The connected TV (CTV) landscape varies around the world from region to region, and different issues come up on different timelines. As we approach the end of 2024, I’ve taken some time to reflect on a few trends I expect we may see next year in the U.K. and Europe. Without further ado, here are seven CTV trends to watch for:
Ad-supported CTV will grow
The first prediction is the simplest and perhaps the most obvious: FAST and AVOD viewership will continue to increase. Over the past few years, FAST and AVOD viewership has ticked up, and there’s no reason to think that this won’t continue in 2025, as content providers continue to see FAST/AVOD as a productive avenue, and advertisers continue to enjoy reaping the benefits. Legacy content providers are taking different approaches to this, as we can see in the contrast between Amazon and Netflix, for example. Netflix now offers an ad-supported tier that subscribers can opt in to, while Amazon turned on ads for all Prime subscribers, allowing them to opt out by paying a premium. Regardless of approach, FAST and AVOD are excellent business models for content providers and their growth will continue into next year and beyond. However…
Not all FAST/AVOD providers will be successful
The number of FAST channels continues to proliferate every year, with new channels starting up all the time. And yet, a relatively small percentage of these account for the majority of viewership. Figures vary from place to place but the old 80/20 rule applies here in a broad sense: roughly 80% of the FAST viewership is happening on about 20% of the FAST channels. This proliferation of FAST channels is happening primarily in niche areas, where new channels with highly specific programming are popping up. This expansion of the channel lineup is creating a situation where viewers are finding themselves without enough time to explore all of the niche content, so they end up concentrating their viewing time with a few preferred channels. Providers like Tubi — which is owned by the American broadcasting company Fox, and features content libraries from Warner/Discovery — are poised to be among the more successful ad supported apps in the U.K. On the other hand, niche content providers that rely on licensing their content to build FAST channels may find they struggle to build a sustainable audience base that reaches the masses, despite having hardcore users. Many of the niche FAST providers will participate in bundled offerings from CTV OEMs and other OS provider, but then it becomes a sea of FAST channels (akin to small cable networks in the linear TV era).
Some traditionally large SVOD players may jump into the FAST game for the first time
As one example, Apple may decide that 2025 is the year they get into the FAST game and expand on their existing Apple TV+ offering (which is currently a SVOD/TVOD model). Google recently started offering an advanced FAST offering in the U.S. and while they still haven’t done that in the U.K., it’s only a matter of time until they do.Apple has a pretty good footprint already with both their standalone Apple TV devices and the Apple TV app in the iOS and Mac OS environments, meaning that it wouldn’t be very hard for them to turn on a FAST offering inside that ecosystem. Apple may want to wait and see and cherry pick the winners that we alluded to earlier, rather than just buying a package of the same FAST channels that everyone else has. Thinking in this way, Netflix also has a large base of SVOD and a growing base of AVOD users, so why couldn’t Netflix start to offer FAST channels?
Live sports come to FAST
Netflix recently carried a worldwide live streaming broadcast of the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul boxing match that it says reached upwards of 60 million concurrent streams worldwide. In the U.S., Netflix is going to enter into live sports broadcasting this year, when they carry two live NFL games on Christmas Day. Amazon has been broadcasting Thursday night NFL games for a couple of years now and is now airing certain Champions League football in the U.K. (following their NFL playbook). Apple TV has its contract with MLS and Major League Baseball for Friday night games in the U.S., will they follow the Amazon model? All of these providers want users to get into their app and spend as much time there as possible. FAST could be one way to do that, and live sports is very compatible with the FAST model (albeit expensive, which plays in the hands of a few global companies). While these live sports examples I listed are primarily from and for the U.S., we could certainly see big announcements from streaming providers of FAST-based live sport offerings in the U.K. and Europe in the next year.
SVODs will shift their revenue focus
Announcements from SVOD leaders like Netflix point to a desire by the SVOD providers to reduce the number of subscribers who are sharing passwords. These announcements indicate that they want to either capture some of those individuals as new subscribers or bring them into a FAST/AVOD environment. There is plenty of trend data out there that shows people are spending less money on SVOD overall, but the flip side of this is that (as I mentioned above) there are now more AVOD/FAST options available. These traditional SVOD providers like Netflix are looking to bolster their base of subscription revenue with ad revenue. Recent announcements from providers like Netflix and the American CTV provider Roku indicate that they will both change from reporting streaming data in terms of number of households to number of hours streamed. This reflects a shift in focus from the traditional revenue model (where most content was consumed by a household subscription), to a newer and more complex revenue model that includes both subscription and ad-supported delivery models, which can be monetized on a more granular level.
Retail media will come into clearer focus in Europe
Everyone has different interpretations of the concept of retail media, even the retailers themselves. Generally speaking, retail media is about allowing the CTV to become a shoppable e-commerce platform while leveraging first-party retail data. This will start to enhance how viewers interact with their CTV content and advertising, because historically TV ads were not clickable. Fundamentally, I believe that the definition of retail media will begin to become more tightly defined across the industry in 2025 as it relates to CTV, and a clearer retail media strategy will start to evolve. Numerous articles have appeared over the past several months that speak to the evolving nature of retail media for CTV in Europe. Over time, this evolution of retail media will create more shoppable and interactive ads in CTV.
Measurement will improve
Another prediction for retail media looks at it from the retailer side: third-party, cross-screen measurement should get better. The first step in this process is getting consent from users. In Europe, because of the GDPR, consent management platforms (CMPs) are now ubiquitous to manage consumers consent for allowing third-party tracking and ultimately the overlaying of custom data segments. As programmatic remains the predominant way to purchase CTV inventory, compliant measures like TCF 2.2 strings will provide and industry standard to privacy — and continue to allow off platform measurement through personal identifiers like IP address. As this continues to become the norm, there will be clear winners that are able to show attribution in a privacy first manner and ultimately unify performance across a fragmented ecosystem. For more information about TiVo’s CTV solutions, click here.
