A spate of recent earnings calls suggests major media companies like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are finally turning profits from their streaming businesses. As streaming has evolved, it has migrated through many consumer propositions. From pay TV add-on to ad-free subscription VOD to fully ad-supported streams, we’re now in an environment that blends many of these models in different ways depending on the genre of content being supported.
Throughout, many analysts have called for connected TV to be re-named to TV. I think it’s the other way around. TV has now finally matured into CTV.
So let’s take a step back, map out the past six years of CTV ad tech history and take a guess at what comes next.
I chose 2019 as a starting point because while FAST channels had been around for longer, it was CES 2019 that finally saw several smart TV’s with strong enough user interfaces to challenge the Netflix-driven ad-free subscription trend that had preceded it. From about then to late 2021, we surged through a FAST Tipping Point.
I’ve heard this era called the “toddler” or "adolescent" stage of ad-supported streaming.
In June of 2021 Magnite purchased SpotX which had recently purchased SpringServe, one of the early CTV ad server pioneers. This presaged the era of the SVOD Ad-tier Explosion from the middle of 2021 through the November 2022 warm embrace of ads by Netflix which triggered an explosion of lower-cost ad-tiers.
What comes next?
I’m calling it the Streaming Maturity Era, although I’m open to other names. It seems to be characterized by a dynamic shift in power happening within programmatic marketplaces. We see challengers from the advertiser side including MNTN which recently had a successful IPO.
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with CTV ad tech guru Andrew Baritz, CEO of Eventually A Castle and an adviser to Cineverse’s c360 audience platforms. He explained it to me in terms of power dynamics.
"There's a very big shift in power dynamics over the last 24 months, 36 months in CTV, as there's a shakeup across DSPs, SSPs, how publishers connect to them, and the various intermediation and mediation layers across the different services, whether that's a company like Publica, Springserve, Indicue, c360, or others, there's a shift in the traditional path that a buyer gets to an advertiser, gets to a publisher and vice versa."
Let's examine these eras more closely.
FAST Tipping Point (2019-2021)
"The Free Streaming Revolution"
We might say the FAST revolution really kicked off when Viacom announced its $340M acquisition of Pluto TV in January 2019. It was followed by Xumo’s acquisition by Comcast in February of 2020 and Fox's $440M purchase of Tubi in March 2020. These strong signals showed that 100% free, ad-supported streaming had arrived as a business model.
The rapid rise of CTV inventory transformed the landscape. Traditional players began to adapt, with Google Ad Manager adding CTV-specific features in December 2020. AWS launched MediaTailor Channel Assembly in March of 2021 flexing its muscles in the server-side ad insertion economy.
Ad tech infrastructure raced to keep pace. FreeWheel began its journey from set-top boxes to CTV. SpringServe, which started as an open-source CTV ad server, survived it’s acquisition by SpotX and became a critical ad serving partner to many. Software infrastructure pioneers Wurl, Frequency, and Amagi all poured gasoline on the fire. Inventory exploded with tier 2 and 3 publishers sailing alongside giants and using via ad exchanges to reach buyers.
"Open Auction" programmatic dominated these early days. Publishers threw inventory into open exchanges, hoping for the best. CPMs were high, competition was fierce, and transparency was minimal. It was the Wild West of programmatic advertising.
Importantly, SSP/Exchange consolidation also began in earnest during this period as the Rubicon Project and Telaria merger created today’s CTV supply powerhouse, Magnite. Over time this move would be prescient, proving scale is essential for CTV survival. Publishers discovered FAST as a viable model but relied heavily on these intermediaries for monetization.
In the meantime, the media landscape continued to undergo turbulence and change. It saw AT&T's spin-off and merger with Warner Brothers Discovery, CBS Viacom's rebrand to Paramount+, and Hulu’s eventual purchase by Disney. Major media companies needed an ad-supported play.
SVOD Ad-tier Explosion (2022-2023)
"Premium Inventory Flood"
Everything changed in November 2022 when Netflix launched its Basic with Ads tier. The streaming giant that had sworn off advertising for years suddenly validated the entire ad-supported ecosystem. This wasn't just another AVOD service – it was the premium streaming leader making a bet-the-farm pivot. Ads were the future.
At this point, the supply path began to shift dramatically.
Andrew Baritz observed this shift clearly: "We've seen this with Trade Desk’s Open Path initiative, with Magnite and other exchanges, and SSPs, cutting deals with advertisers directly. Often, and increasingly, publishers moved to go direct to advertisers as well. We've really hit a broad commoditization of each of these different pieces of the ecosystem."
He continues: "So depending on where you used to sit, doesn't directly require you to still sit there. And we've seen that across many different businesses, DSPs, SSPs, publisher networks, audience networks, and the lines have become very blurred as to, who does what, how do they do it, should they be doing it, are they doing it right, and who does it bring value to?"
Also during this period, The Trade Desk's dominance in CTV grew. They launched Unified ID 2.0 and signed on Fubo, showing how a DSP could reshape the ecosystem. The Trade Desk controls a large share of CTV demand which gives them leverage to demand more from SSPs.
More importantly, IAS acquired Publica for $220M, scooping up one of the CTV-first ad server alternatives. This wasn’t a digital display server being repurposed for big screens, but rather a ground-up build focused on the unique tech that CTV demands. Meantime, AppLovin's $430M Wurl acquisition suggested content distribution and ad insertion had a special integration relationship.
YouTube's addition of CTV co-viewing KPIs and the industry-wide push for deterministic targeting showed that understanding who was watching mattered more than ever.
Technology challenges unique to video became clearer. Index Exchange added transparency features, while innovators like Transmit.live created new formats and insertion technologies to handle things like picture-in-picture advertising. Thursday Night Football's streaming-exclusive move to Prime Video marked a watershed moment for live sports and emphasized the need to scale up highly performant server-side workflows.
Finally, this period saw increased vulnerability to fraud and viewability challenges. Verification became more critical as advertisers demanded proof their ads were being seen. DoubleVerify and IAS developed CTV-specific measurement capabilities and White Ops, (now Human,) focused on making sure that InValid Traffic of IVT was not present in CTV ecosystems where traditional web verification methods didn't apply.
Streaming TV Maturity: CTV (2024-2025+)
“Engagement? Contextual? Performance?”
So where does CTV go from here? The ad tech upstarts emerging today suggest several possible futures, each with implications for how we consume and monetize video content.
First off, the CTV supply chain appears destined for simplification.
We've already seen this with SpringServe's recent evolution into a smart mediation layer that leverages Magnite's SSP capabilities. FreeWheel's 2024 report that only 35% of CTV is transacted programmatic suggests plenty of headroom for premium growth.
With Roku surpassing 90 million households, platforms are discovering the power of their data advantage.
But will we see a handful of mega-platforms controlling the entire ecosystem? Or will specialized players carve out defensible niches?
First-party data activation could become the defining characteristic of the latter. MNTN's successful IPO validated the growth of performance-based TV advertising. We're seeing contextual signals, attention metrics, and outcome-based campaigns gaining momentum as well.
The Trade Desk's Open Path to CTV announcement signals that even dominant DSPs recognize publishers' desire for direct relationships. As inventory quality trumps quantity, premium publishers may find themselves able to dictate terms again.
Could this herald a new golden age for CTV content publishers?
As Baritz observes, the evolution continues: "Magnite will continue to grow, as they pick up other companies, as publishers begin to gain more confidence, and as more tools become available for them to access, there's a lot of shifting in how those buyers are gonna reach those publishers, and how those publishers are gonna provide opportunities for those buyers to reach them."
Still, today’s CTV publishers face challenges including dramatically low fill rates.
The marketplace is placing remarkably diverse bets on what comes next.
Personalization pioneers like IndiCue are betting that viewing patterns can drive dynamic ad cues, pods and loads.
Creative innovators like Transmit and TripleLift are developing formats that transcend traditional 15 and 30-second spots.
Commerce integrators dream of seamlessly blending shopping with viewing, while audience platforms like Cineverse c360 provide access to audiences no matter where they are watching.
Contextual champions like Anoki and JWP Connatix are investing heavily in content understanding technologies to improve the semantic relevance of ad experiences.
Each represents a different vision of streaming TV's future. Will one approach dominate, or will we see a mosaic of solutions serving different needs? Since the shifts are happening simultaneously, it’s hard to say.
Rising demand for CTV and these new technologies may finally give publishers the ability to control their CTV destiny. But whether this leads to more consolidation or more fragmentation, more standardization or more innovation, these remain open questions.
Where do you see the CTV business headed? Write to [email protected] and access his research at #FutureOfTV.Live
Brian Ring is President of Ring Digital LLC, a best-in-class GTM consultancy enabling high-tech video innovators to drive product-led revenue growth. Mr. Ring also publishes the #FutureOfTV.Live 📺 Quarterly, a TV Survey, Report & Zoomcast on the business, technology and creative markets fueling the growth of Streaming TV. Ring has 25 years of technical and product expertise in these areas.
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.