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First there was the Golden Age of TV. Then there was Peak TV. Now … all hell is breaking loose.
“We’re amid a linear to streaming transition, and it’s being accelerated by a pending content drought from the Hollywood strikes,” Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, told Adweek. “Just like many of us are experiencing hybrid work, we are also experiencing hybrid television.”
Hybrid TV is leaving consumers confused and increasingly penny-pinched as networks and streamers fight for ad dollars and attention through rebrands, bundles, ad tiers and content cross-pollination.
As an example of the disruption, Max, which dropped HBO from its name last year, is now streaming live news from CNN; Disney, which is fast-tracking its Hulu and Disney+ merger, is bringing its streaming-only series Only Murders in the Building to ABC; and, most confusingly, Paramount has rebranded Showtime’s linear channel as Paramount+ With Showtime, but it won’t include all the Paramount+ offerings.
“It’s kind of this messy middle right now,” Proulx said.
Emphasis on messy.
Adweek recently caught up with more than two dozen analysts, TV executives and ad sales insiders to see where the industry was headed in 2024. Within the wide-ranging responses, several themes rose to the top:
The battle for ad dollars
Linear TV fell below 50% of viewing for the first time in 2023, and according to Insider Intelligence, retail media spend will soon pass traditional TV and double it by 2027.
So the new fight for video dollars is all digital.
“The next phase of the streaming war is embarking on the battle for ad revenue and profitability,” Proulx said.
SVOD is already a thing of the past. Now, streamers blatantly raise ad-free prices to push consumers to ad-supported plans and CTV offerings as they look to ramp up revenue per user.
“The proliferation of ad-supported streaming such as AVOD and FAST channels has shaken up the streaming landscape,” Dina Roman, senior vice president of global ad sales at Fubo, said.
