Fox’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service Tubi announced a trio of partnerships alongside new planning tools as it looks to attract ad dollars during the Upfront season.
Some of the new partnerships include integrations with VideoAmp’s Premium Video Planning Tool and LiveRamp TV Activation for forecasting and planning investments. It’s also tapping Comscore and VideoAmp to help with audience measurement for campaigns. Coinciding with partner announcements, Tubi is expanding its available ad formats with the introduction of Pause Ads as one of the products available to buyers.
With the integration of Tubi into VideoAmp’s platform for Upfront and Scatter deals, the FAST said brands can now plan holistically across media channels. As for the LiveRamp TV activation, Tubi noted it’s a first for any streaming service, and said it will give advertisers more control as they’re able to take third- and first-party data and forecast the coverage on Tubi.
“Advertisers can send Tubi an audience for planned transactions, with LiveRamp helping to inform scale across Tubi’s viewership,” the company noted.
Tubi is also leaning into alternative audience measurement with Comscore and VideoAmp. Specifically, brands will be able to measure campaigns using Comscore Campaign Ratings (CCR) and VideoAmp Audience Measurement. This enables advertisers to test a variety of partners, Tubi said, as the industry continues to advance and evolve methods for cross-screen measurement. VideAmp brings measurement for reach, frequency and attribution on Tubi, allowing for measurement on cross-platform investments in one unified location.
And later this year, Tubi is launching Pause Ads, which it said expands on the success of its Sponsorship and Total Takeover formats. With Pause Ads, advertisers can present full screen display images that show up on the screen when viewers pause the content they’re watching.
“Like the Total Takeover, which gives an advertiser 100% audience reach in-stream over a selected window, Pause Ads can be used to reach every viewer to deliver high impact with 100% SOV,” Tubi said.
Tubi’s free streaming service, which features on-demand content with over 50,000 movies and TV shows and more than 200 local and live news and sports channels, has seen both user and revenue growth. In the December quarter Tubi’s ad revenue rose 25% year over year, with record viewing time in the last month of 2022. The service now boasts 64 million monthly active users – up from the 25 million it had when Fox purchased the FAST roughly three years ago. And just last month Tubi captured a 1% share of total TV viewing time in the U.S., breaking out of Nielsen’s The Gauge “other streaming” category and nabbing the distinction of the most popular FAST in the U.S.
“Tubi is the largest and fastest-growing free ad-supported TV streaming service in the U.S., and we offer advertisers unique and incremental TV audiences to drive brand impact,” said Mark Rotblat, chief revenue officer at Tubi, in a statement. “We’re expanding our partnerships with key industry players to make it easier than ever for buyers to transact on Tubi and deliver the seamless experience they need to effectively plan, activate and measure their campaigns.”
As viewers continue to turn to free ad-supported options for TV viewing and streaming, advertiser dollars are expected to follow suit. Analysis from firm TVREV earlier this year projects that FASTs share of TV ad spend will grow from its current 17% today to 35% in 2025 - at which point the category outpaces that of cable, broadcast or SVOD - and expand further to garner a 42% share or $42.6 billion by 2027.
In a recent article on Fierce Video, TVREV analyst Alan Wolk commented on Tubi reaching the 1% threshold on The Gauge and said what’s interesting about the Fox-owned service is that “it defies the whole FAST is linear narrative”- as even though it offers linear channels its app and content is designed with on-demand programming front-and-center. Wolk reiterated that FASTs offer both linear and on-demand content and noted “consumers actually like both and like having both options.”
For reaching the Gauge benchmark, Wolk said “well done” for Tubi. “You had a vision and you stuck to it and now you’ve got a massive audience,” he wrote.