The Smart Set: OEMs, OS Wars, and the New CTV Playing Field
29 May 2025
How are the OEM and OS battles changing the way TV is marketed and distributed, from live linear to FAST, AVOD, and all other forms of free streaming? Are we heading toward a closed society in terms of CTV, as the worldwide competition for control of TV interfaces continues and dominant OEMs consolidate their power as content gatekeepers? In this article, several leading industry figures weigh in on these questions, offer insight about what is at stake for providers and users, and discuss the current CTV landscape.
The 2025 Streaming Media All-Stars
31 Mar 2025
After a 12-year hiatus, Streaming Media is bringing back the Streaming Media All-Stars for 2025 to pay tribute to a select group of key technology innovators who are driving and disrupting the streaming industry.
The State of OTT and CTV Monetization 2025
28 Mar 2025
Conversation about monetization is so nuanced that after a decade of writing on this topic, I am still looking for meaning where there may be little to find. Essentially, what I've come to understand is that advertising is like the stock market: Certain aspects of advertising deals are not transparent now and may never become fully transparent. What is clear, according to research from Statista, is that 64% of revenue growth in the U.S. in OTT is coming from advertising.
The State of Generative AI 2025
28 Mar 2025
Can generative AI (gen AI) rip things apart and then try to glue it all back together with more insight, more intelligence, more efficiency, and more value? It really depends on what the application is. Within the video workflow, some tasks are good matches for using gen AI, and others aren't.
Streaming Year in Review 2025: Online Video Is Now an Advertising-Led Business
28 Mar 2025
Old Hollywood got Wall Street's memo: "Do whatever it takes to do what Netflix is doing." And finally, the studios have begun making money from streaming. With the exception of NBCUniversal, the biggest legacy media companies all reported a profit from their direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses in Q3 2024. They got there by variously writing down or shedding cable assets, slashing jobs, hiking prices, policing password-sharing, improving bundled offerings, and putting the full focus of their business strategy into online.
Streamticker: The Biggest Streaming Mergers and Acquisitions of 2024
28 Mar 2025
The 2024 edition of Streamticker, recapping the streaming industry's most momentous mergers and acquisitions of 2023, kicked off with Disney's gobbling up the last extant portions of Hulu, as Comcast ceded its remaining 33% stake. But if the late-2023 deal marked only the quiet conclusion of an already-silent partnership, the much noisier news of Jan. 6, 2025, found Disney absorbing sports-centric streamer Fubo and merging it with Hulu Live + TV. Here we'll review this and other done (or more nearly done) M&A deals that reshuffled the streaming industry in 2024.
The State of Live Sports Streaming 2025
28 Mar 2025
The sports media sector continues to undergo rapid change, with streaming aggregators attempting to reconsolidate for greater efficiency but still falling short of traditional broadcast models in reach and revenue.
The Day After: Post-Cookie Apocalypse Inventory Value Enhancement for Second-Tier Video Publishers
31 Jan 2025
As third-party cookies disappear, video publishers face a stark reality. Without precise targeting and retargeting, their ad inventory risks becoming commoditized. For midsize players like FAST channels and smaller ad-supported streaming platforms, this challenge is especially acute. The result will be a shift toward generic ads aimed at generic audiences, driving down CPMs and diminishing advertiser interest. To avoid this fate, publishers must adopt innovative, privacy-compliant strategies to maintain—and even grow—the value of their ad inventory.
How to Monetize Interactive Live Sports Streaming with Real-Time SSAI
03 Feb 2025
Interactivity revenue generator Play Anywhere and ultra-low-latency live streaming platform Phenix Real Time Solutions partner for real-time SSAI at scale
The 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards
09 Dec 2024
The readers have spoken! We've counted all of the votes in the 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards, and—drumroll, please—it is now my pleasure and sworn duty to present winners and runners-up in each of our 17 categories.
The Generative AI Industrial Revolution
27 Sep 2024
Generative AI may prove even more divisive to society than the Industrial Revolution. There are many questions well worth examining regarding gen AI's impact on the streaming industry, the media and entertainment world, and more. In this article, I'm going to focus on a few streaming use cases in the hope of providing a broader perspective on the changes happening in our world now and those we can expect going forward.
Presenting the 2024 Streaming Media 100
21 Oct 2024
Here we reveal the 2024 Streaming Media 100, our list of the top 100 companies in the streaming universe outside of Europe. This list complements the Streaming Media Europe 51, which recognizes Europe's key streaming innovators, exemplars, and disruptors.
Multicurrency, Personalization, and Consumer Privacy in the CTV Ecosystem
29 Jul 2024
As CTV is pulling in more advertising dollars and viewers than ever before, it's crucial for advertisers to ensure that they are optimizing their reach with the best-targeted data to represent audiences and outcomes, all while respecting data privacy laws and individual rights. What are the most significant challenges surrounding data identity and the privacy economy in today's CTV advertising ecosystem? How can content owners and platform providers supply advertisers with the user data that will maximize growth without violating personal privacy or privacy laws? And how might the idea of "TV" itself be redefined in an era when multiscreen use beyond the living room is so prevalent?
AI and Streaming Media
29 Jul 2024
This article explores the current state of AI in the streaming encoding, delivery, playback, and monetization ecosystems. By understanding the developments and considering key questions when evaluating AI-powered solutions, streaming professionals can make informed decisions about incorporating AI into their video processing pipelines and prepare for the future of AI-driven video technologies.
Q&A: Wurl’s Ria Madrid Discusses BrandDiscovery's Groundbreaking Generative AI for CTV Ads
01 Jul 2024
A Q&A with Ria Madrid of Wurl - she discusses BrandDiscovery, their new tech that makes it possible for marketers to precisely match CTV ads with the emotion and context of what viewers are watching to create positive attention, using Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. Partners like Media.Monks are already driving impressive results for their clients through Wurl's solution, which uses scene-level contextual targeting to help advertisers align the emotional sentiment of their campaign creatives with content closest to the ad break.
All the News That’s Fit for FAST
14 May 2024
News broadcasting is one of the most exciting and quickly growing areas for FAST development, highlighted by the recent announcement of the BBC/AMC 24-hour live FAST news channel. Other legacy media news broadcasters, such as Scripps, Sinclair, Hearst, and USA Today, have also entered the FAST news space, many of them with a focus on local content. What are some of the current trends and challenges for FAST news delivery? In this article, several leading industry commentators provide insight.
Streaming Media's Trendsetting Products and Services of 2024
12 Jun 2024
A detailed guide to Streaming Media's Trendsetting Products and Services of 2024.
The State of Video Monetization 2024
04 Apr 2024
What does the future of streaming monetization look like? This post-Peak TV media ecosystem is a brave new world, and being able to find the content you want, with the price you want to pay, will likely keep consumers on their toes for years to come.
The State of Live Sports Streaming 2024
04 Apr 2024
Live content is led by sports, and fan appetite—much like bidding for rights—shows no sign of slowing down as the calendar turns to 2024.
Welcome to FAST Times
18 Mar 2024
2023 got everyone on the same page: FAST should be part of the media mix whether you are a content provider, a broadcaster, or a distribution platform.