Q&A: Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft’s Worldwide Media and Entertainment Strategy Director, Talks Gen AI

In this expansive interview with Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft's worldwide media and entertainment strategy director, we discuss how Microsoft customers are leveraging generative AI in all stages of the streaming workflow and how they're using it in content delivery and to enhance user experiences in a range of use cases. Crownshaw also digs deep into how Microsoft is building asset management architecture and the critical role metadata plays in effective large-language models (LLMs), maximizing the value of available data.

The Generative AI Industrial Revolution

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

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.

Q&A: NBCUniversal SVP Monica Williams Talks Streaming the Olympics, Cross-Platform CX, and the Power of Metadata

In this wide-ranging interview with Monica Williams, NBCUniversal's SVP of digital products and operations for the company's content distribution business, we discuss how the proliferation of digital platforms across the OTT, CTV, and online ecosystems has brought new content distribution challenges, the boon of metadata for improving customer experiences, and the 17-day everything-must-go-perfectly marathon of distributing the Olympics.

Multicurrency, Personalization, and Consumer Privacy in the CTV Ecosystem

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

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.

Pay TV Gets Serious About Free Streaming

When it comes to free streaming, U.S. growth has been fueled by pure players like Pluto TV and Tubi and connected TV platforms like Roku and Samsung looking to feed cord-shavers and cord-cutters in need of a linear viewing experience. These companies have had a head start and a clear path to test and learn for years. However, in the past 18 months, pay TV players have decided that they too have a role to play in free streaming.

Q&A: Wurl’s Ria Madrid Discusses BrandDiscovery's Groundbreaking Generative AI for CTV Ads

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.

The Most Demanded FAST Genre in 2024: News

2024 is the ultimate election year. A total of 91 countries—including the U.S., the U.K., India, and 27 European Union nations—will hold elections. In this context, it's no surprise to witness platforms and news outlets finessing their FAST channel strategy. The BBC News FAST channel launch was perfectly timed in that regard. BBC News is now available as a FAST channel on platforms like Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, Xumo Play, VIZIO, and more.

All the News That’s Fit for FAST

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.

Review: JW Player

This review will highlight the JW Player online video platform and explore its on-demand streaming, captioning, web player capabilities, and other features. It will walk viewers through using the platform, including the core features like uploading videos, importing streams, and creating playlists in the Media Library and configuring the media player, as well as more advanced features. It will also discuss testing done using the platform.

Streaming Media's Trendsetting Products and Services of 2024

A detailed guide to Streaming Media's Trendsetting Products and Services of 2024.

Q&A: Google Cloud's Anil Jain Explains How Generative AI Is Driving Digital Transformation for M&E and DTC

For Anil Jain, leading the Strategic Consumer Industries team for Google Cloud has meant helping traditional media companies embrace cloud and AI, move to an OpEx-centric business model, and adapt to a more development-oriented mindset in engineering and product management. In this interview, Jain discusses the global shift to cloud-based operations in the media industry, the ways generative AI is disrupting everything from production to packaging to all aspects of the user experience, and what media companies should be afraid of if they're not already.

Welcome to FAST Times

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.

Streamticker: The Biggest Streaming Mergers & Acquisitions of 2023

When it comes to mergers and acquisitions in the streaming industry and M&E marketplace in 2023 and an accounting of the year's most consequential deals, it makes the most sense to open at the close: Disney's early-November announcement that it would fully subsume Hulu into its empire with a buyout that completed an acquisition initiated in pre-pandemic 2019.

The State of Video Monetization 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

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.

Q&A: Adtaxi's Murry Woronoff Says Streaming TV Levels Have Surpassed 80% of U.S. Adults in 2024

A new report by Adtaxi, one of the nation's fastest-growing digital marketing agencies, has revealed that more Americans than ever are now defaulting to streaming as their primary viewing content source. Murry Woronoff, Agency Director - Marketing Research and Consumer Insights at Adtaxi, spoke with Streaming Media's Tyler Nesler about many specific aspects of the report and what the findings reveal about the current state of streaming as the industry continues to evolve rapidly.

Monetizing FAST and OTT with Metadata and User Data

Nothing makes recommendation engines—and every other means of profit-making leverage—go, go, go like data in its many varieties. Metadata in particular is the key to personalizing viewer experiences and optimizing content portfolios. AI plays an ever-greater role in enhancing the metadata quality and improving recommendations. As analysts focused on the M&E industry and insiders at major media companies playing critical strategic roles agree, data is also essential to understanding customer journeys and making informed decisions on how to reach and retain subscribers and, on the ad-supported side, deliver the right ads to audiences and the right audiences to brands.

Michael Cerda, CPO for Streaming at TelevisaUnivision, Talks Building and Growing the World’s Largest Spanish-Language Streaming Service

Nadine Krefetz interviews Michael Cerda, CPO for streaming at TelevisaUnivision. He discusses the from-the-ground-up rebuild he implemented when he arrived at the company. He describes how—in just 9 months—his team assembled and scaled the tech stack dri­ving ViX, the world's largest Spanish-language streaming service, which haslive-streaming, AVOD, SVOD, and FAST offerings.