Streaming Industry Glossary

Streaming services and business models

OTT (over-the-top): Video delivered over the public internet, typically through an app or website, outside a traditional managed pay-TV distribution network.

CTV (connected TV): A television connected to the internet, either directly or through a streaming device, game console, or set-top box. In advertising, CTV generally refers to video ads viewed on that television screen.

Smart TV: A television with an operating system and built-in internet-connected apps.

Streaming device: Hardware that connects a television to internet video services, including a streaming stick, box, or game console.

TV operating system (TV OS): The software layer that manages a connected television's interface, apps, discovery, and, in some cases, advertising.

O&O (owned and operated): A service, channel, or inventory owned and operated by the company selling or distributing it.

AVOD (advertising video on demand): On-demand video that earns revenue primarily from advertising. The viewer may or may not need an account.

SVOD (subscription video on demand): On-demand access to a catalog in exchange for a recurring subscription fee. A subscription service may also carry ads.

TVOD (transactional video on demand): A movie or program rented or purchased through an individual transaction.

PVOD (premium video on demand): Transactional access to a newly released or otherwise premium title, often at a higher price than a standard rental.

EST (electronic sell-through): A digital purchase that provides ongoing access under the retailer's license terms. It does not necessarily transfer copyright ownership or guarantee perpetual platform access.

FAST (free ad-supported streaming television): A free, advertising-supported streaming offering organized around linear channels. Many FAST services also offer on-demand viewing.

FAST channel: A programmed, linear-style channel distributed through an internet-connected service, usually free to the viewer and supported by advertising. It can include scheduled, live, or dynamically assembled programming.

Linear streaming channel: A continuous scheduled stream watched at the time it airs, as distinct from a viewer selecting an individual on-demand title.

vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor): An internet-delivered subscription service offering a bundle of live television channels, often alongside on-demand programming.

Hybrid monetization: A service using more than one revenue model, such as subscriptions with advertising, free channels, rentals, and purchases.

Ad tier: A subscription plan that includes advertising, often priced differently from an ad-free plan.

Bundle: Two or more services or benefits offered together under a single commercial proposition, whether through one bill, a discount, or a distribution partnership.

Aggregation: Bringing content or services from multiple providers into one interface, subscription offer, search experience, or distribution platform.

Direct to consumer (DTC): Distribution by a rights holder or brand directly to viewers through its own service or customer relationship.

Windowing: The sequence and timing of a title's availability across theaters, transactions, subscriptions, free streaming, broadcast, or other outlets.

Carriage agreement: A commercial agreement under which a distributor carries a channel or service.

Revenue share: An arrangement that divides qualifying revenue between parties according to agreed terms.

Minimum guarantee (MG): A contracted minimum payment, often against future revenue under a content license or distribution agreement.

Content, metadata, and discovery

Metadata: Structured information describing a title, episode, channel, event, asset, rights, or availability, used to manage, display, find, and measure content.

Descriptive metadata: Details such as title, synopsis, genre, cast, language, team, or event that help identify and present content.

Technical metadata: Details about a media asset, such as codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, audio configuration, or captions.

Rights metadata: Information about who may distribute or use content, where, when, on which platforms, and under what conditions.

Availability data: Information indicating when and where a title, channel, or event can be watched and under which access model.

Content identifier: A stable ID used to distinguish a work, version, episode, edit, asset, or event across systems.

EIDR (Entertainment Identifier Registry): A registry of persistent identifiers for audiovisual works and related versions and assets, supporting identification across organizations and workflows.

EPG (electronic program guide): Structured schedule and program information used to show what is airing, when, and on which channel. A guide may be updated as schedules change.

Channel lineup: The channels offered by a service and their ordering or presentation to viewers.

Content discovery: The ways viewers find relevant programming, including search, guides, recommendations, promotions, and editorial collections.

Recommendation engine: A system that selects or ranks content for a viewer using signals such as catalog data, context, preferences, and viewing behavior.

Personalization: Adapting content, interface, messaging, or advertising based on information available about a viewer or household.

Content graph: A structured representation of relationships among titles, people, genres, franchises, teams, events, and other entities to support discovery and analysis.

Asset: A media file or associated element, such as a video master, trailer, artwork, captions, or audio track.

Ingest: Receiving and validating media files and metadata into a distribution or asset-management workflow.

Digital supply chain: The processes and systems that prepare, package, deliver, publish, update, and track media and its metadata across partners.

Localization: Adapting content or its presentation for a market, including language, dubbing, captions, artwork, ratings, and cultural context.

Accessibility metadata: Information describing features such as captions, audio description, or other access services available for a title.

Closed captions: Timed text representing dialogue and relevant non-speech audio for viewers who need it.

Subtitles: Timed text representing spoken dialogue, often translated into another language; their scope can differ from captions.

Audio description: A narrated description of important visual information, generally inserted between dialogue.

Sports taxonomy: A structured set of categories and relationships for sports content, such as sport, league, competition, season, team, athlete, and event.

Event metadata: Information about a live event, such as participants, start time, status, venue, competition, and links to its broadcast or replay.

Schedule overrun: A program or live event continuing beyond its planned end time, requiring guide, distribution, or advertising updates.

Blackout: A restriction preventing a particular audience from receiving a program in a specified territory or circumstance, often due to rights agreements.

SCTE 224 (ESNI): An event scheduling and notification standard used to communicate events and policies, including distribution control such as regional blackouts.

SCTE 35: A family of signaling standards used to communicate insertion and event cues in video distribution workflows, including advertising opportunities. Implementations depend on the applicable part and delivery environment.

Advertising and commerce

Programmatic advertising: Automated buying and selling of ad opportunities using software, data, and agreed transaction rules.

DSP (demand-side platform): Technology advertisers and agencies use to evaluate and purchase digital ad opportunities.

SSP (supply-side platform): Technology publishers use to make inventory available to buyers and manage monetization.

Ad exchange: A marketplace or technical mechanism connecting available ad opportunities with potential buyers.

OpenRTB: An IAB Tech Lab protocol for communicating bid requests and responses in real-time bidding.

PMP (private marketplace): A programmatic transaction with access and terms limited to selected buyers.

Programmatic guaranteed: An automated deal in which buyer and seller agree in advance on inventory, pricing, and delivery commitments.

Direct-sold advertising: Inventory sold through a direct agreement between a seller and an advertiser or agency.

Ad inventory: Opportunities to show advertisements within content or an interface.

Ad pod: A group of one or more video advertisements presented during a break.

Pod bidding: Programmatic bidding that conveys information about an ad pod and its available positions, allowing buyers to evaluate opportunities within the break.

Ad load: The quantity or duration of advertising shown within a program or viewing session.

Fill rate: The proportion of eligible ad opportunities that receive an ad, using a clearly stated denominator and counting method.

eCPM (effective cost per mille): Revenue per 1,000 measured ad impressions, often used to compare monetization across deals or channels.

Frequency cap: A rule limiting how often an ad is shown to the same viewer, household, or device during a defined period, subject to available identity signals.

Reach: The number of distinct people, households, or devices exposed to a campaign, with the unit specified.

Incremental reach: The additional distinct audience reached by a campaign or channel beyond the audience reached elsewhere in a comparison plan.

Addressable advertising: Advertising selected or delivered to eligible audience segments, households, or devices using available signals and applicable privacy controls.

Contextual targeting: Selecting an ad opportunity based on the content or surrounding context rather than an individual's identity.

First-party data: Data collected by an organization through its direct relationship with users or customers, subject to applicable permissions and use restrictions.

Identity resolution: Connecting available identifiers and signals to estimate whether activity belongs to the same person, household, or device across contexts.

Data clean room: A controlled environment for matching or analyzing data from multiple parties under defined access, privacy, and output rules.

Retail media network (RMN): An advertising business built around a retailer's owned media, shopper relationships, and commerce data, sometimes extending campaigns to CTV inventory.

Shoppable TV: A viewing experience or ad format that enables a viewer to learn about or purchase a featured product through a television interface or connected device.

Interactive CTV ad: An ad that invites a viewer action, such as opening details, scanning a QR code, or choosing an option.

Pause ad: An advertisement shown when a viewer pauses playback, subject to the service's implementation.

SSAI (server-side ad insertion): Combining ads and video content upstream of the playback device so they arrive as a more continuous stream.

CSAI (client-side ad insertion): The app or player requests and inserts ads during playback on the viewer's device.

DAI (dynamic ad insertion): Selecting and placing ads at playback or stream assembly time; it can use server-side or client-side methods.

VAST (Video Ad Serving Template): An IAB Tech Lab specification that structures video ad responses and communicates how a player should handle them.

OM SDK (Open Measurement SDK): An IAB Tech Lab software standard that supports third-party ad measurement and verification across supported environments, including CTV.

app-ads.txt: A publisher-controlled file identifying companies authorized to sell or resell an app's advertising inventory.

sellers.json: A transparency file through which advertising systems identify the entities associated with seller IDs.

SupplyChain object (schain): Information passed in a programmatic bid request describing the parties involved in selling or reselling an impression.

Invalid traffic (IVT): Ad traffic that does not represent a legitimate human advertising opportunity under the measurement rules being applied.

Attribution: Assigning credit for a desired outcome, such as a visit or purchase, to advertising exposures using a defined method and window.

Incrementality: An estimate of the additional outcome caused by a campaign compared with what would likely have happened without it.

Delivery and viewing quality

ABR (adaptive bitrate streaming): Delivering alternative encodings of video so a player can switch quality levels as bandwidth and device conditions change.

HLS (HTTP Live Streaming): An HTTP-based media streaming protocol using playlists and media segments for live and on-demand playback.

MPEG-DASH: An adaptive streaming standard that describes media segments and alternative representations through a manifest.

CMAF (Common Media Application Format): A media packaging format that can help reuse encoded media across compatible streaming workflows.

Manifest: A file that tells a player which streams or segments are available and how to retrieve them.

Codec: A method or implementation for encoding and decoding audio or video. Examples include AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265, AV1, and AAC.

Transcoding: Converting an encoded media asset or stream into another encoding, resolution, bitrate, or format.

CDN (content delivery network): Distributed infrastructure that caches and delivers media closer to viewers.

Multi-CDN: Using more than one content delivery network to improve resilience, performance, or commercial flexibility.

Latency: The time between an event occurring or a stream being produced and the viewer seeing it.

Low-latency streaming: Techniques that reduce the delay between live capture and playback, with tradeoffs involving scale, reliability, and playback conditions.

QoE (quality of experience): The viewer's experienced playback quality, often evaluated through start time, interruptions, picture quality, and failures.

Rebuffering: Playback stopping temporarily while the player waits for more data.

DRM (digital rights management): Technologies that control access to protected digital content according to licensing rules.

Watermarking: Embedding information in audio or video so content or a distribution copy can later be identified, subject to the watermarking system used.

Live-to-VOD: Making a recording or edited version of a live program available for on-demand viewing after or during the event.

Audience, performance, and emerging formats

ACR (automatic content recognition): Technology that identifies media playing on a device by comparing audio or video signals with a reference library. Uses and data practices vary by implementation.

MAU / DAU (monthly / daily active users): Distinct users or accounts active within a month or day, according to a service's stated activity threshold.

Watch time: Total time viewers spend watching content during a defined period.

Completion rate: The share of qualifying starts or impressions that reach a specified end point, with the denominator defined.

Churn: Subscribers or customers leaving a service during a defined period; calculations differ between gross and net churn.

ARPU (average revenue per user): Revenue divided by the specified number of users or subscribers over a defined period.

CAC (customer acquisition cost): Sales and marketing spending divided by customers acquired, using a defined cost scope and period.

LTV (customer lifetime value): Estimated economic value of a customer relationship over its expected duration, based on an explicitly stated model.

Microdrama: A serialized scripted story told in very short episodes, often designed for mobile viewing and fast narrative progression. Business models and episode lengths vary.

Vertical video: Video composed primarily for a portrait-oriented screen, commonly with a 9:16 aspect ratio.

Short-form video: Video whose length is substantially shorter than conventional long-form programming; no single duration threshold is universal.

Creator economy: The businesses and commercial relationships around creators who produce content and build audiences across digital platforms.

AI-assisted localization: Use of AI tools in tasks such as transcription, translation, dubbing, or quality review, typically with human and rights oversight.

Synthetic media: Audio, images, or video generated or materially altered by AI systems.