FAST seems to be everywhere these days, but that’s only because the free, ad-supported medium remains one of the most fascinating and vibrant corners of streaming.
And it’s also why our One Touch Intelligence researchers and analysts keep tracking its channel lineups, ad loads, genre strategies, language mix, ad repetition, and monetization trends. In our fourth installment of the “FAST & Curious” DEEPDive series, the explosive channel proliferation and “wild west” chaos that defined the category just a few years ago has given way to something quieter but arguably more powerful. In case you haven’t noticed, FAST is growing up.
A year ago, we described FAST’s trajectory as a “video drift,” a slow-motion convergence with traditional linear TV blurring the lines between free channels, paid AVODs, and old-fashioned cable TV.
Twelve months later, the drift has decelerated from a street takeover to a steady cruise.
Consumers increasingly don’t care whether a channel is technically FAST, AVOD-adjacent, cable-like, app-based, embedded in a smart TV UI, buried in a free tier, or delivered through some hybrid acronym only this industry could love. They just want to find something easily and watch it.
A radical concept for sure.
The channel counts show that FAST is still expanding, but not like the old days. Our OTI StreamTRAK® video intelligence service now counts 2,027 distinct FAST channels across 15 major U.S. providers, up just 6% from 1,911 in the previous installment.
While channels come and go monthly, leading to quite a bit of short-term volatility on our counts, that single-digit growth rate suggests that the channel land grab is slowing. Several major providers reduced channel counts over the last year, including Paramount Skydance’s Pluto TV and Philo Free, which each dropped 10 channels, while EchoStar’s Sling Freestream shed 43. Meanwhile, others kept pumping the gas: Vizio WatchFree surged 39% to 481 channels, Prime Live TV grew 31% to 880 by leaning heavily into local news, and MyFree DirecTV jumped 39% as DirecTV doubled down on free streaming as a customer-retention play. Short-term volatility or not, the FAST market seems to be maturing over time.
Of course, modest top-line growth masks a much more dynamic story underneath. FAST’s 2,027 distinct channels are controlled by a surprisingly concentrated group of owners, led by Paramount Global with 149 channels, followed by Warner Bros. Discovery with 77, FilmRise with 62, Tegna with 56, and A+E Global Media with 56.
But the more interesting story may be local news. Tegna, Gray Television, Hearst, and Sinclair collectively operate more than 150 FAST channels, almost entirely local news, turning FAST into a quiet but increasingly important distribution pipeline for local journalism. Not bad for a category many consumers still couldn’t define if you offered them a free remote.
The exclusivity data also complicates the idea that FAST has become commoditized. While many of the same recognizable networks appear across major platforms, 41.4% of all FAST channels (840 out of 2,027) exist on only one provider.
Only 108 channels appear on 10 or more platforms, including widely distributed names such as LoveNature, Court TV, NBC News Now, and Scripps News. In other words, FAST is simultaneously becoming more standardized in user experience and more differentiated in inventory. That’s a neat trick, and one that matters for platforms trying to make their free tiers feel less like generic channel dumps and more like intentional, programmed environments.
Genre strategy is where those platform differences become even clearer.
Unscripted content still dominates the FAST universe, but providers increasingly lean into it quite differently. For example, Philo Free devotes 56% of its lineup to unscripted programming, Local Now is 58% local news, MyFree DirecTV is 20% sports - more than double the 10% industry average - and Samsung TV Plus carries 56 music channels, or about 10% of its lineup. In other words, FAST may look similar from a distance, but under the hood, the engines are tuned very differently.
The language story is just as revealing.
Not surprisingly, U.S.-based FAST aggregators remain overwhelmingly English-language focused, with English accounting for 82% of the channels we track. But the remaining 18% points to a multilingual layer that varies dramatically by platform. Spanish dominates the non-English landscape with 260 channels, or 12.8% of the total, while Sling Freestream remains the most linguistically diverse general-purpose FAST provider, with 18.3% non-English content spanning more than 18 languages. In many ways, Sling’s FAST offering looks like Dish Network’s international programming legacy translated into the free-streaming era.
But the universal language is still money, and this year’s ad data shows FAST becoming far more disciplined.
In Q1 2022, ad minutes per hour ranged from 3.5 to 12.4 minutes. By early 2026, that spread had tightened to between 11.1 and 12.9 minutes. Ad breaks have also clustered into a narrow 4.5-to-5.1 range, suggesting that roughly five breaks per hour is becoming a de facto FAST industry standard. Pluto TV leads on ad minutes at 12.9 per hour and sits closest to the traditional linear TV ad experience, while The Roku Channel has the lightest FAST ad load at 11.1 minutes and 4.6 breaks per hour, likely a strategic choice tied to Roku’s broader platform economics.
Ad repetition — once one of FAST’s most annoying flaws — is also improving. Across nine providers from June 2025 through May 2026, 77.5% of detected ads were unique, while 22.5% were repeats. The Roku Channel led with 87.4% unique ads, followed by Peacock at 83.7% and Prime Video at 79.4%. Xumo Play came in lower at 66.8%, but the broader direction is unmistakable: FAST ad loads are becoming more consistent, and ad experiences are becoming less repetitive. That matters because nothing makes “free” feel expensive faster than seeing the same spot six times in an hour.
The paid-ad mix tells the maturation story even more directly.
Peacock leads at roughly 90% paid ads with only 4% unfilled, while Pluto TV runs at about 77% paid with a remarkable 2.3% unfilled rate. That’s essentially zero waste. But not every platform is monetizing FAST the same way. On The Roku Channel, only about 7% of ads are paid and roughly 90% are promotional, suggesting Roku views FAST less as a direct ad-revenue maximizer and more as a viewer-acquisition funnel across its broader ecosystem. LG, meanwhile, still shows how difficult monetization can be even for a major Smart TV player, with roughly 50% unfilled ad time despite owning the screen.
Interactive and shoppable ads remain one of FAST’s more promising innovation lanes, but the market may be on pause before the next wave. Interactive ads rose from near-zero in early 2023 to roughly 7% of total FAST ad count by late 2025, but the share has stabilized over the last few months. For now, most FAST interactivity still means QR-code-based ads rather than the more sophisticated click-to-buy formats that AVOD platforms like Prime Video can support. That may cap growth for a while, although retailers, OEMs, and platform owners clearly have every incentive to keep pushing.
Meanwhile, the advertiser mix increasingly looks like premium video. Our audits suggest FAST is now dominated by five major categories: insurance, automotive, pharma, quick-service restaurants, and sports betting. GMC was the largest advertiser on Samsung TV Plus at 2.2% of detected ads, while Kisqali followed at 2.11%. FanDuel led on Tubi, consistent with Fox’s sports-betting synergies. Insurance brands including Progressive, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, and State Farm appeared in the top 10 across virtually every platform, suggesting major advertisers increasingly treat FAST as a must-buy component of broader video plans.
Among the three major smart TV OEMs, Samsung TV Plus appears to have the broadest advertiser depth, with a category mix spanning auto, pharma, insurance, tech, and CPG, plus 8,443 detected ads. Vizio WatchFree has the most obvious momentum story, with channel growth tied to Walmart’s commerce-forward ownership strategy. LG Channels, however, still lags on fill rate, with only 2,960 detected ads and 37% unfilled. Owning the screen helps, but apparently it does not automatically fill the ad pod.
The trendlines leave FAST in a much more mature place than it occupied three or four years ago.
Channel growth has slowed to single digits. Ad loads have standardized. Paid fill has improved. Big brands are buying. Local news has flooded the ecosystem. Sling Freestream has effectively turned FAST into an international programming service across 17 languages. And the consumer-facing distinction between FAST, AVOD, linear streaming, and cable-like channels keeps getting harder to explain without sounding like someone trapped inside an industry conference panel.
FAST has essentially evolved from a streaming category (and a fluid one at that) into a programming layer inside smart TVs, streaming apps, free tiers, and platform ecosystems. When consumers can’t tell the difference between a FAST channel and linear TV, and advertisers buy FAST inventory as part of larger 360-degree ad deals, the label itself starts to evaporate. FAST has become Linear TV 2.0. And if the name eventually disappears into the broader streaming matrix, that may just mean that FAST did exactly what it was destined to do: Fade into the background as an ancillary but vital part of the streaming ecosystem. The big question is how we define that ecosystem going forward. But that’s for another report…
(Click here to download a complimentary copy of our Fast & Curious 4 report).
Michael Grebb is Senior Vice President and Lead Analyst for One Touch Intelligence, which provides market intelligence and industry analysis services for leading companies in the media and telecommunications space.
The One Touch Intelligence STREAMTRAK series is a complimentary service offering industry professionals insights and context around developments in the digital media sphere.
Industry Voices are opinion columns written by outside contributors — often industry experts or analysts — who are invited to the conversation by StreamTV Insider staff. They do not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.