How free streaming became the new dining room table

What's changed about watching a movie at home isn't the habit — it's the intentionality. As restaurant prices have risen and discretionary budgets have tightened, a growing share of Americans have reclaimed the dinner-and-a-movie ritual as an intentional choice rather than a fallback.

According to a Harris Poll study commissioned by Tubi, 84% of Americans say dining out has become too expensive, and yet 93% still want to share meals with the people they care about.¹ The desire to gather over food hasn't gone away. The restaurant experience has moved. Seventy-six percent of consumers now prefer dining in over dining out, and 72% are planning more "movie and meal nights" at home.¹ For QSR brands, that behavioral shift has created a concentrated, measurable moment of purchase intent.

"Dining out and paid streaming have both gotten too expensive at the same time," said Katelyn Kroneman, VP of QSR ad sales at Tubi. "Consumers are rebuilding the dinner-and-a-movie ritual at home, pairing [delivery] QSR meals with free streaming. That's not a coincidence. It's a behavioral shift that puts QSR brands in the right environment at the right moment."

"Whether it's lunch, dinner, late night or a limited-time offer, streaming provides greater flexibility to reach consumers at the moments when they are actively making dining decisions," said Paul Emdin, senior director of programmatic sales at InMarket. "Combined with audience targeting, this creates a greater opportunity to influence dining behavior and drive restaurant visits."

The couch is already a dining occasion

Streaming and eating have always gone together. Eighty-six percent of streaming viewers stream during at least one mealtime daily.¹ Eight in 10 eat dinner while streaming.¹ The consumer who has chosen a free streaming service for their entertainment is also making a cost-conscious calculation. Seventy-three percent said they are cutting back on everyday spending specifically to keep ordering from their favorite QSR brands.¹

The audience is actively choosing this advertising trade-off. Eighty-one percent of ad-supported streaming viewers say watching ads is a fair exchange for free content³ — and 76% of Tubi viewers say they'd rather watch ads and put the savings toward food delivery than pay for ad-free.¹

"What makes free streaming structurally different is the value exchange," says Katelyn Kroneman, VP of QSR sales at Tubi. "When a QSR ad appears, it's not interrupting someone who paid to avoid ads, and it's not fighting a scroll reflex the way social does. It's landing in front of someone who is already in a value-forward mindset, often deciding what to eat, in a lean-back environment where they're actually paying attention. And for the brands, there's an additional halo effect by being part of the free streaming experience since they're helping power the entertainment those consumers chose."

The dinner and a movie ritual relocated to the living room, where free streaming is able to deliver the value exchange that consumers are seeking.

Streaming during mealtime is the highest-intent ad moment

For QSR brands, streaming isn't just about reach — it's about proximity to the purchase decision. Harris Poll data shows that 61% of viewers recall the last QSR ad they saw while streaming and 73% have ordered food directly because of a streaming ad.¹ No other ad environment places a brand inside the exact moment a viewer is deciding what to eat.

Additionally, when compared to other streamers, Tubi drove the top performance for QSR brands.² Across 39 measured QSR campaigns on Tubi, QSR brands saw a 27.5% visitation lift and a 37.7% sales lift, both outperforming InMarket benchmarks.² These are true lower funnel outcomes.

"These weren't isolated results from a single advertiser or campaign," says Emdin. "We saw strong outcomes across a broad set of QSR brands, suggesting Tubi's combination of audience quality and viewer engagement lends itself well to restaurant advertisers looking to drive real-world results."

How QSR brands can act on the data

Consumers are increasingly opting into ad-supported experiences — giving QSR marketers access to audiences that have actively chosen the advertising model rather than paying to avoid it. The 81% of ad-supported streaming viewers who call ads a fair trade for free content are a captive audience.³ For partners, Tubi bridges the best of both worlds: the precision and accountability of digital with the mass reach of TV, all within a single platform. Incremental reach is becoming a more important measurement benchmark for QSR brands that have historically relied on linear TV. Tubi reported an average 91% incremental reach compared to linear TV campaigns,⁴ meaning more net-new households reached, not just more impressions against an existing customer base.

The dining occasion hasn't shrunk. It moved home and it brought the TV. QSR brands that meet consumers at that moment aren't playing defense. They're advertising inside a ritual their customers already built.