Asian audiences are adopting connected TV faster than any other ethnic group in the U.S., and at least part of the reason is likely the far greater representation of Asian actors in streaming programming compared to linear TV, according to a new report from Nielsen.

Nielsen’s “Seen, Heard, Valued” report, issued in advance of Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, also finds programming with Asian actors or produced in Asian countries get binged frequently, and that AANHPI audiences are 46% more likely than the total population to buy from brands that advertise in inclusive content.

Nielsen survey data show AANHPI respondents are 79% more likely than the general population to say they feel underrepresented in TV and film, making them the ethnic group that feels most underrepresented.

There's been some progress in the inclusion of Asian actors and their work, including a slew of Academy Awards for “Everything, Everywhere All At Once” and its cast, the success of “Squid Game” on Netflix and the streamer's commitment to $600 million of investment in content from South Korea since 2021. But still, only 2.4% of titles available on linear TV and streaming in January 2023 came from nine Asia-Pacific countries, according to Nielsen’s report.

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The relative strength of inclusive content in streaming appears to have had one major impact: Asian Americans are the first ethnic group to spend more time with connected TV content than with live TV—a milestone reached in the fourth quarter, according to Nielsen. Counting DVR playback, Asian viewers still spent slightly more time daily (one hour and 31 minutes) with linear TV than with connected TV (one hour and 24 minutes).

The Asian audience's impact on CTV can be seen in several ways, for example, by likely helping keep Disney’s “Moana” regularly among the most streamed titles despite being released seven years ago, according to the report. Overall, people who identify as AANHPI had a 10.3% share of screen time among the 462 most-watched streaming titles in 2022.

Inclusive content works particularly well for advertisers. Nielsen found AANHPI audiences are 46% more likely than the total population to buy from brands that advertise in inclusive content. The research firm found that fashion, pet care, electronics and travel advertisers were among those that allocated a significant portion of the ad budgets toward content that features and appeals to the AANHPI community.

Content that appeals to AANHPI viewers also tends to be highly “bingeable,” according to data from Nielsen’s Gracenote, based on a measure of how many episodes of a program people watch on a given day. A 3.0 score is considered highly bingeable. On the high end of that spectrum, “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” a series with a 62.5% AANHPI audience, had a score of 6.2, for example. 

Asian-inclusive content also can fuel hit successes for streaming series. When Netflix released season three of “Never Have I Ever,” a coming-of-age drama about a first-generation Indian-American teen lauded by critics for breaking South Asian stereotypes, it attracted about 1 million new viewers who hadn’t watched any Netflix content the prior week, only about 10% of whom where Asian, according to Nielsen.

The effect can happen on linear TV too. ABC’s “The Company You Keep,” based on a South Korean series “My Fellow Citizens” and featuring female lead Catherine Haena Kim, drew an audience of 2.9 million people in February, about 1.1 million of whom didn’t watch any ABC content the prior week, with about 5% of the new viewers being Asian.