Overlay Ads and the Streaming Ad Tech State of Play
IAB Tech Lab’s VP of Product Jill Wittkopp outlined the current state of streaming ad‑tech, focusing on overlay formats such as L‑bars, squeezebacks and corner overlays. The lab applied an 80/20 rule to distill eight ad experiences down to six, aiming for a common framework that lets advertisers reuse creative across publishers. A forthcoming set of signaling standards will define how each overlay type is identified and triggered, ensuring the right creative matches the right format. The initiative is moving toward public release after a comment period, promising faster, scalable spend for CTV campaigns.
How Brands Should Respond to CTV Ad Fatigue Before Viewers Tune Them Out
Streaming platforms are rapidly expanding ad‑supported inventory, with Prime Video doubling its ad load, Netflix adding ad minutes, and Amazon rebranding its ad‑free tier. The U.S. CTV audience now exceeds 240 million, and projected ad spend is set to surpass $46 billion...
NAB 2026, Via LA, and the Future of NDI|HX
NAB 2026 highlighted the growing tension between NDI|HX’s low‑bandwidth 4K delivery and new licensing costs introduced by the Via Licensing Alliance (Via LA). Via LA replaced its flat $100,000 annual cap with a tiered structure that can reach $4.5 million for the biggest...
What Does Contextual AI Look Like at Scale?
At Streaming Media Connect 2026, Tavant convened leaders from Roku, DAZN, Philo and Intersection to discuss how contextual AI is being woven into core advertising operations. The panel revealed that AI is no longer a peripheral feature but a foundational layer...
How to Monitor Live Streams for Optimal Ad Server Performance
Industry leaders at Streaming Media Connect 2026 highlighted the observability gaps that can cripple live‑stream ad insertion. They stressed that encoding quality, manifest integrity, and SCTE‑35 cue signals are the first line of defense against broken ad breaks. Real‑time “eyes on...
Streaming?s Next Phase Demands a New Kind of Infrastructure
Streaming video has become the default medium, but legacy content delivery networks (CDNs) are straining under the surge of live, high‑resolution events. Traditional CDN architectures rely on a limited number of large points of presence, which cannot efficiently absorb massive,...
Q&A: Paramount Global CTO Phil Wiser Talks AI in Media
Paramount Global’s CTO Phil Wiser outlined how AI is reshaping media operations during a HumanX Q&A. He highlighted AI’s role in speeding up global content localization, automating asset stitching, and ensuring compliance, while stressing a hybrid top‑down and bottom‑up adoption...
The Many Ways CTV Publishers Extend Supply and What It Means For You
CTV publishers use five distinct supply models to monetize inventory beyond their owned‑and‑operated channels. The models—inventory share, backfill, buyback, audience extension, and run‑of‑network—allow publishers to expand impressions from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions while retaining control over pricing...
Broadband?s Growth Playbook Is Broken, Relevance-Led Growth Is Next
Broadband providers have outgrown the traditional scale‑first playbook as market scarcity gives way to abundant choices like fiber, cable, 5G and satellite. Speed and reliability are now baseline expectations, leaving providers to compete on relevance rather than raw performance. The...
Peeling Back Sports' Hidden Layer of Streaming Ops and Tech
The article reveals that modern sports broadcasting relies on a hidden, highly complex layer of technology that produces multiple simultaneous feeds—main broadcast, alternate angles, highlights, social clips, and personalized streams. This invisible infrastructure must capture, transport, process, and orchestrate massive...
Stream of Consciousness: How CTV and Household Targeting Keeps Brands Top of Mind
Streaming television overtook broadcast and cable in May 2025, capturing 44.8% of U.S. TV viewing and climbing to a 47.5% peak in December 2025. The surge has accelerated ad‑supported models, with Netflix’s ad tier rising from 26% to 40% of...
Leveraging SGAI for Longtail Live Sports
FloSports is piloting Server‑Generated Ad Insertion (SGAI) to tackle quality and revenue challenges in long‑tail sports streaming. The platform gains end‑to‑end observability of its video pipeline, allowing it to monitor performance without blind spots. SGAI also enables side‑by‑side programmatic ads...
The Subscriber Retention Funnel: Turning One-Time Viewers Into Loyal Audiences
Streaming services are grappling with rising churn, which has climbed from 2 % in 2019 to 5.5 % in 2025, while retention rates linger between 30 % and 40 %. Traditional mass‑mail and generic push tactics no longer engage users, prompting a shift toward...
Independent Report Compares Codec Royalty Costs Across Two Major Licensing Pools
An independent analysis by Jan Ozer for Streaming Learning Center compares royalty costs between Access Advance’s Video Distribution Patent Pool and Avanci’s Video program across eight typical streaming service models. The study finds Avanci’s royalties can be 1.9‑times higher for...
AI-Enriched Metadata Drives Better CTV Content Discovery
Cineverse’s cineSearch platform uses AI to generate scene‑by‑scene, emotion‑focused metadata, enabling natural‑language queries that match how viewers think about what to watch. By extracting thousands of contextual dimensions—mood, feeling, genre nuances—the system moves beyond traditional descriptive tags. SUMM8’s Jamie Mackinlay stresses...
