Vertical video is all the rage these days, from straight-to-vert microdrama to the AI-powered verticalization and clipping of legacy IP libraries. But how does vertical viewing really square with the three L's of the traditional living-room CTV experience: landscape, longform, and lean-back? Roku's Margret Schmidt and Hub Entertainment Research's Shannon McKenzie acknowledge that it's to some degree an opportunity still in search of a definitive use case in the transition from mobile and social to CTV, with a lingering gap between preferred modes of creation and consumption, as they explain in this lively discussion with Chris Pfaff Tech Media's Chris Pfaff at Streaming Media Connect 2026.
17 Sep 2026
As agentic AI and contextual advertising move into the adtech mainstream, changing circumstances arguably call out for new standards to establish a working level of consistency and interoperability across the industry lest proprietary standards and incompatible secret sauces continue to drive players and packagers. Sargeway Owner Sarge Sargent, Dataxis Principal Analyst Ophélie Boucaud, and Servers.com Global Sales Executive Adtech Bradley Lewington discuss why standards and integrations are needed for widespread adoption and review the current and emerging state of specs and standardization across the CTV ecosystem in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.
16 Sep 2026
Inviting AI to play a leading role in the match game of contextual advertising raises a number of red flags, and one of the most concerning is the built-in bias in the way that LLMs are trained. As Digital Culture Group's Crystal Foote points out, "A lot of adtech companies just aren't that diverse," and that can leave significant blind spots and "stereotypical insights" that find their way into AI models that manifest themselves in ad decisions. Foote, Sargeway's Sarge Sargent, and Dataxis' Ophelie Boucaud discuss what Sargent calls "bias toxicity" and its implications for AI-powered scene analysis, contextual advertising, and audience representation in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.
15 Sep 2026
What might be described as the "golden rule" or "Platonic ideal" of content discovery on CTV and OTT is "the right content, the right user, the right moment," as Dataxis Principal Analyst Ophélie Boucaud suggests in this clip from Streaming Media Connect, while Xperi VP & GM Content Discovery Chris Ambrozic offers AI-enhanced best practices for getting there and Hub Entertainment Research Principal Jon Giegengack discusses what gets platforms and services closest to achieving this goal.
11 Sep 2026
Even as technology trade shows like IBC, which opens at RAI Amsterdam just as this issue goes to press, atomize those experiences by industry rather than packaging them for popular consumption, they promise "see the world of tomorrow" excitement without the nationalistic and imperialistic baggage associated with it at many of the world's fairs of the 19th and 20th century.
07 Sep 2026
So, how do you meet your audience "where they are" if you don't know where they'll be when they see your video? You stream it both vertically and horizontally at the same time, and you leverage technology to re-orient your content automatically.
31 Jul 2026
One way agentic AI is making inroads into streaming monetization, as I learned at Streaming Media Connect, offers the potential to complement and free up time for human creativity rather than replace it.
23 Jun 2026
Opening our blog to a never-ending stream of guest contributors yields some of the coolest stuff we publish, with topics that would never occur to me. Though I rarely know when these pieces will arrive or where they'll come from, it is often heady, provocative stuff that I'm proud to publish.
16 Mar 2026
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09 Jun 2022
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24 Aug 2021
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24 Nov 2020
Sponsored By: Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company
18 May 2020