AI is beginning to remove one of the media industry’s biggest historical constraints: limited execution capacity.
For decades, operational friction shaped streaming economics across production, localization, metadata, packaging, marketing, and distribution. AI is now compressing those workflows simultaneously, allowing media companies to generate, version, localize, merchandise, and distribute content at significantly larger scale and speed.
That shift is creating what amounts to “execution abundance.”
As output volume expands, workflow infrastructure and operational coordination become increasingly important competitive differentiators.
IAB: U.S. video ad buys expected to exceed $81 billion in 2026
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Amagi Launches ‘In-Content Ads’ to Attract More CTV Advertisers
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DAZN’s ViewLift Bet Is A Play To Control Local TV’s Post-RSN Future
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Roku CEO: Ad-Free Howdy SVOD Doing ‘Extremely Well’
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How Infinite Execution Is Reshaping the Economics of Media
AI is beginning to remove one of the media industry’s biggest historical constraints: limited execution capacity.
For decades, operational friction shaped streaming economics across production, localization, metadata, packaging, marketing, and distribution. AI is now compressing those workflows simultaneously, allowing media companies to generate, version, localize, merchandise, and distribute content at significantly larger scale and speed.
That shift is creating what amounts to “execution abundance.”
As output volume expands, workflow infrastructure and operational coordination become increasingly important competitive differentiators.
The Take
The biggest impact of AI on media may not be content generation. It may be the collapse of execution constraints across the entire streaming stack.
As content and asset creation become cheaper and more abundant, leverage shifts toward companies that control discovery, distribution, workflow infrastructure, and audience relationships.
The future of streaming may center less on content scale and more on which companies can operationalize infinite execution fastest.
Read the Full Analysis: The Streaming Wars
IAB: U.S. video ad buys expected to exceed $81 billion in 2026
U.S. digital video advertising is expected to surpass $80 billion this year, doubling in size from five years ago as marketers and ad buyers continue to shift money away from traditional TV campaigns into streaming, social and online video, according to a report released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) this week.
The report projects digital video ad spending will reach nearly $82 billion this year, up 11 percent from the near $74 billion earned last year. The growth rate is nearly 20 percent faster than the overall ad market, IAB noted, though it reflects a slower pace of spending than the post-pandemic acceleration from just a few years ago.
Digital video is expected to account for 61 percent of total U.S. TV and video ad spending this year, IAB said, marking the first time that digital video represents more than 60 percent of the market. The figure is up from 58 percent last year and 38 percent in 2021.
The continued shift comes despite a year when large cyclical event like the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and the midterm elections would typically support linear television spending. But the migration of those events to streaming platforms, including through programmatic ad opportunities, is helping digital video gain share even in a cycle that has historically favored traditional TV, IAB noted.
Social video is expected to remain the largest digital video category after surpassing connected TV in 2025. The report projects social video ad spending will reach $31.9 billion in 2026, compared with $29.3 billion for online video and $20.7 billion for connected TV. Social video’s growth is being fueled by AI-powered personalization, creative optimization, measurement tools and the expansion of the creator economy, the report said.
Connected TV (CTV) continues to grow as well, supported by live sports, professionally produced entertainment and stronger evidence that the channel can deliver measurable business outcomes. The adoption of CTV ad buys is also being helped by greater investment from smaller advertisers, with the share of small spenders investing in CTV rising from 60 percent in 2024 to 85 percent in 2026, IAB affirmed.
Read the Full Story: TheDesk.net
Amagi Launches ‘In-Content Ads’ to Attract More CTV Advertisers
Amagi has launched In-Content Ads, a new offering in its Ads Plus marketplace designed to provide ad placements separate from traditional ad pods using programmatic selling.
In-Content Ads is now available across hundreds of streaming channels, including premium news, sports and entertainment content.
Amagi In-Content Ads uses the company’s Thunderstorm server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and dynamic ad-stitching platform, which has been deployed across premium streaming environments for more than a year. This latest expansion marks the next phase of the offering, designed specifically to streamline programmatic access for advertisers via Amagi Ads Plus.
In-Content Ads connects sponsors to unique ad formats stitched directly into linear video content in real time. This alignment can significantly boost overall campaign results, the company said, while the breadth of Amagi’s technology footprint enables seamless activation across the streaming ecosystem.
Available ad formats at launch include overlays, squeezebacks and picture-in-picture (PIP) ads, high-impact formats that can provide advertisers with powerful options to boost performance in tandem with existing midroll campaigns, Amagi said. Content owners and streaming platforms can benefit by growing ad revenue without increasing pod length or interrupting the viewer experience, it said.
“Today’s dynamic CTV advertising marketplace demands innovation that delivers results at scale,” said Srinivasan KA, co-founder and president, global business at Amagi. “By building upon our proven platform technology and ecosystem connections, our new In-Content Ads Marketplace enables advertisers and content owners to unlock more value from streaming audiences while preserving the viewer experience.”
Read the Full Story: TVTechnology
DAZN’s ViewLift Bet Is A Play To Control Local TV’s Post-RSN Future
For the better part of two years, the unraveling of the regional sports network model has forced local rights holders across Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League into an improvised, often inelegant patchwork of distribution solutions. What was once a highly efficient — if overbuilt — system of bundled carriage fees has given way to a fragmented landscape defined by experimentation, short-termism, and uneven economics.
Into that vacuum steps DAZN, whose $100 million acquisition of ViewLift may represent the first credible effort to reassemble something resembling the RSN model — albeit in digital form.
The current moment is best understood as a transition defined by trade-offs. In the wake of the collapse of Main Street Sports, teams have been forced to choose between reach and revenue, rarely achieving both at once. Some have leaned into an over-the-air reset, striking partnerships with local broadcast stations to regain mass distribution in markets like Phoenix, Utah, and Las Vegas. That approach has restored visibility and, in some cases, rekindled casual fan engagement. But it has also stripped away the high-margin affiliate fees that once made RSNs such a powerful economic engine.
Others have pursued direct-to-consumer streaming, launching standalone services that offer control and a direct billing relationship with fans. Many of these efforts — often powered behind the scenes by firms like ViewLift — have proven technically sound but commercially uneven. Subscription uptake has been constrained by pricing friction, limited marketing scale, and the simple reality that local sports, on their own, are a narrower value proposition than the bloated but effective cable bundle they are replacing.
Post-RSN Reality: No Model Delivers Both Reach And Revenue
Still others have attempted to split the difference, stitching together hybrid models that combine broadcast reach, streaming access, and remnants of traditional pay-TV distribution. These solutions are rational, even necessary, but they are also inherently complex. They require teams to operate as de facto media companies, managing multiple partners, platforms, and revenue streams with little historical precedent to guide them.
The result is a marketplace that feels less like a new equilibrium than a holding pattern. The core value proposition of the RSN era — ubiquitous distribution, predictable recurring revenue, and operational simplicity — has yet to be fully replicated.
That is what makes DAZN’s move strategically distinct. On its surface, the acquisition of ViewLift is a straightforward technology play, giving DAZN access to a platform already embedded across teams and RSN-adjacent services in the United States. But the deeper significance lies in how it changes DAZN’s role. The company is no longer simply a rights buyer or a global streaming outlet. It is positioning itself as a full-stack provider capable of handling the entire lifecycle of local sports distribution.
Read the Full Story: TVREV
Roku CEO: Ad-Free Howdy SVOD Doing ‘Extremely Well’
Roku CEO Anthony Wood said the connected TV player sees a very large potential market segment for its low-cost $2.99 per month ad-free Howdy SVOD service, which is looking to be more attractive than some onlookers may have initially expected.
Wood shared comments around Howdy last week during Roku’s first quarter 2026 earnings call and on the heels of Antenna releasing estimates that Howdy had surpassed 1 million subscribers in just eight months since its August launch.
Analysts on the call questioned Roku leaders about potential for the service while noting the Antenna data and expressing the view that it’s clear Howdy is much bigger than most Wall Street analysts had anticipated.
While Wood declined to confirm Antenna’s subscriber estimates for Howdy, he did say the SVOD is “doing extremely well.”
It’s not as large as The Roku Channel – which is Roku’s main owned-and-operated streaming service that’s the No. 2 app on the company’s platform, and as Wood acknowledged, the opposite of Howdy in that its primarily linear streaming and a fully free ad-supported model.
As we’ve written before, Howdy is a somewhat unique offering and proposition in the broader market. With Howdy, Wood said Roku is “going after a segment of the market that’s not currently served” in the sense of an inexpensive, ad-free and on-demand entertainment streaming service.
Read the Full Story: StreamTV Insider
Netflix Reportedly Set to Live-Stream NFL Season Opener From Australia on Sept. 10
Netflix is reportedly adding to its exclusive NFL slate of games on Christmas Day with the 2026 season opening game between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams on Sept. 10 from Melbourne, Australia.
Netflix and the NFL have not disclosed any details. The news was first reported by the New York Times’ The Athletic, citing sources familiar with the situation.
Last year’s NFL season opener (Sept. 4, 2025) between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles was live-streamed on NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform.
In addition to Netflix, the NFL has live-streamed games on YouTube, while Prime Video holds exclusive rights to NFL Thursday Night Football.
Netflix continues with its live sports strategy selecting one-off games and events across Major League Baseball, the NFL, tennis, boxing, mixed martial arts, women’s soccer, and free climbing.
The platform, with 325 million paid subscribers worldwide, live-streamed the MLB season-opening game between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants, followed by this summer’s Home Run Derby on July 14 and the “MLB at Field of Dreams” game on Aug. 13. Netflix will live-stream the Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031.
Read the Full Story: Media Play News
Netflix Subscribers Retained by Shoulder NFL Content
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Our Streaming Economics model calculates that major streamers lost $6.3 billion in global revenue to canceled subscriptions in 2025. Live sports can help platforms mitigate churn.
Key Findings
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Take Netflix’s recent investments in live NFL games. While live games command massive, immediate viewership spikes, attention rapidly falls off once the game is over. To prevent fans from canceling, Netflix has built a retention infrastructure of premium shoulder programming—such as Quarterback, Receiver, and America’s Sweethearts.
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The retention data proves the strategy works. We calculate that Netflix’s NFL shoulder content prevents approximately 500,000 global subscribers from churning every single quarter.
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This directly translates to the bottom line. By keeping these acquired sports fans engaged year-round, these shoulder titles alone have generated over $100 million in global streaming revenue for Netflix, proving that the true value of expensive sports rights can be extended through the surrounding ecosystem.
In Case You Missed It
- Hollywood Demands Discipline From Everyone Except Executives. The Streaming Wars
- Ask Skip: Why Is Advertising Still Selling Certainty?. The Streaming Wars
- Disney+ Is Becoming the Front Door to Disney. The Streaming Wars
- The Front Door is Now Worth More Than the House. The Streaming Wars
- Paramount’s Path to 57% Reach Signals a Shift From Streaming Services to Full-Scale Ecosystems. The Streaming Wars
- DAZN’s NBA Rights Push Is a Bet on Owning the Next Phase of Local Sports Distribution. The Streaming Wars
- Netflix Turns Mobile Into a Discovery Engine With TikTok-Style Clips Feed. The Streaming Wars
- Basics Of Streaming: Blockchain And Streaming. The Streaming Wars
- Roku’s $1 Billion Platform Business Starts to Look Structurally Durable. The Streaming Wars
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