State of Streaming Podcast

Have a question? Send us a text!Get the report from this episode hereTim sits down with Ross Benes from EMARKETER to map out the current landscape of U.S. football advertising — and why traditional broadcasters are still dominating the space despite the streaming boom. Recorded in peak football season to break down Ross's latest U.S. football advertising report. Linear networks still control 88% of the ad revenue, and college football is becoming a mini NFL.While streaming dominates headlines, 88% of NFL ad revenue still flows to five legacy linear companies: Fox, Paramount, Comcast, Disney, and the NFL Network. The lack of local broadcasting flexibility in the NFL keeps the big players firmly in control of the rights. Meanwhile, college football is aggressively mirroring the pro model. With massive media rights deals, rampant conference realignment, and an expanded 24-team playoff, the regional charm of college football is fading as it transforms into a highly lucrative "mini NFL". 1:58 – Why linear broadcast networks still capture the lion's share of NFL advertising revenue 2:19 – The five legacy companies that control 88% of the NFL ad market 3:56 – Conference realignments and why college football is becoming a mini NFL Streaming's 12% slice and the escalating cost to acquire an NFL viewer. Amazon and Netflix have carved out the remaining 12% of the NFL advertising market. Amazon's strategy focuses on consistency, successfully turning Thursday Night Football into a reliable brand, whereas Netflix has opted for one-off event viewing like Christmas games. But acquiring these viewers isn't cheap. Networks are paying an average of $4.12 per unique viewer per game, with ESPN and ABC knowingly overpaying to secure indirect benefits like exclusive access and shoulder content partnerships. 5:34 – Amazon's strategy for Thursday Night Football versus Netflix's one-off event approach 6:12 – The actual cost per unique viewer for NFL games across major networks 7:07 – Why ESPN accepts overpaying for NFL rights to fuel their broader content ecosystem Shoulder content is driving down CPMs, but Super Bowl pricing is hitting record highs.Connected TV eCPMs against live football actually dropped 13%. The culprit is a massive influx of shoulder content. Spin-offs, docuseries, and reality shows have flooded the market, increasing the ad supply and pushing prices down. Conversely, the Super Bowl remains immune to this dilution and is on pace to be the first billion-dollar ad spend Super Bowl. Disney sold out its inventory before August at a record asking price of $10 million per spot, and is confidently upselling backup advertisers while introducing hyper-segmented alt-casts like a Star Wars feed. 7:58 – Why a surge in shoulder content has caused connected TV CPMs to fall 13% 9:01 – Shawne Merriman's Lights Out Sports TV and capitalizing on the long tail of football 10:04 – Disney's $10 million Super Bowl spots and their strategy of adding targeted alt-casts Connect with Ross Benes on LinkedIn

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim sits down with Jason Fairchild from tvScientific to unpack why last-click attribution is breaking modern marketing budgets — and how connected TV is turning top-of-funnel awareness into a measurable performance engine. Recorded in the wake of Pinterest's acquisition of tvScientific, exploring the convergence of commercial intent and living room CTV. Last-click attribution is kindergarten math applied to multi-million dollar media budgets. When a consumer watches a television commercial and searches the brand on their smartphone seconds later, last-click attribution hands 100% of the credit to Google. tvScientific was built to import the deterministic feedback loop of paid search into connected television. Instead of treating TV as unmeasured top-of-funnel spend, marketers can now track household ad delivery directly through to downstream website visits, app downloads, and purchases. 2:28 – Bringing the paid search feedback loop to CTV: Bill Gross, Idealab, and tvScientific's origin 4:14 – The Domino's Pizza dilemma: how mobile search masks TV's true conversion impact 5:08 – Why incrementality testing and holdout groups are the gold standard for assigning real ROI The Halo Effect: TV creates the commercial intent that search and social harvest. Performance search cannot manufacture consumer demand; it can only capture existing intent. A 30-second spot on a living room screen delivers full sight, sound, and motion that a small digital ad tile cannot replicate. tvScientific's Halo reporting demonstrates that increasing TV exposure frequency directly lifts downstream search click-through rates, site dwell time, and purchase rates — all while delivering roughly 50% more value in unmeasured brand equity for free. 6:19 – The "free" 50% bonus: gaining brand awareness value on top of quantitative performance ROI7:35 – Full sight, sound, and motion vs. 1-inch ad tiles: why TV builds the demand search feeds on 9:51 – Frequency curves: what delivering 1 to 10 ad exposures does to downstream search CTR and dwell time The agency divide: Legacy media silos versus performance accountability. The primary barrier to performance CTV adoption is legacy agency structure. Traditional TV buyers remain focused on upfronts and Gross Rating Points (GRPs), while digital teams manage cost-per-click (CPC) campaigns without integrating television. At the same time, "Wild West" players make black-box ROI claims without data verification. Modern marketers and CFOs are overcoming this by demanding auditable, log-level timestamp data that connects ad delivery to verified outcomes. 10:38 – Avoiding black-box claims: why marketers must demand granular, auditable data 11:28 – The agency disconnect: why legacy GRP buyers and digital performance teams don't speak the same language 12:45 – The Ford F-150 case study: how a $150M television budget gets completely credited to a Google search click Pinterest intent data meets the living room: 80 billion monthly visual searches. With paid search CPMs climbing between $30 and $100+ in competitive verticals, performance CTV offers targeted household reach at roughly a $15 CPM. Pinterest’s acquisition of tvScientific unites high-intent commercial search data — with Pinterest generating 80 billion monthly visual searches, half of which are commercial — with the living room screen. Marketers can now surgically target households actively researching products and reinforce that intent on television before driving conversion. 14:28 – Inside Pinterest's acquisition of tvScientific: 80B monthly searches and commercial volume larger than Amazon 16:10 – The CPM reality check: comparing $70–$100 Super Bowl–level search CPMs against $15 targeted CTV 16:41 – Intent layering: pairing Pinterest search intent signals with CTV campaigns for performance bumps Connect with Jason Fairchild on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected]

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim sits down with Alexander Dao, Vice President of Advertising & Sponsorships at Electronic Arts, to break down the official launch of the EA advertising platform and explore how console gaming is becoming one of the most powerful performance channels in the digital ecosystem. Recorded following the platform's official launch at Cannes Lions. The controller is where fandom starts — gaming is the new front door to sports. Modern audiences are trading passive television broadcasts for highly interactive console experiences, shifting where living room attention lives. Gaming isn't just complementing sports viewing; it's driving it. Studies show 35% to 40% of soccer fans actually fell in love with the sport through playing EA Sports titles before ever watching broadcast matches or attending games in person. For younger generations, the controller is where sports fandom begins, serving as a primary discovery portal for player skills, team dynamics, and league rules. 2:29 – Why EA launched an ad platform now and where consumer living room attention is shifting 3:15 – The study showing 35% to 40% of soccer fans became fans through EA video games 3:50 – How gaming serves as a primary discovery portal for younger sports fans Beyond static logos: turning ad placements into interactive player experiences. In-game advertising has evolved far past static background banners into dynamic, native brand moments that add genuine value to gameplay. Dao outlines EA's strategy of combining real-world broadcast authenticity with player progression. Case in point: Visa created squad-building challenges that unlocked Visa-branded stadiums and vanity kits, while Red Bull tied in-game custom stadiums to the real-world "Wings Cup" tournament, flying winners to the Miami finals and printing EA Sports FC QR codes on hundreds of millions of retail cans worldwide. 4:36 – The three pillars of modern sports fandom: passive, active, and interactive 5:49 – Balancing player value with brand authenticity in native gaming environments 6:45 – Case studies: Visa's squad-building challenges and Red Bull's global Wings Cup & QR cans Lowering the barrier to entry: dynamic targeting and sports licensing extensions. For marketers intimidated by custom, expensive gaming builds, EA's ad platform introduces scalable dynamic capabilities across titles. Brands with existing sports licenses can naturally extend their reach into interactive environments, while non-endemic brands without licenses can leverage EA's own IP—such as Ultimate Team in FC. Moreover, dynamic targeting enables flexible geotargeted campaigns, allowing brands to buy shorter flight dates in specific markets like Canada rather than committing to global multi-year buys. 8:58 – Why interactive in-game experiences build stronger brand affinity than passive TV ads 10:26 – Scaling past custom build friction with EA's integrated ad platform 11:20 – Utilizing unlicensed environments (EA IP) for non-endemic brands 13:05 – Lowering price entry points with geotargeting and short flight dates Standardized measurement and the Domino's mid-game test. To solve the measurement bottleneck in console advertising, EA partnered with the IAB to establish standardized impression reporting across games. Beyond standardized impressions, EA measures mid-funnel engagement—such as jersey equips, matches played, brand lift studies, and social sentiment. In a standout direct-response activation, Domino's messaged competitive FC players on Friday nights with free pizza codes mid-game, allowing the QSR brand to track direct redemption rates, existing customer usage, and net-new customer acquisition. 14:14 – Standardizing console ad impression measurement in partnership with the IAB 15:30 – Case study: How Domino's drove direct conversions with mid-game free pizza codes 16:34 – Platform launch at Cannes Lions and what's ahead for console ads in the next 18–24 months Connect with Alexander Dao on LinkedIn · EA Advertising 

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim sits down with Nana Kofi Amoh, creator of Amoh Sports Media and AD in activation at Omnicom Media Group, to break down the rapidly shifting business of local sports broadcast rights, app consolidation, and how advertisers should navigate regional sports inventory. Recorded on State of Streaming. The RSN model isn't dying — it's evolving: Why DAZN, EverPass, and app consolidation are reshaping local rights.Local regional sports networks are shifting away from traditional cable packages toward direct-to-consumer apps and aggregated streaming platforms. Major moves—like DAZN acquiring EverPass to secure commercial bar and restaurant distribution, or channels like Gotham Sports transitioning to DAZN for the 2026–2027 season—highlight a broader push toward centralized sports destinations. Meanwhile, teams in smaller markets (such as St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and Miami) are navigating rights shifts that force fans to rethink how and where they access their favorite games. 0:45 – How app consolidation and DAZN's takeover of commercial venue distribution are reshaping local sports 2:53 – From Sinclair and Spectrum to Omnicom: Nana's path into programmatic media and founding Amoh Sports Media 5:26 – RSN evolution, DAZN's Gotham Sports deal, and the rights dilemma for small-market MLB, NBA, and NHL teams Audience-first over broad targeting: Tapping into non-biased, highly passionate regional fanbases.Live sports offer an environment driven by raw emotion, unscripted outcomes, and authentic regional engagement. Even when a franchise struggles on the field—such as the Pittsburgh Pirates—networks like SportsNet Pittsburgh generate strong ad revenue because local fandom remains deeply committed. Instead of applying broad demographic targeting, smart advertisers focus on where audience interest circles overlap, prioritizing regional nuances, multi-screen viewing habits, and personalities over traditional intellectual property. 7:47 – Why sports advertising provides non-biased engagement and brand safety for advertisers 8:49 – The Pittsburgh Pirates case study: Maintaining strong ad revenue despite fan discontent 9:57 – Moving beyond broad demographics: Prioritizing audience culture, multi-screen habits, and personalities over IP The programmatic measurement dilemma: Balancing immediate conversion with long-tail brand awareness.Evaluating the exact business outcome of a programmatic sports ad is challenging when fans stream games while simultaneously engaging with secondary devices. Exposure during a live broadcast may not drive an immediate transaction—such as buying a vehicle or shopping at Walmart right away—but high-impact live inventory builds lasting top-of-mind brand equity. Media buyers must look past immediate 90-day conversion metrics and adopt a patient, long-term equity mindset when evaluating sports inventory. 11:26 – Casting wide nets vs. specific targeting in programmatic sports buying 14:43 – Building lasting top-of-mind brand equity vs. expecting immediate transactional outcomes 16:10 – The 21-year Ogilvy lesson on auto brand positioning and consumer patience Commercial co-viewing, $1,500 streaming bills, and the rise of niche live sports inventory.With annual sports streaming costs reaching $1,200 to $1,500 for consumers, platform fragmentation is accelerating industry consolidation. DAZN's acquisition of EverPass addresses a critical co-viewing challenge by securing distribution in commercial venues like bars and restaurants, while platforms like Fubo integrate regional college networks and emerging properties like the Team Boxing League. These emerging leagues expand available live ad inventory while offering streaming platforms net-new subscriber segments. 16:53 – DAZN acquiring EverPass Media to control live sports distribution in commercial venues 19:19 – Managing $1,500 annual streaming costs, app fatigue, and network consolidation 20:20 – How emerging leagues (Team Boxing League, ACC/SEC networks on Fubo) expand live ad inventory Connect with Nana Kofi Amoh on LinkedIn · Amoh Sports Media 

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim sits down with cloud and media experts Rahul Bhatia and Hemant Soni for a special panel comparing how cloud architecture, AI, and regulation are shaping the future of streaming television on both sides of the Atlantic. Recorded on State of Streaming. Commercial engine vs. public core: Why the US is built to monetize while the UK is built to balance.The US streaming model is driven by private capital, aggressive monetization, and high-scale subscription plus ad-supported tiers. In contrast, the UK market is anchored by public service broadcasters like the BBC and ITV, operating under strict regulations and public funding. While US platforms compete heavily on first-party data and sports monetization, the UK balances a commercial ad engine on top of a publicly mandated service core. 2:30 – The UK's public-sector-driven streaming market vs. US private equity funding 3:14 – Built to monetize vs. built to balance: How US and UK incentive structures diverge 4:21 – Why UK streaming operates as a commercial engine on top of a public core Cloud architecture at scale: Designing for massive traffic spikes and regulatory exit strategies.Building streaming infrastructure isn't about average usage—it's about designing for extreme traffic spikes, such as major live sports broadcasts. US giants leverage public cloud and serverless architectures to scale effortlessly without owning physical servers. Meanwhile, UK operators must navigate heavy regulatory requirements like GDPR and mandatory cloud exit strategies, making infrastructure decisions as much about compliance as performance. 5:44 – Designing for live traffic spikes: Why Netflix and Prime Video run on public cloud 6:24 – UK cloud regulations, mandatory exit strategies, and navigating GDPR The AI shift: From backend forecasting and 114-minute AI movies to agentic ad tech.AI is moving rapidly from backend revenue forecasting and scene rendering into interactive ad experiences. On the consumer side, tools like Higgsfield Cinema Studio are generating entire feature-length films like Cully Hill Boys, complete with prompt instructions. On the monetization side, Netflix is leveraging recommendation data across 250 million ad-supported viewers to deploy interactive mid-roll ads, QR codes, and dynamic pause screens. 7:41 – How AI forecasting tools replace spreadsheets to project multi-year growth 9:18 – The Coley Hill Boys case study: Full-length AI-generated filmmaking 12:23 – Netflix's 250M ad-tier milestone and the rise of interactive mid-roll ads 15:12 – Agentic AI in action: AWS Bedrock Agents and live production automation The 3-to-5 year outlook: Agentic campaign operators, privacy-first ads, and the coming storage bill.AI is evolving from a creative tool into an active operator within the advertising ecosystem, capable of placing ads, managing budgets, and optimizing campaigns automatically. In the US, dynamic shopping data is driving hyper-personalized ads, whereas the UK's privacy-first regulations focus AI on content-contextual matching. As streaming catalogs expand, platforms may soon face massive infrastructure costs, making cloud storage the next big fee passed onto consumers. 17:27 – Is Netflix a tech company? Agentic AI and backend database investments 18:50 – Amazon's Dynamic TV Creative and shopping data-driven ad switching 20:44 – Why edge computing and cloud storage could become streaming's next paid fee 22:48 – US vs. UK AI strategy: Ads smarter with user data vs. context and privacy-first consent Connect with Hemant Soni on LinkedIn · Rahul Bhatia on LinkedIn

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim sits down with Joe Franzetta, Head of Sports at Roku, to map out how Roku is solving sports discoverability, unifying fragmented streaming rights, and turning smart TV home screens into interactive fan hubs. They explore a 21-year-old prediction about interactive TV, how Roku City brings live stadium energy home, and why centralized sports zones are driving real engagement for major leagues. From 21-year-old soap opera predictions to the front door of modern streaming.Over two decades ago, Joe envisioned a world where television viewers could use their remote control to click on a couch or dress inside a soap opera and purchase it in real time. While technology was ahead of execution back then, streaming television has finally caught up. Today, sports serve as the ideal home for interactive viewer engagement because they command the largest, most captive audiences. To power this experience, Roku operates on two levels: as a platform OS acting as the front door to over 100 million households, and as a service via The Roku Channel offering free, ad-supported content. 0:00 – Looking back at a 21-year-old prediction about soap operas and interactive TV 1:25 – Why live sports are the ultimate home for interactive viewer engagement 2:10 – Roku as a platform OS vs. Roku as a first-party service Bringing Grayson Stadium to Roku City: How the Savannah Bananas built a fan-first destination.To recreate the energy of a live game for fans at home, Roku teamed up with the Savannah Bananas for a unique platform-level integration. They placed a clickable Grayson Stadium right inside the iconic Roku City screensaver. Hitting the remote's "up" button enters viewers into a virtual stadium greeted by founder Jesse Cole, which leads directly into the Banana Ball Zone—a dedicated hub aggregating live games across all distribution partners alongside VOD clips and exclusive content. 4:15 – The Savannah Bananas partnership: taking Broadway-style baseball on the road 5:40 – Placing Grayson Stadium inside Roku City as an interactive, clickable feature 7:10 – Solving fragmentation: How the Banana Ball Zone aggregates live games across all distribution partners Solving rights fragmentation with Roku Sports Zones and fan personalization.As sports rights split across four, five, or six different streaming platforms, viewer friction has reached an all-time high. Roku’s North Star solution is the Sports Zone—a centralized hub on the platform that aggregates live broadcasts by sport, provider, and league (including the NFL, NBA, MLB, WNBA, and NWSL). By combining explicit signals (fans picking their favorite teams) with implicit viewing signals, Roku serves personalized content feeds while leveraging the tribal nature of sports fandom. 8:45 – The North Star thesis: centralizing sports content across fragmented rights holders 10:30 – Building dedicated branded hubs for the NFL, NBA, MLB, WNBA, and NWSL 12:15 – How explicit fan choices and implicit viewing signals power personalization Reimagining RSNs with FAST channels and expanding the playbook globally.Regional sports networks were built for traditional cable, but digital streaming opens up new hybrid models. By offering free game unlocks on FAST outlets like the Roku Sports Channel paired with interactive click-to-subscribe remote prompts, leagues can convert local viewers into paid subscribers. Beyond North America, Roku is taking this sports hub playbook international across Latin America, Europe, and the UK, driving record streaming engagement during global tentpole events like the World Cup. 14:10 – The future of RSNs: hybrid distribution, FAST unlocks, and click-to-subscribe remotes 16:05 – T-commerce, ticket sales, and building digital fan communities around team rivalries 17:35 – International expansion: driving record World Cup streaming engagement across seven global territories Connect with Joe Franzetta on LinkedIn · Roku 

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim Rowe sits down with Moe Chughtai, Global Vice President at MiQ, to untangle the fragmented state of modern television and how advertisers can responsibly measure multi-channel media allocation. The episode dives into the evolution of "Total TV," bridging the gap between walled gardens and the open web, and why true measurement requires looking beyond platform-provided metrics. The definition of TV is now entirely generational.What constitutes "TV" completely changes depending on who holds the remote. For older generations, it remains the traditional cable box, but for Millennials, it is streaming-first, and for Gen Z, TV means YouTube and social video before anything else. Advertising must follow the consumer, meaning buyers have to operate across multiple ecosystems—often needing at least three different platforms to achieve true CTV scale. 01:27 – How MiQ’s AI tech enables traders to run 45 campaigns a month compared to the agency average of five 02:50 – Why getting CTV scale requires buying across at least three platforms, including walled gardens like Amazon and Google 07:21 – The "Total TV" framework and how younger demographics view short-form social video as primary entertainment Platform-graded measurement is creating massive blind spots.If an advertiser relies solely on a buying platform to measure its own success, the numbers will inevitably overstate performance and claim overlapping conversions. True measurement cannot be graded by the platform selling the media. Advertisers need to elevate their data strategy above individual platforms to identify overlap, measure cross-channel frequency, and spot wasted ad spend across both the open web and streaming investments. 10:30 – How overlaying location data with CTV and social investments helps national brands eliminate local media wastage 13:17 – Why relying on platform-reported performance leads to overcounted conversions and critical business blind spots 13:50 – The shift toward independent measurement partners and digital MMM solutions to track true cross-channel performance Walled gardens are finally lowering their defenses.After years of locking down data in response to privacy regulations and competitive fears, the major walled gardens are starting to open up. Platforms are realizing that to secure ad dollars, they must allow marketers to bring their own data in and take actionable signals out. With clean rooms and integrated measurement providers gaining traction, the binary battle between the open web and walled gardens is turning into a collaborative spectrum. 15:23 – How Google’s Ads Data Hub and Meta’s clean rooms are signaling a shift toward more open data sharing 16:06 – Why YouTube remains the dominant global video player, with 60% of MiQ's YouTube ads running on the big screen 18:23 – Moe's two-year prediction on walled gardens allowing more data in and out to satisfy marketer demand Connect with Moe Chughtai on LinkedIn · MiQ

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim sits down with Keith Bedford, GM of EMEA at Wurl, to map the infrastructure gaps standing between live sports and FAST monetization — and what Wurl is building to close them. Recorded ahead of Sportel and Mipcom, with a Part Two already locked in.Live sports on FAST went from less than 3% of viewing to an entire content category in <12 months.A year ago, live sports made up less than 3% of all FAST viewing compared to nearly 20% on traditional television. That gap is closing fast — Man City launched a channel going live on match days, UEFA landed on Tubi with highlights and women's Champions League content, the Bundesliga kept a Friday night game for Samsung TV Plus while selling Saturday rights to Sky. The rights model is diversifying. The platforms are filling up. The ad infrastructure hasn't caught up yet.1:37 – Man City's live match day channel and why it's unprecedented in the UK market2:10 – UEFA on Tubi: highlights, women's Champions League, and what rights they kept4:48 – The Bundesliga case study: Saturday rights to Sky, Friday nights to Samsung TV PlusThe programmatic problem? If nobody knows it's live, nobody bids like it's live.In a programmatic bid stream, a live Champions League match and a three-year-old highlights reel look identical without metadata. The CPM is the same. The opportunity isn't captured. Wurl has spent most of the year building a live event API that pre-sends event IDs, metadata, and timing into the bid stream — essentially a sports TV guide for media buyers and planners that tells the market what's live, when, and what content surrounds it. It's not live yet. But it's close.7:57 – Why FAST ad monetization is still a mixture of pre-sold sponsorships and programmatic9:30 – Why walled garden OEM data creates fragmentation for advertisers trying to reach across platforms16:23 – Wurl's live event API: pre-sending event IDs and metadata so planners can actually plan against itSomeone still has to press the ad button - what about AI?All this technology and AI, and the best way to insert an ad break into a live sports stream is still a human being pressing a button in real time. Wurl uses AI to model when game breaks should happen, but the final call is manual — because if it's live and the game overruns, an automated system gets it wrong. The investment they've made is in making that human intervention smarter, faster, and more frequent so more ad slots get filled at better rates.12:50 – What Wurl does: playout, channel distribution, and AdPool across every major platform14:22 – Why live ad insertion still requires a human in the loop15:10 – How Wurl's ad break model creates more inventory and better metadata in the same workflowThe three reasons FAST live sports channels fail: the TV, the home screen, and the cross-marketing.Keith's honest diagnosis of why good content still doesn't find its audience. First: consumers don't know the free channels exist when they buy the TV. Second: if the content isn't on the home screen, it might as well not exist — and getting home screen placement requires an active marketing strategy with the platform. Third: almost nobody is cross-marketing their FAST channel across social, YouTube, and Instagram, which is the only place to find the audiences who aren't already looking. Two tiers exist: brands that understand marketing, and brands that ignore it entirely. There's no middle.19:39 – Why consumers don't know they have 300 free channels when they buy a new TV20:30 – Why home screen placement requires an active strategy, not just distribution22:01 – Why cross-platform marketing is the missing piece for almost every FAST sports channelConnect with Keith Bedford on LinkedIn · Wurl

Have a question? Send us a text!Tim Rowe sits down with David Nyurenberg, SVP of Digital at InterMedia Advertising, days before the Ad Exchanger Awards Gala at Programmatic I/O — where three of InterMedia's projects landed five finalist nominations. The episode unpacks all three: closing the conversion loop on direct publisher buys, privacy-safe show-level targeting at scale, and what happens to performance when you separate good news from bad news using AI.Direct publisher buys in CTV have been dumb buys. That just changed. More advertisers buy direct-to-publisher in CTV than the industry realizes — better rates, no middleman fees, upfront commitments, JBP spend requirements. But the tradeoff has always been measurement. Publishers had no visibility into which slices of their inventory were driving conversions, which meant they couldn't optimize. The buy either worked or it didn't — a roll of the dice on CPMs that aren't cheap. InterMedia closed that loop with Tubi, NBCU, and Paramount by placing publisher pixels and feeding conversion data back in real time. All three publisher tactics became the top-performing placements across an entire major buy.3:09 – Why direct CTV buys have historically been "dumb buys" — and why that matters at scale6:53 – Why DTC and mid-market brands are existential for legacy CTV publishers competing with Meta and Google9:04 – The result: Tubi, NBCU, and Paramount tactics outperformed every other tactic across the entire buyShow-level targeting without knowing the show name. Privacy-safe and scalable. David has been banging the drum on show-level transparency for years — because you can't optimize toward content that drives performance if you can't identify the content. The first solution used metadata matching: zip code, time of day, channel, and network cross-referenced against an airings table to deduce what show was on and bid accordingly. It worked. It didn't scale. Pier 39's content ID solution hit scale — assigning a unique ID to every show without revealing the title, then tying that ID to conversion data so the algorithm knows what to buy more of. You give up the show name. You get the performance signal.12:20 – Why show-level transparency is the gap holding CTV back as a true performance channel13:14 – The first approach: metadata matching via zip code, time, channel, and Grayston airings tables15:07 – The Pier 39 solution: random content IDs tied to conversions, scaled through Pontiac IntelligenceGood news outperforms bad news. The data is now in.News is efficient and it converts — older audiences, disposable income, high engagement. But many advertisers still won't buy news on CTV because brand safety enforcement is harder than in display: no keywords, just moving sound and image. Anokey AI's contextual technology solved it by segmenting news into positive and negative sentiment in real time. InterMedia ran a scientific split — positive news versus negative news versus all news bundled together, with deduplicated audiences and a control line. Positive news outperformed both the negative-only line and the everything line on a cost-per-lead basis. Good news is good for your bottom line.16:52 – Why news performs in CTV — and why most advertisers still won't buy it17:21 – How Anokey AI segments local news by sentiment in real time on CTV19:00 – The result: positive news sentiment outperformed negative news and the control lineConnect with David Nyurenberg on LinkedIn · InterMedia Advertising

Have a question? Send us a text!📊 Read the MRI-Simmons Video Podcast Report: mrisimmons.comTim sits down with Emily Williams, Consumer Expert at MRI-Simmons, for a return visit built around fresh data from their annual podcast study — 10,000 US podcast consumers surveyed, weighted and projected to the total US audience. The topic: why the definition of a podcast is breaking down, why that's actually good news, and what the numbers say about where streaming, podcasting, and creator content are all converging.Only 36% of podcast consumers still define a podcast as audio-only. In 2021, that number was over 60%. The format-first definition of podcasting is collapsing — and Emily's data shows it happening faster than anyone expected. Today 13% of podcast consumers define a podcast as a video program on an app. Another 8% — roughly 7 million active podcast consumers — say they're not even sure how to define a podcast anymore. Emily's read: podcasting isn't losing its identity. It's becoming bigger than the format that originally created it.1:26 – How MRI-Simmons surveys 10,000 US podcast consumers annually and what the study measures3:00 – How the definition of a podcast has shifted: from audio-first to format-agnostic4:47 – The 8% who actively consume podcasts but can't define what they're consuming96% of podcast consumers still listen to audio. 89% watch video. Video isn't replacing audio — it's adding to it. The winner-versus-loser framing the industry keeps reaching for doesn't match the data. Nearly three-quarters of podcast consumers — 74% — say video is an enhancement to audio, not a replacement. Two-thirds say they prefer to watch video when it's offered. And 53% say that when they're watching a video podcast, they ignore the video and just listen anyway. The availability of video matters more to consumers than the constant visual attention. They want the option. They don't always use it.9:00 – Why video and audio are complementary formats, not competing ones10:20 – Why 53% of video podcast viewers ignore the video while listening11:30 – The multi-platform consumer: TV at home, audio in the car, clip on Instagram at nightSocial media clips have officially replaced word of mouth as the #1 way people discover podcasts. Up until 2024, the number one podcast discovery mechanism was a friend or colleague recommending a show. Starting in 2024, social media surpassed verbal recommendations. Today 44% of podcast consumers discover shows through social media — ahead of recommendations, app directories, online searches, and advertising. A two-hour episode generates dozens of short clips. Those clips circulate on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The show finds the consumer before the consumer finds the show.18:07 – How social media surpassed word of mouth as the #1 podcast discovery channel in 202418:30 – Why video creates the short-clip discovery engine that audio alone never could19:45 – Why consumers discover the clip before they discover the podcast — and why that's lower friction23 million consumers say podcast time is replacing streaming time. Netflix is paying attention. Podcasts are not just another content category for streaming platforms — they are increasingly a competitor for the same hours. 23 million consumers say their podcast time is replacing video streaming. Another 32 million say it's replacing traditional live TV. Nearly 60% of podcast consumers say they find podcasts more engaging than TV. And 70% say they actively seek out other content from publishers once they find a program they like — TV shows, movies, live events, merchandise. That's not passive media consumption. That's fandom. That's why Netflix and YouTube are in a bidding war for creator franchises.12:54 – Why streaming platforms see podcasts as a competitor for attention, not just a content category13:30 – Why 55% of podcast consumers — about 50 million people — go to YouTube for podcasts16:21 – Why streaming services acquiring podcasts are buying loyal audiences, trusted creators, and communitiesBy 2031, we'll stop asking whether something is a podcast or a TV show. We'll just ask whether it has an audience. Emily's five-year prediction: the podcast-versus-TV distinction disappears. The relevant distinction becomes scripted versus unscripted. The future media landscape will be organized around creators, communities, and interests — not formats. Brands that create belonging and give audiences reasons to return will win. The format will be irrelevant.21:19 – Emily's 2031 prediction: the end of the podcast-versus-TV conversation21:45 – Why scripted vs. unscripted is the distinction that actually matters to consumers22:10 – Why the future asks "does it have an audience?" not "is it a podcast or a TV show?"📊 Read the MRI-Simmons Podcast Study highlights deck — free: mrisimmons.com Connect with Emily Williams on LinkedIn · MRI-Simmons