The State of Streaming Codecs 2026
2025 reshaped streaming video economics as content‑side patent pools and high‑profile settlements brought codec royalties into the CFO’s purview. Access Advance launched a VDP pool with capped fees and de‑minimis waivers, while Nokia’s settlement with Amazon proved that patent owners can enforce royalties on streamed content. Sisvel announced licensing roughly half of the AV1 device market, challenging the codec’s royalty‑free reputation, and the Alliance for Open Media introduced AV2, promising 20‑30 % bitrate savings. Regional moves, such as Brazil’s TV 3.0 decree mandating VVC/LCEVC, further illustrate divergent adoption paths.
Streaming Year in Review 2026
In 2025 YouTube cemented its role as the dominant TV platform in the United States, overtaking mobile devices and capturing 12.5% of all TV usage, while its Shorts, live streams, and licensed long‑tail titles attracted a broad demographic. Meanwhile, Paramount Skydance...
How Streaming Has Transformed NBA Audience Insights
The NBA’s audience has shifted dramatically from traditional TV to a fragmented mix of streaming services, mobile devices, and consoles, with over a quarter of viewership now coming from virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPD). This migration forces the league...
Samsung TV Plus Powers the Next Era of FAST, Showcasing Live Events, Creator-Led Content, Exclusive Offerings, and Interactive Features Accelerating...
Samsung Ads unveiled a full‑funnel performance platform at IAB NewFronts 2026, pairing AI‑driven targeting with shoppable ad formats on Samsung TV Plus. The platform integrates Amazon’s Interactive Video Ad technology, enabling viewers to add Amazon items to cart directly from their...
California?s Streaming Loudness Law: Time for Ad Tech to Rethink Audio Control
California’s SB 576 now obliges streaming ads to match the perceived volume of surrounding content, shifting compliance responsibility to the platforms that deliver the ads. The rule exposes a split in ad‑tech workflows: client‑side insertion (CSAI) offers little control over audio,...
The Hidden Cost of Over-Engineering Broadcast Stacks
Broadcast technology has shifted to IP‑based, software‑defined workflows, unlocking remote production and cloud connectivity. However, the drive for flexibility often leads to over‑engineering, where extra routing layers, middleware, and monitoring tools inflate system complexity. This hidden cost manifests as longer...
Setplex Transforms Video Streaming with AI and Super Aggregation Innovations at the 2026 NAB Show
Setplex will debut its fully integrated Zapflex platform at the 2026 NAB Show, highlighting new AI‑driven search and a super aggregation engine that merge internal libraries with third‑party content. The AI search combines keyword precision with intent‑based semantics, while the...
The Fine Print
Colonial Williamsburg, celebrating its 2026 centennial, has launched a pilot project that uses a large‑language model to create AI‑driven digital content for visitors and staff. The model is being trained on a broad corpus of 18th‑century philosophical treatises, letters, pamphlets...
Middle-Mile Resiliency and Delivering Live Streams at Scale
The conversation at Streaming Media Connect 2026 highlighted a shift from last‑mile to middle‑mile challenges in live streaming. CacheFly’s CTO Matt Levine explained that variability between ingest and edge caching now drives reliability concerns for live events. Providers are adopting aggressive...
Key Contextual Data Points for Targeted and Brand-Safe CTV Advertising
At Streaming Media Connect 2026, Philo and Roku executives discussed how contextual data drives brand‑safe CTV advertising. Philo, a lean MVPD with just 11 ad‑operations staff, relies on programmatic workflows and granular tone signals—such as happy versus sad moments—to match...
How the NBA Keeps Younger Viewers Engaged
The NBA is reshaping its fan‑engagement strategy to capture younger viewers who avoid traditional TV appointments. By aggregating data across League Pass, the NBA app, social platforms and betting interfaces, the league sees that youth consumption is actually rising, just...
Why the Gap Between the Game and Your Screen Is a Business Problem
Live‑sports streaming latency now reaches 40‑plus seconds on many platforms, turning a quality‑of‑experience nuisance into a revenue‑critical issue. Research from the Super Bowl showed Peacock lagging 48 seconds while broadcast stayed within 19 seconds. In‑play microbetting, a $21 billion market projected...
Inside the CTV Contextual Advertising Toolset
At Streaming Media Connect 2026, Team Whistle and Intersection explained how CTV contextual advertising now hinges on AI‑driven tools and real‑time data pipelines. Team Whistle has built proprietary Looker‑based analytics that feed production, programming, and ad teams with live‑event and audience...
Volumetric Video Won Gold at the Olympics. Is an Oscar Next?
Volumetric video captured the Winter Olympics, delivering multi‑angle replays that can be re‑framed in post‑production. The technology proved its worth at Milano Cortina 2026, where AI‑enhanced volumetric replays approached cinematic quality. Outside sport, artists like Radiohead have experimented with the format, but...
Shoppable Content Meets Cloud Gaming on CTV
At Streaming Media Connect 2026, Fuse Media’s CRO Karl Meyer and Spaceback co‑founder Joe Hall discussed how shoppable content is converging with cloud gaming on connected‑TV platforms. Samsung’s early integration of on‑demand gaming into its smart TVs set the stage,...
Vertical Leap: Growing the Free Vertical Drama Business at Streaming Media Connect
At Streaming Media Connect, Chris Pfaff led a panel on the rapid rise of vertical microdramas on free streaming platforms. Panelists highlighted how mobile‑first viewing, bingeable formats and AI‑driven production are turning short‑form vertical series into a potential mass‑media staple....
Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery Reshape Streaming?s Power Balance
Paramount Skydance Global and Warner Bros. Discovery have announced a $111 billion merger that would unite two major studios and their extensive content libraries. The combined entity would blend HBO’s premium brand with Paramount’s franchises such as Star Trekk, Mission: Impossible, Transformers and...
How Audience Insights Drive NBA Media Decision-Making
NBA Vice President Michelle Auguste explained how audience insights have shaped the league’s new 11‑year media rights agreement, positioning the NBA as a growth property despite overall TV declines. The data highlighted the league’s nightly reach, youthful and diverse fan...
CTV Is Defining the Future of Streaming Ads
Connected TVs now reach over 85% of U.S. households, with roughly 60% of Gen Z streaming on them, and have surpassed cable as the primary source of video consumption in 2025. Advertisers are shifting focus to CTV because it gathers the...
Why Most Live Streams Won't Exist in 30 Days
Live streaming generated roughly $78 billion in 2025 and approaches $100 billion by 2024, yet most platforms delete recordings within days or weeks. Twitch, Instagram Live, and TikTok Live automatically purge VODs, while YouTube’s archival is optional and often de‑prioritized. This creates...
FOX 12 Plus Will Become The Home of the Portland Fire and Portland Thorns With New Focus On Women?s...
Portland’s WNBA expansion team, the Fire, and NWSL club, the Thorns, have signed a multi‑year media partnership with Gray Media’s KPDX (FOX 12 Plus). All Fire games will air on FOX 12 Plus with select simulcasts on FOX 12, while the Thorns continue their expanded...
What Live Sports Still Do Better Than Anything Else
Live sports remain the last true appointment viewing in an on‑demand world, delivering real‑time, unscripted emotional moments that cannot be paused or replayed. Over the past decade, cloud production, remote workflows and hyper‑personalized streams have broadened access and lowered costs....
Operational Discipline in Streaming Is Now Non-Negotiable
Streaming operators are moving from growth‑focused strategies to strict cost discipline as subscriber acquisition slows and infrastructure expenses rise. Igor Oreper argues that profitability now depends on tightly controlled workflows, AI‑driven automation, and smarter cloud‑native architectures. He highlights concrete levers...
Planning Beyond the C-Band Auction: How IP Distribution Is Shaping What Comes Next
The FCC is set to reclaim at least 100 MHz of Upper C‑band spectrum, further shrinking the bandwidth available for satellite video delivery. Broadcasters are accelerating migration to managed IP distribution platforms that offer SLA‑backed performance, flexibility, and cost efficiencies. Leading...
Designing the Shift to Software-Based Media Production
The broadcast industry is shifting from hardware‑centric production to software‑based Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) architectures. In September 2025, AMWA and the EBU launched the JT‑DMF task force and the open‑source Media eXchange Layer (MXL) to define standards for containerised media processing...
Silverpush and Epitaph Release Attention Study with Lumen Research to Prove Performance of YouTube and Context
Silverpush and agency Epitaph released the first attention study for YouTube ads, partnering with Lumen Research. Analyzing over 60 million impressions across more than 30 campaigns, the study found contextual video ads delivered via Silverpush generated 37% higher attention per mille,...
Fuse Media and Complex Introduce Complex TV
Fuse Media has teamed with youth‑culture leader Complex to launch Complex TV, a free‑ad‑supported streaming (FAST) channel debuting on April 1, 2026. The service will roll out on Amazon Prime, Plex, Roku, Samsung TV Plus, TCL TV+, TiVo, Vizio and Xumo, blending Fuse’s proven monetization engine with...
Sneak Preview: Finder?s Feat: Optimizing Search & Discovery With Metadata & Machine Learning at Streaming Media Connect
At Streaming Media Connect, a panel titled “Finder’s Feat: Optimizing Search & Discovery With Metadata & Machine Learning” will examine how structured metadata and AI‑driven tools transform content discovery into a revenue engine. Panelists include Tom Gennari (Fabric), Jamie Mackinlay...
From Probabilistic to Proven: The Deterministic Turn in Audience Data Strategy
TV advertising is shifting from probabilistic to deterministic audience data. Recent studies show IP‑based identity links to the correct household only 13% of the time, undermining reach and measurement. Deterministic signals such as authenticated ISP or publisher subscriber data can...
When Sports Piracy Goes Industrial: Building a Coordinated Defense
Industrial‑scale sports piracy now generates billions in lost revenue, with 24% of live‑sports views in 2024 coming from illegal streams. Rights holders such as LaLiga, the NFL and the Premier League face a 142% surge in piracy incidents, prompting a...
Sneak Preview: Leveraging AI for Contextual CTV Advertising at Streaming Media Connect
At Streaming Media Connect, a panel titled “All About Context: Leveraging AI for Contextual CTV Advertising” will explore how artificial intelligence can power real‑time, content‑aware ad placements across connected‑TV platforms. Moderated by SVTA expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya, the discussion features leaders...
Pause Before You Chase the Next CTV Ad Format
Interactive CTV formats are finally scaling, and pause ads are emerging as the most viable entry point. Research from Magna and DirecTV shows 92 % of viewers stay paused for over 30 seconds, delivering unprecedented dwell time. Yet advertisers still treat pause...
Sneak Preview: Peak Performance: Handling Traffic Spikes for Global Live Sports Streams
On February 25, Matt Stagg will moderate a Streaming Media Connect panel titled “Peak Performance: Handling Traffic Spikes for Global Live Sports Streams.” The discussion brings together senior engineers from TATA Communications, BT Group, and DAZN to dissect how leading...
Sneak Preview: Forging FAST?s Middle Mile: Building Live Linear Streaming Infrastructure
On February 24, a Streaming Media Connect panel titled “Forging FAST’s Middle Mile: Building Live Linear Streaming Infrastructure” will be moderated by Reality Software’s Nadine Krefetz. The discussion will focus on how ingest, encoding, packaging, and routing—collectively the middle mile—determine the...
Avanci Video Signs First Licensee and Publishes Rates
Avanci Video announced its first licensee and released royalty rates, marking the first commercial uptake of its patent‑pool platform launched in October 2023. The pool now aggregates over 40 licensors covering five video‑technology standards, including AV1, HEVC, VVC, VP9 and...