We're an independent company. When we started, we didn't inherit a direct ad sales team. And so we decided not to build one. And we had a lot of conversations across the industry with advertisers, with agencies about the way that they were looking at CTV. And I think one of the big things that we heard is Philo hasn't released recent subscriber numbers. The most recent ones that we did release were 850,000 subscribers. And we've grown since then. And that is a great scale, but it is not when people think about buying TV. They're thinking about more than 100 million households in the U.S. And so we understood that advertisers were not going to be buying just on Philo, that they were going to be looking for their audiences on Philo, but also across the CTV ecosystem and more traditional linear. And so we wanted to make addressability as easy as possible. We kind of leaned into programmatic as a way to enable that.
So we're doing everything programmatically. We're passing through signals in the bitstream, like client-side device ID and IP address to enable advertisers to find their relevant audiences on and outside of Philo. And then to do that sort of holistic measurement across the media that they're buying on Philo and across the CTV and broader ecosystem.
Going into 2025, advertiser conversations around addressable TV are different than they have been in past years. Considered an "add-on" by many just a few years ago, addressable TV is now considered a "must-buy" among the majority of advertisers today. Sona Pehlivanian of New York Interconnect writes that this shift represents a new level of maturity in how the advertising industry views addressable and how it is an important milestone in bringing TV advertising in line with shifts in consumer viewing behaviors.
27 Mar 2025
With 55-60% of advertising dollars flowing to Amazon, Meta, and Google, streaming services need to be strategic and deliberate in how they differentiate their offerings not just to audiences but to the brands that support them. In this clip from Streaming Media Connect, ESHAP's Evan Shapiro and Atmosphere TV's Lana LoRusso discuss the challenges to stay ahead of the market in the competition for ad dollars and the creative way Atmosphere TV positions its sound-optional venue-based platform to attract ad agencies.
09 Feb 2024
As YouTube Connected TV grows, and arguably emerges as the world's predominant channel, is the model for TV monetization changing as a result? ESHAP's Evan Shapiro and Common Sense Networks' Eric Berger discuss YouTube's impact on the CTV landscape in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
04 Dec 2023
Randy Bapst of AiBUY sits down with Tim Siglin to discuss AI-based OTT overlay transitions in this interview from Streaming Media East 2023.
12 Jun 2023
As ad-driven monetization increasingly takes center stage in the OTT and premium content worlds today, where is the ad spend growing fastest, and how is the underlying tech evolving? Quickplay's Chris Drake and Altman Solon's Jonathan Hurd discuss current and emerging trends in ad-based streaming content monetization--particularly in the sports world--in this clip from a panel at Streaming Media West 2022.
13 Feb 2023
Estrella Media's Christina Chung and FOX's B.J. Elias discuss the challenges of moving from broadcast to FAST (free, ad-supported streaming TV) and launching and growing streaming services in this talk from Streaming Media West 2022.
06 Feb 2023
What are some of the biggest adtech challenges for live streaming at scale? Jarred Wilichinsky of Paramount talks about the ways his team works to mitigate technical issues, such as minimizing latency, load testing, and correcting audio levels, along with ensuring that the ads themselves meet acceptable legal standards and practices.
18 Oct 2022
How does better data impact the way that users react to ad-supported streaming tiers? Will having the impression of more options for personalized ad preferences lead to more acceptance of ad-supported streaming? Three industry experts discuss these questions and the future of heavily data-supported advertising and its impact on both the streaming industry and the web as a whole.
05 Oct 2022
With the rise of ad-supported streaming, platforms such as Disney+ must create new workflow models that account for age-based regulatory protections in different regions while also finding new ways to fulfill the user data desired by advertisers.
29 Aug 2022
On the surface, low render rates would seem to represent an annoying illustration of opportunity cost—the ads (and therefore revenue) that could have been delivered but weren't, typically because a user stops watching in the middle of the stream. However, there are more subtle and meaningful implications of low render rates that publishers need to be aware of.
15 Jun 2022
In order for streaming services to offer a truly "real TV" experience, they need to match content, ads, and devices, as well as support rapid spikes in traffic, maintain high quality of experience, and more. In short, it all comes down to the manifest manipulator.
15 Jun 2022
Advertisers are advised to use a combination of tactics to achieve their goals: Reach more potential buyers with traditional data-driven TV and then use addressable advertising as a tactic to reach those more likely to buy sooner.
10 Jun 2022
Reimagining how the industry buys, sells, and measures TV (and digital) is easier said than done, but there are more than a few places to start for a simple refresh on how to think about TV ad commitments this year.
21 Apr 2022
Advertisers must work with publishers and technologies to make sure viewers receive the ads they want, every single time.
08 Mar 2022
Innovid CTO & Co-Founder Tal Chalozin discusses future directions for connected TV moving beyond the linear TV paradigm into enhanced, direct ecommerce opportunities in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2022.
22 Feb 2022