Streaming Spotlight

The FAST Track To Premium Inventory

The rapid growth and complexity of the Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) market, with its projected growth to 1.1 billion users by 2027, reflects a shift in TV consumption and a challenge for advertisers to navigate the fragmented landscape. Unlike traditional TV advertising, FAST combines elements of digital, programmatic, and broadcast ad models with supply chain dynamics that includes layers of inventory rights holders including at least eight major streamers and likely more than 70 channel operators. This amalgamation seems a formidable challenge for buyers seeking to accelerate the reallocation of budgets previously earmarked for broadcast TV.

Fortunately, the programmatic process can make things fairly straightforward as long as buyers embrace the nuance and fragmentation that makes up the FAST ad market. For example, buyers can work directly with channel operators, check inventory partner domains on ads.txt files for validation, instruct their DSPs and other inventory gatekeepers to understand FAST and allow access to FAST inventory sold by channel operators. Read More →

Lack of Transparency in CTV Still an Issue

Chris Bruderle, the IAB’s VP of industry insights and content strategy, recently told Adexchanger that transparency is the second factor holding back growth in CTV ad spend (after attribution) and that understanding where ads ran at the show level is a big deal for streaming advertisers.

"They are not going to stop asking,” Bruderle said of advertisers’ desire to get transparency, but could it be they are simply not asking the right cohort on the supply side? FAST channel operators are more than willing to provide show level data and further levels of transparency, but streaming ad buyers need to show a willingness to work with channel operators. We wrote about it just last month. Read the article →

Happenings Around Our Orbit

• Professional pickleball action from the US Pickleball Open was recently broadcast LIVE on our pickleball channel, PickleTV. More Live Pickleball action is coming every Tuesday night September - December as we broadcast Tuesday Night Pickleball LIVE.

• The Monster Jam FAST channel, exclusively distributed by SPACEMOB, recently launched on Plex.

• SPACEMOB brought the classic hit TV show, The Red Green Show, to streaming more than 3 years ago and they recently did a write up to tell their fans how the Red Green Show wound up back on their living room TV.

Interested in learning more about our channels and how entertainment brands use FAST as a marketing vehicle? Want exclusive access to our audiences via PMP deals? Reply to this email.