%. Smartme also found that 43.3% said a brand's sponsorship increased their trust in it, rising to 53% among those younger than 35. These are the provider's reported survey responses, with the age comparisons attached to their respective questions. They describe discovery and trust as different aspects of the audience's relationship with a brand.
The study therefore has two complementary layers. Recorded exposure locates the same person across media, while a survey asks what that person remembers or says about brands. Neither question can be answered by adding the audience of La 1 to that of DAZN. Smartme's stated method joins observations and responses at the individual level, illustrating why its commercial offer combines consumption measurement with research on advertising effectiveness.
Reading that July material alongside September also changes which business question the data can answer. An event study examines audience behaviour and stated responses around a tournament; the monthly CTV report sizes the available environments after the event. An advertiser can use each at a different stage of work: understanding a specific occasion's brand context and examining the current audience available for a subsequent plan.
These examples explain why July viewing should retain its sporting context when read beside September. The summer reports describe viewing around specific content and changing routines; September supplies the latest monthly observation after that event. For an advertiser, the sequence contains information about when audiences moved and which environments carried them, rather than a single permanent ranking of platforms.
Turning a crossmedia audience into a planning decision
Smartme presents CTV Landscape as a way to identify penetration, audience profile and overlap with linear television, social networks and video platforms. Its accompanying planner is directed at deciding where and how to reach people across linear television, CTV and video. The commercial mechanism is to use those relationships when distributing audiovisual investment, including which combinations might extend coverage and which would repeat exposure to the same people.
The low, medium and high television-viewer categories make that proposition tangible. A target defined by limited television consumption raises a different coverage question from one defined by heavy viewing. CTV's relationship with the target can be examined alongside demographics and the device used. The product therefore offers more than a national reach figure: its stated purpose is to connect the available audience with a particular brand's planning target.
There is also a separate activation relationship in the company's documented offer. In a June announcement, Smartme and The Trade Desk said advertisers could activate segments built from Smartme's own crossmedia behaviour panel directly in the programmatic platform. They identified low television viewers as an example of an audience that this arrangement could help reach. That earlier agreement is background to the measurement business, distinct from October's publication of September audience data.
The companies described moving from an existing relationship measuring brand lift, reach and frequency towards activation. In that arrangement, information about actual media consumption helps define a segment for campaign buying. September's CTV report supplies a broader view of the environment in which such audience decisions occur. Market sizing, segment selection and campaign delivery are connected tasks, with different data attached to each.
The company and the data behind the service
Smartme Analytics is the commercial identity of Smart Analytics S.L., a Spanish company whose legal notice identifies its Madrid registered office and Madrid commercial-register entry. Its current product and reports describe single-source crossmedia technology, with breakdowns by target, platform and device. The monthly audience values are the supplier's published estimates; the report date and the period being measured remain separate references.
The company's privacy documentation explains elements of its research operation. It describes advertising-measurement pixels that may collect IP addresses, device identifiers, timestamps and campaign identifiers. It also sets out anonymisation and pseudonymisation processes for market research and marketing studies. For the measurement pixels, the document identifies consent as the legal basis and refers to the standards of IAB’s Transparency & Consent Framework. Smartme also identifies its participation in that framework under vendor number 653. These are features of the supplier’s declared data-handling arrangements, alongside the audience product.
Smartme reports three certification areas in that document: information security under ISO 27001, privacy management under ISO 27701 and market, opinion and social research under ISO 20252. They identify the governance and research standards the provider says it follows. Alongside the single-source product description, they help explain the type of supplier behind the audience figures and its role between media consumption, research and commercial planning.
The September publication consequently adds two useful observations to that offer. The advertising-reachable population continues to rise within a total audience close to the levels reported in July, and the report still identifies people outside linear television's reach. The product's device and behavioural dimensions provide the means to examine those observations for a target, moving from a broad national total towards a specific audiovisual planning question.
Who's who and how to read the figures
Smartme Analytics supplies crossmedia measurement and CTV Landscape. Smart Analytics S.L. is the Spanish legal company behind the brand. The Trade Desk is the programmatic buying platform identified in the earlier activation agreement. RTVE Play and DAZN are platforms discussed in the summer viewing reports, while atresplayer, Mediaset Infinity, Movistar+ and Orange TV appear in August's account of the platform mix.
CTV means connected television; linear television follows a scheduled broadcast. ASVOD identifies subscription viewing with advertising in the reports. Single source refers to observing different media in the same people. ACR is the content-recognition technology named in the tournament study. Survey answers, observed behaviour and projected audience counts are different kinds of evidence within that research.
The millions in this article express estimated audiences in Spain, not the measurement sample, subscriptions, advertising impressions or sales. Exclusive CTV viewers are a subset of the wider audience and should not be added to it. The television-screen percentages concern consumption by platform. Keeping those units clear makes the September report useful for deciding which audience a campaign wants to reach and how much overlap a combination of channels may contain.
In this article
Marian Vasile
Marian Vasile is a MarTech and growth professional. His work spans product marketing, SEO, paid advertising and deep online tracking, including behavioral analytics and attribution.
