Streaming Monetization, CTV Advertising & Ad Tech News

IAB Tech Lab has released AAMP 2.0, introducing transaction-ready Buyer and Seller Agent SDKs that facilitate automated negotiation and deal execution within guardrails of existing standards. The update also includes an Agentic Audiences OpenRTB extension, Prebid module, and open-source scorer to enable the use of vector embeddings in programmatic advertising. The SDKs are designed for real-world deployment, supporting various storage backends and deployment options, with a focus on scaling, reliability, and security.

FreeWheel has launched a new Partner Portal, a centralized hub for technology partners to integrate with its FreeWheel Streaming Hub for CTV advertising. The portal offers a single dashboard for API access, sandbox testing, and production rollouts, aiming to streamline onboarding and accelerate the deployment of third-party tools for publishers.

AgenticAdvertising.org (AAO) announces the publication of Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) 3.0, expanding the protocol from media buying/signals into a broader advertising lifecycle scope including discovery, planning, execution, governance, identity, and creative workflows. The article describes new elements such as governance checks with audit trails, a machine-readable brand identity file (brand.json), a “Sponsored Intelligence Protocol” for brand sessions in conversational AI, and a creative workflow intended to generate and distribute multi-format assets from a single brief. It also states AdCP 3.0 expands supported channels from 9 to 20 (including linear TV and streaming-related channels) and notes reference implementation governance (Prebid) and planned future work like third-party auditing for AdCP Verified.

PubMatic features an interview with DIRECTV Advertising’s Tyler DeNicola on efforts to unify linear and streaming ad inventory, with an emphasis on live sports aggregation and programmatic buying. DIRECTV Advertising cites internal data claiming its streaming capabilities have enabled about 40% more live sports impressions versus linear satellite alone, and highlights newer ad formats such as pause ads with addressable and interactive features. The discussion also covers using AI and analytics for inventory packaging, pricing, targeting, yield optimization, and measurement transparency in an authenticated, partner-agnostic programmatic ecosystem.

Live streaming is expected to generate an additional $4 billion in programmatic CTV ad spend globally by 2028, according to estimates from BCG and Google. The article, sponsored by Google Ad Manager, highlights the technical challenges of delivering ads to massive, simultaneous global audiences for live events, advocating for a globally distributed or edge-based ad serving architecture to minimize latency and ensure seamless ad delivery.

FreeWheel announced the launch of Context Engine, an AI-driven feature within FreeWheel’s Streaming Hub designed to enable scaled contextual ad targeting across premium video. The product uses Comcast Technology Solutions’ VideoAI, combining computer vision, machine learning, and generative AI to analyze video content and derive contextual segments and keywords from closed captions and visual signals.

This report details programmatic advertising statistics for 2026, projecting global spend to reach $821 billion with 90% of digital display and 71% of CTV inventory being programmatic. It covers key trends including CTV programmatic spend reaching $36 billion, the dominance of DV360 and Trade Desk among DSPs, and the impact of cookieless programmatic advertising. The report also highlights shifts towards private marketplaces, header bidding configurations, and ad fraud rates across channels.

Netflix said advertising is a key growth driver, projecting $3bn in ad revenue in 2026 (about double 2025) and reporting more than 4,000 advertisers after a 70%+ year-on-year increase in 2025. On its Q1 earnings call, Netflix reported quarterly revenue up 16% to $12.3bn, noted ad-supported plans represented over 60% of Q1 sign-ups where available, and highlighted increased use of its Netflix Ads Suite with programmatic expected to exceed 50% of non-live ads. The company also confirmed co-founder Reed Hastings is stepping down as chairman and reiterated a standalone strategy after withdrawing from a potential Warner Bros. Discovery assets deal.

Expedia Group Advertising has partnered with Magnite to expand its off-platform and curated ad offering. This collaboration aims to provide advertising partners with broader off-platform reach and a more targeted, brand-safe approach to reaching consumers. Magnite is identified as the largest independent sell-side advertising company.

As part of its 2026 upfront pitch, Paramount announced several ad-tech initiatives, including the complete merger of the ad tech stacks for Paramount+ and Pluto TV over the summer. The company is also launching Precision+, a new performance advertising tool, offering 'streaming fixed units' for guaranteed ad pod placement, and extending dynamic ad insertion (DAI) to more live sporting events within the CBS Sports digital portfolio.

Viant Technology announced a definitive agreement to acquire TVision Insights, aiming to integrate TVision’s second-by-second “eyes-on-screen” attention measurement signals directly into Viant’s AI-powered programmatic buying platform. The combined offering is positioned to add attention, co-viewing, and in-room presence signals alongside Viant’s identity capabilities to support planning and optimization across linear TV and streaming/CTV inventory, including a proposed “attention-adjusted CPM” metric. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026, subject to customary conditions.

Amazon has launched Prime Video Ultra in the US, replacing the prior ad-free plan and increasing the add-on price for Prime subscribers to $4.99/month from $2.99 (about a 67% increase). The new tier bundles ad-free viewing with additional features, including making 4K/Ultra HD streaming exclusive to Ultra, increasing simultaneous streams from three to five, and raising offline download limits from 25 to 100.

Magnite announced a strategic collaboration with AMC Global Media to make AMC's content available to buyers via Magnite's programmatic platform. This partnership enables programmatic purchasing of unified linear and streaming inventory from AMC Global Media through a single access point.

The article argues that FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) platforms such as Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and Samsung TV Plus are growing into large, data-driven advertising ecosystems, citing metrics including 100M+ monthly active users for Tubi, 80M+ for Pluto TV, and a U.S. FAST ad market estimate of $12.26B in 2025 with a projection to $27B by 2030. It describes how targeting is enabled by smart TV data (including ACR) and dynamic ad insertion, and outlines buying paths via direct sales and programmatic DSPs (e.g., The Trade Desk, Google DV360) including Roku’s self-serve political ad tools. It also notes that political/issue advertising rules vary by platform and that streaming is not regulated like broadcast by the FCC, with federal requirements mainly tied to FEC disclosures.

Simon-Kucher’s Global Streaming Study 2025 (surveying 12,000+ streamers across 11 countries) reports that streaming usage is stable (88% same or more than last year) and intended churn declined to 35% over the next 12 months, while 42% say they spend too much on streaming. The study highlights rapid adoption of ad-supported tiers—reported at 34% of Netflix and 31% of Disney+ subscriptions—alongside growing demand for live content (30% want more live) and mainstream bundling (51% using bundles, often via telecoms). It also notes increasing competition for attention from social platforms, with 49% of under-40s viewing social media as a substitute for streaming.

This article discusses 'agentic advertising,' an AI-driven approach for executing and optimizing ad transactions, and posits Connected TV (CTV) as its first real testing ground. It highlights how existing CTV ad execution models struggle with complexity and customization, leading to operational bottlenecks for publishers. Agentic systems aim to address these by encoding publisher-defined business rules into seller agents, enabling continuous, automated monetization without constant manual intervention.

Research from subscription bundling platform Bango, based on a survey of 2,500 US consumers, found that 36% of Americans would tolerate twice as many ads in streaming/subscription services in exchange for a lower monthly price, rising to 46% of Millennials and 49% of Gen Z. The report says US consumers pay for an average of 5.2 subscriptions costing about $69 per month, with 23% saying they spend more than they can afford (41% among Gen Z). Willingness to accept more ads was reported as highest among Apple TV users (52%), followed by Disney+ (48%), HBO/Max (47%), Netflix (44%) and Amazon Prime Video (40%).

X is modifying its creator revenue share program to reward original content creators more effectively and reduce payouts to aggregator accounts. Head of Product Nikita Bier stated that changes are being implemented to identify original authors and allocate a larger portion of revenue to them, with aggregator payouts already reduced by 40% in the current cycle and an additional 20% reduction planned. This initiative aims to incentivize original content creation over reposts and clickbait, similar to efforts by Instagram and Meta to prioritize original content.

Comcast Advertising announced Outcomes+, a new targeting and attribution suite spanning traditional TV and streaming, built on deterministic viewing data from 30M+ Comcast households and supported by partnerships including Mastercard, Clarivoy, DISQO, Fandango, and S&P Global Mobility. The launch also includes a new Amazon Ads partnership that gives Comcast Advertising’s local and SMB advertisers programmatic access to Prime Video inventory via Amazon DSP, alongside new AI-driven activation tools and a consolidated measurement dashboard (myResults).

Salesforce discusses three challenges ad sales teams face during the Upfront season: managing complex hierarchical relationships, a lack of visibility into available ad inventory, and the commitment vs. execution gap. The article highlights how static tools, off-the-shelf apps, and in-house applications often fail to address these issues, leading to inefficiencies in ad sales operations. It then suggests questions to ask prospective ad sales software vendors to ensure proper management of relationships, real-time inventory queries, and accurate ad sales pipeline reporting.

Magnite outlines a shift towards a 'supply-first strategy' for CTV publishers, enabled by tools like mediation and sophisticated segmentation. This approach allows publishers to dictate ad pricing more effectively. The company indicates this represents an evolution from defensive yield management to proactive strategies for its partners.

This article discusses how client-side beaconing, IAB Open Measurement, and SVTA standards contribute to improving ad verification and monetization within OTT dynamic ad insertion (DAI). It focuses on the technical mechanisms and adherence to industry standards to enhance advertising effectiveness.

Amazon Ads and Roku announced an exclusive U.S. integration that makes Amazon DSP the sole access point to a shared, authenticated CTV advertising footprint across Roku and Amazon streaming audiences. The companies say the shared ad identifier enables deterministic recognition of logged-in viewers across Roku OS/devices (and associated streaming apps), targeting/measurement improvements, and frequency management at an estimated reach of 80M U.S. CTV households (over 80% of U.S. CTV households, per Comscore). Amazon states the solution will be available to all Amazon DSP advertisers in the U.S. by Q4 2025, with early tests reporting 40% more unique reach at the same budget and ~30% lower frequency to the same person.

Nielsen is delaying the next release of its monthly “The Gauge” report by about a week after some streaming-focused clients requested more detail on how newly implemented DASH data will affect audience estimates. Nielsen says the DASH methodology, developed with NORC and accredited via the Media Rating Council process, may expand the estimated universe for broadcast/cable viewing and reduce streaming’s share in the report, which matters because Nielsen remains a core measurement currency for U.S. TV ad sales.

Fastly has launched its Ad Tag Gateway, a new product designed to enhance first-party measurement for Google Advertisers. This solution aims to improve ad signal visibility and ensures compliance, with reported uplifts of up to 14% in ad signals.

TCL FFalcon, the internet services arm of TCL, has named advertising technology company Affinity as a primary demand partner for its smart TV advertising ecosystem. The partnership will provide global brands with a streamlined programmatic pathway to TCL's inventory across AVOD and FAST channels in over 160 countries. The integration facilitates automated, auction-based ad buying on TCL's smart TV interface and streaming channels.

Magnite details how its SpringServe Live Scheduler product is being used by Scripps to organize and signal upcoming live sports ad inventory for the newly launched Scripps Sports Network, a 24/7 ad-supported sports streaming channel. The article positions Live Scheduler as a standardized workflow for planning, activating, and measuring programmatic advertising around live events, and pairs it with Magnite’s Live Stream Acceleration (LSA) for high-concurrency live ad-break performance optimization.

Citing Omdia projections, the article says global TV and online video revenue is expected to rise from $775B in 2025 to $1.03T by 2030, with online video advertising growing from $309B to $540B and increasing advertising’s share of total revenue from 40% to 53%. It argues that industry measurement and pricing systems are not keeping pace with fragmented streaming consumption, pointing to issues such as Nielsen’s timing challenges ahead of upfronts and estimating streaming has recaptured only about two-thirds of ad dollars lost from linear TV. The piece also projects social video platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Meta) will account for roughly $400B in streaming ad revenue by 2030, aided by closed-loop measurement and optimization compared with more fragmented measurement across ad-supported streaming services.

Red5 discusses the state of ad insertion for Media over QUIC (MOQ), focusing on how SCTE-35 signaling can be carried as structured events to enable server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) and regional blackout workflows while keeping ad and primary media streams separately distributed. The article references presentations at an IETF MOQ interim meeting (Feb 2026, Google Boulder) describing an architecture using an Event Timeline track for real-time switching between program and ad tracks. Red5 also states it is developing MOQ ad workflow integrations with partners and plans to showcase MOQ/TrueTime and collect beta testers for a Red5 Cloud + CacheFly MOQ delivery network at NAB 2026.

In an op-ed response to a prior TVNewsCheck column, ITN executive Craig Sulema argues that “programmatic” for television should be defined by automated workflow and platform-based access to supply rather than impression-level ad delivery and deterministic targeting. The article cites ITN integrations with Magnite (to transact local linear TV inventory via SSP-to-DSP infrastructure alongside CTV/digital video) and Comscore (to support planning and transacting against advanced audience segments) as evidence that local linear can operate within programmatic ecosystems today.

Key findings from the 2026 Purchase Funnel Study by TVB/GfK/NIQ and a Sky Media analysis highlight the effectiveness of linear TV and addressable TV advertising in driving brand awareness and consumer decisions. These studies indicate that local linear TV remains a trusted and influential medium, even among heavy streamers, with addressable TV campaigns showing stronger, more accountable results compared to linear TV alone. These insights will be featured at BroadcastAsia 2026.

Omdia forecasts global traditional TV and online video revenues will grow from $775B in 2025 to $1.03T by 2030, with growth primarily driven by digital advertising. Online video advertising is projected to rise from $309B to $540B and increase its share of total revenues from 40% to 53%, with social video platforms (Meta, TikTok, YouTube) expected to generate around $400B of streaming ad revenues by 2030. Subscription and transaction revenues are expected to grow more slowly, while linear TV advertising and pay TV revenues decline as audiences migrate to digital platforms.

A survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by All About Cookies found that only 24% pay attention to streaming ads, with 52% having considered cancelling a service due to ads. Additionally, 67% prefer one long ad break upfront over multiple short breaks, and most subscribers to ad-supported tiers feel there are too many ads across platforms like Hulu and Peacock.

Synamedia discusses how pay-TV operators can monetize live sports streaming at scale. Key strategies highlighted include dynamic ad insertion, effective blackout management, and deeper observability to enhance revenue generation.

The article discusses how the complexity of buying premium video inventory across linear TV and streaming endpoints creates friction in ad purchasing and can divert budgets. It frames the emerging use of AI agents to automate parts of TV/streaming ad buying, including agents transacting with other agents, as a developing approach to reduce that operational complexity.

FreeWheel executive Alex Ibarguen argues that Connected TV (CTV) fragmentation is not just an inventory distribution challenge but also an identity resolution problem. The article highlights how identity gaps can weaken audience fidelity and complicate buying across fragmented CTV environments.

According to Deloitte's 2026 digital media trends report, two-thirds of streaming subscribers are now opting for ad-supported tiers, a 20% increase from 2024. This shift is driven by rising subscription fees, with consumers showing increased price sensitivity and a willingness to accept ads for lower costs. Streaming platforms are leveraging this trend to maintain dual revenue streams from subscriptions and advertising.

Charter Communications appointed John Lee as Head of its new Intelligence Ventures unit, which will build intelligence-driven products and partnerships using Charter’s proprietary data signals and AI capabilities in a privacy-safe manner. The team’s mandate includes developing scalable solutions aimed at creating value for marketers, agencies, platforms, and enterprises. Lee previously founded Scout Data Advisors and served as Chief Data Officer at NBCUniversal, after a long tenure at Merkle.

Advertisers are continuing to rely on The Trade Desk as a leading demand-side platform (DSP) while also evaluating alternative buying options. The article notes that Amazon and Google are actively courting media buyers, contributing to increased consideration of competing ad-tech platforms.

Cineverse announced a strategic partnership with VA Media to improve growth and monetization across Cineverse’s fandom-focused YouTube channel portfolio, including longform and shortform strategy, channel optimization, and financial modeling. The effort begins with the Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan YouTube channel, and extends to adjacent social video platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. Cineverse says its owned and/or operated YouTube channels collectively exceed 10 million subscribers and 200 million views.

Genius Sports announced it will host a NewFront event on March 26 during IAB NewFronts week, including a live webcast and replay, to present its immersive advertising and real-time activation capabilities for live sports. The company plans to unveil “Moment Engine,” which uses official league data and real-time signals to enable addressable, measurable ad activation and optimization around live in-game moments, integrated with SSPs and accessible via major DSPs. Genius Sports said the product has already been used at scale during the Super Bowl and is expected to support additional campaigns ahead of the NBA Finals and FIFA World Cup.

Anoki and Amagi announced the launch of In-Scene Ads, which applies Anoki’s ContextIQ multimodal AI to Amagi’s in-content ad formats for FAST services. The integration combines ContextIQ with Amagi’s Thunderstorm SSAI to enable scene-level contextual ad experiences designed to be inserted without interrupting viewing.

LinkedIn has signed a connected-TV advertising partnership with The Trade Desk, making The Trade Desk its first demand-side platform partner for CTV and enabling advertisers to use LinkedIn audience data for targeting CTV ad buys. The partnership is in a test phase with a small group of brands and complements LinkedIn’s existing CTV setup that works through Microsoft’s supply-side platform, Monetize. The deal comes as The Trade Desk faces market pressure and scrutiny following Publicis Groupe saying it would no longer recommend the DSP after an independent audit, which The Trade Desk disputes.

StackAdapt was ranked #1 in the Best Cross-Channel Advertising Software category in G2’s Spring 2026 Report, based on verified customer reviews and market presence. The company also secured top rankings in Connected TV (CTV) Advertising Platforms, Digital Audio Advertising Software, and Demand-Side Platform categories. This recognition highlights StackAdapt's AI-powered platform for unifying campaign management, optimization, and measurement across various advertising channels including CTV, digital video, and audio.

fullthrottle.ai has launched enhanced SmartMail capabilities, integrating identity-powered direct mail into its self-service platform. This allows marketers to activate personalized physical mail campaigns alongside digital display, audio, and CTV campaigns using first-party and third-party audiences within unified DSP workflows, with end-to-end attribution.

OpenX and TVision launched OpenX Attention Targeting, a connected TV pre-bid capability that converts TVision’s panel-based, second-by-second attention measurement into real-time activation signals within OpenX’s bidstream via OpenXSelect. The integration allows CTV buyers to use impression-level attention scores as a targeting parameter when curating programmatic CTV deals, shifting attention data from post-campaign reporting to pre-auction optimization. The announcement is positioned amid broader industry focus on improving CTV ad quality and measurement, including concerns about TV-off impressions and new attention measurement standards from MRC and IAB.

Amazon announced that starting April 10, Prime subscribers will need a new “Prime Video Ultra” tier to watch supported titles in 4K and use Dolby Atmos, while the existing ad-free add-on price increases from $3/month to $5/month. Prime Video Ultra will also raise limits for simultaneous streams (to five) and downloads (to 100), while the cheaper tier retains Dolby Vision with increased streams and downloads. The article contextualizes the move within Amazon’s prior shift to ads for Prime Video and reported increases in ad load over time.

The article reports that Netflix is projected to capture nearly 10% of global connected TV (CTV) advertising spend. Media buyers attribute the market share increase to Netflix expanding into live sports, offering lower-priced options, and forming demand-side platform (DSP) partnerships that improve ad buying access.