As streaming continues to mature worldwide, smart TV platforms are placing greater emphasis on improving the viewer experience. Denis Oštir, senior director and editor in chief at V, says the industry is entering a period of consolidation that will ultimately simplify the streaming landscape for consumers. He believes connected TV should no longer be viewed as separate from traditional television, emphasizing that audiences expect the same high-quality viewing experience regardless of how content reaches the screen.
Oštir says the next major opportunity lies in improving content discovery. As viewers spend more time searching than watching, platforms must deliver faster, more intuitive navigation powered by AI-driven recommendations and voice technology. VIDAA's smart TV operating system is designed around speed, openness, and collaboration, supporting hundreds of TV brands worldwide while working closely with advertisers, content providers, and platform partners. As the company expands its presence in the United States, it aims to deliver a streamlined, content-first experience for connected TV audiences.
Denis Oštir:
So my name is Denis Ostir, O-S-T-I-R. It's spelled a little bit different. It's not the US way. I come from V. I'm a senior director at V, the company behind the VIDAA Smart TV Operating System. We make a smart TV platform and we've doing one since 2014.
So it's a first. I've ever been to StreamTV in Denver. I've been to StreamTV in Lisbon, the inaugural one this year. It's the first time here. It's super awesome. I think there's a lot of good people here, a lot of good industry chatter and talk. Great discussions, great partners, and it's a super, super cool event. The only thing I have a complaint about, it's hot. I expected coming to a Mile-High City, it's going to be nice and cool, but it's not.
Yeah, so we're seeing a lot of the stuff that has happened in the US in terms of streaming over the last decade or so slowly moving towards the other parts of the world. We are a global platform, so we operate a lot across the world. We're present in 180 countries. We're not that big in the US, but what we are seeing in other parts of the world, that's also the reason why we're here, is a lot of the trends are moving here. What we're seeing is a lot of consolidation, a lot of clarification. In the past, we had way too many fast channels. We had way too many VOD providers. Now everything seems to be consolidating. Things are clearing up and cleaning up, which is good, especially for the end consumer.
And one of the trends that we are going for is the one that we have behind us, that it's TV is TV. We want the industry to go back to its roots to understand that there's no differentiation between CTV and TV. Our CEO had a nice fireside chat with Alan Wolk specifically about that, just trying to explain to everyone, "Listen. The TV is the same device. The way that the signal comes to the TV might have changed, but it's the same device." So we have to treat it that way when it comes to quality of content, when it comes to monetization. And so that's a big trend that we are seeing.
And we're also seeing a lot of discussions about how to make the discoverability of content on the TV much better, especially on our side. Customers today are spending way too much time on the device just looking for stuff to watch. We have to make the user experience much better. And this is what we're hoping is going to be the outcome of this conference.
Yeah, so our OS is the fastest operating system in the world. We've tested it a couple of times through independent providers and they've always shown that we are the fastest platform in the world. We are completely independent. We've been in the market since 2014, which means that for 12 years we made the OS. It's super, super slick. It's got its own voice engine. It's got its own recommendation engine. We use a lot of AI to make the user experience much, much, much better. We are present on more than 400 different brands and we have more than 55 million connected devices across the world. So we're big, even though in the US people don't know us that much as the VIDAA OS. Outside of the US, I think we're one of the biggest platforms and I believe we're also the fastest-growing platform over the last three years.
No, I think we're okay. We will be entering the US market very soon. We did a couple of strategic partnerships with a couple of key retailers in the space, a couple of brands as well. So we will be more and more present in the US as well. We see a lot of stuff happening right before the event. We saw one major announcement, which has been the talk of the floor over the last couple of years, which I think is a great opportunity for us to introduce a completely independent platform into the space.
That's also the key differentiator that we've got. We're not looking to replace everyone. There's no vertical integration with us. We're a platform. We want to work with advertisers. We want to work with content providers. We want to work with customers that want to work with us. We're not trying to squeeze them out of the business to take over what they do.