Losing the Feed, but Owning the Story

For decades, broadcasters were the heartbeat of live sports. They owned the feed, shaped the story, and set the standard. But today, that control is slipping, not because audiences have abandoned them, but because the definition of "live" has changed.

Litigating and Monetizing Content Licensing to LLMs

Licensing data to LLMs is a potential revenue stream for streamers much like advertising on CTV platforms: it is an opportunity that didn't exist until recently that has the potential to deliver dividends for years to come. But as with CTV advertising, its viability and profitability won't happen overnight.

AI's Streaming Stack: Meet the Media Workflows

How has AI entered the media workflow? For this new column, we'll look at different applications used in the media industry. For this issue, we'll start with asset management, asset storefronts, and localization. While some of this functionality—speech-to-text transcription, translation, voice synthesis, natural language processing, logo detection, facial recognition, and object detection—has been around for a while, the biggest improvement is that much of it is now available on workflows with live content.

Mining for Riches in the Niches: Dynamic Approaches for Targeted Growth

What does niche streaming mean in 2025? With the vast abundance of content available to TV audiences, how can niche programming be targeted adequately toward specific audiences, and what are some of the best ways these audiences can discover that content?

Presenting… The 2025 Streaming Media Top 100

Here we reveal the 2025 Streaming Media Top 100, our list (appropriately enough) of the top 100 companies in the streaming universe outside of Europe. This list complements the 2025 Streaming Media Europe 51, which acclaims Europe's key streaming innovators and high achievers.

The Multiview Imperative: How Technical Architecture Determines Streaming Success

The largely unsung hero in YouTube's growth may be a feature that cost the company 99% less to implement than Sunday Ticket: multiview streaming capability. As this article shows, if you're broadcasting sports, multiview--particularly Build Your Own Multiview (BYOMV)--is quickly becoming an expected feature among sophisticated viewers. It's also one of the most affordable and effective ways to amplify the value of your programming, particularly when your content isn't exclusive and faces direct competition in the same market.

AI and Adtech in Operation

With an eye to providing more insight into real-world deployments and the operational side, online adtech firm Magnite volunteered to give me insight into how AI fits into their current operational processes.

Industry Champions Revealed: The 2025 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards

The readers have spoken! Here we present 19 top tech solutions of 2025, as chosen by the readers of Streaming Media .

Leveraging AI in OTT and CTV Content Discovery

In this article, experts from key streaming vendors weigh in on both the benefits and drawbacks of leveraging AI in OTT and CTV content discovery while speculating on how it will impact the future of personalization. Various methods of filtering make AI recommendations fully transparent to users, ensuring that personalization does not become too rigid for them, and advancements in IP distribution are among the many issues under consideration in this evolving field.

AWS GM of M&E Samira Panah Bakhtiar Talks Gen AI and Interactive Sports Streaming

In this Q&A, Samira Panah Bakhtiar, Amazon Web Services (AWS) general manager of me­­dia, entertainment, games, and sports, talks about how AWS and agentic AI are changing the ways streaming workflows are executed. In her interview, she spoke both to the business side of the house and the underlying tech.

How the Gen Z Playbook Is Reshaping Next-Gen Sports Streaming

Going 'round the horn with a handful of strategically positioned industry players reveals a range of emerging strategies in play for attracting and holding the interest of Gen Z sports fans, including building interactive experiences, emphasizing player-centric fandom, and embracing gaming and social media-based fan communities.

Q&A: Globo Director of Product & Engineering Igor Maciel Macaubas Talks Content Delivery, Discovery, and Build vs. Buy

In this wide-ranging conversation with Globo Director of Product & Engineering for Digital Products Igor Maciel Macaubas, we discussed Grupo Globo digital products that deliver content at scale monthly to 90 million unique Brazilian viewers.

The Smart Set: OEMs, OS Wars, and the New CTV Playing Field

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.

Q&A: Google's Shalini Govil-Pai Talks the Future of Android TV

In this interview with Streaming Media's Nadine Krefetz, Google VP & General Manager Shalini Govil-Pai discusses ongoing developments at Google TV, the state and future of streaming, and the growing impact of AI on streaming recommendations, user experiences, and monetization.

Maximizing Content Value with Subtitles, Dubbing, and Localization

AI-driven dubbing has recently gained attention as major platforms like Amazon Prime Video and YouTube roll out new tools designed to expand their content's global reach. Amazon is testing AI-assisted dubbing on licensed content, while YouTube has introduced auto-dubbing for thousands of channels. Both efforts reflect a growing belief that dubbing can help platforms engage new audiences—but the results so far have been mixed.

The 2025 Streaming Media All-Stars

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

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.

Streaming Year in Review 2025: Online Video Is Now an Advertising-Led Business

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.

Buyers' Guide: Hardware Transcoders

Although software transcoding is accept­able for transcoding most VOD streams and even low-volume live programming, most high-volume live applications need hardware for efficient transcoding, both to save you money and to save the planet. This buyers' guide will cover: What hardware transcoders are, what you need to bring to the table to identify the best hardware transcoder, factors to consider when choosing one, choosing a hardware transcoder for cloud workflows, and choosing a hardware transcoder for on-prem workflows.

The State of the Video Codec Market 2025

HEVC rode the 4K/HDR wave to success, but AV1, VVC, and LCEVC lack an equivalent killer app. With CDNs racing to the bottom on pricing and new royalty pools threatening to increase costs, codec adoption is no longer just about technical merit—it's about survival. These are the issues I'll explore in this article.