State of Streaming Podcast

Covering the topics, trends, people, and acquisitions shaping Streaming TV.

State of Streaming Podcast is a news podcast hosted by State of Streaming, with 36 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

State of Streaming hosts State of Streaming Podcast, a news show with 36 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #6

  How AI Is Replacing The Media Planning Cycle | Josh Hudgins, CPO at VideoAmp

  Aug 17, 202621 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Josh Hudgins , Chief Product Officer at VideoAmp , to unpack how the performance media platform connects ad exposure directly to real-world outcomes — store visits, purchases, subscriber signups — and how AI is acting as a semantic layer to reinvent how that data gets interpreted, planned against, and acted on. The measurement problem is a signal-to-noise problem. Advertisers and analysts aren't starving for data — they're drowning in dashboards. VideoAmp's answer is a semantic AI layer built on top of their measurement stack that interprets the data, separates noise from signal, and surfaces the insights that actually matter — without replacing the rigorous measurement methodology underneath. 1:18 – What VideoAmp is and the core problem it solves: closing the loop between ad exposure and real-world outcomes 2:13 – How VideoAmp built its data asset: set-top boxes, smart TVs, streaming log-level data via clean rooms 6:19 – The new AI-powered reporting experience: from monolithic dashboards to interactive insight conversations The alchemy nobody expected: audience + content + platform = lift. When you can report at a creative level all the way through to outcomes across every platform simultaneously, you start finding combinations that no analyst would have predicted. A specific audience, paired with specific content, on a specific platform, driving measurable lift for a specific product. That's not a dashboard insight. That's a campaign brief. 7:54 – What the data reveals when AI interprets it: creative-level performance tied to real-world outcomes 9:30 – How the AI journey goes from insight to media plan to agentic campaign orchestration 10:25 – Why siloed channel teams are being replaced by audience-first, outcome-first structures Media planning is becoming a real-time optimization loop. The traditional cycle — annual media mix model, allocation decision, wait and see — is collapsing. VideoAmp is working with publishers on mid-flight optimization tied directly to outcomes, compressing what used to take a year into a near-real-time feedback loop. The automotive supply chain example makes the implications concrete: media exposure signals flowing back into inventory planning. 10:56 – How AI compresses the learning and response cycle from annual to near real time 11:59 – The automotive case: from dealership visits to supply chain signals, all connected to media exposure 13:21 – What it looks like when the measurement flywheel starts spinning faster Agent-to-agent integrations will make brittle API workflows obsolete. The next six months: agencies, streaming platforms, and media companies are all building AI agents — and those agents are starting to talk to each other. What used to take 12 months to integrate now takes weeks. Josh explains what that means for the pace of new capability development and why it's the most exciting technical shift he's seen. 13:48 – What agent-to-agent integrations actually are and why they replace brittle API workflows 14:27 – How different entities — buyers, sellers, platforms — are now connecting via agents 15:51 – Why AI unlocks more human time, not less: the case for focusing on connection and ideas Connect with Josh Hudgins on LinkedIn · VideoAmp Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #5

  How TV Took Over: Viant Q2 2026 Earnings Brunch with Jon Schulz, CMO

  Aug 13, 202624 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Jon Schulz , CMO at Viant , the day after the company reports its best quarter ever — revenue up 34%, CTV now 50% of total revenue, and a single NBA Finals ad moment hitting $120 CPM, nearly double the Super Bowl. This is the Viant Earnings Brunch. ' Best quarter ever' was 27-years in the making. Revenue up 34%. CTV at 50% of total revenue. Direct CTV transactions up from 50% to 80% in a single quarter. IRIS Content ID now on 50% of the CTV bid stream, targeting 70% by year end. Viant Household ID mapped to 95% of US households. None of this happened overnight — Jon walks through the acquisitions, infrastructure investments, and strategic decisions that made Q2 2026 possible. 0:31 – The Q2 numbers: 34% revenue growth, 50% CTV mix, $120 CPM NBA Finals peak 1:26 – Why best quarter ever is the result of a long-term plan, not a lucky cycle 2:11 – How eliminating non-value-added resellers created a win for both publishers and advertisers Meta, Google, and Amazonall have buying tools. They also have a serious conflict of interest...learn about it. Google has DV360. Amazon has Amazon DSP. But 80%+ of their revenue comes from their own owned-and-operated inventory. The buying interface is a gateway to their supply — not a neutral platform. Meanwhile, the top 52% of advertisers have grown just 1% annually over 15 years, while the Mag 7 grew 550% over the same period. Jon puts a number on who is actually winning in digital advertising — and it's not the brands. 3:41 – Viant's history: from exclusive inventory to Time Inc. to independent buy-side platform 4:26 – Why Amazon DSP and DV360 are gateways to owned inventory, not neutral DSPs 5:10 – The stat: top advertisers up 1% annually over 15 years. Mag 7 up 550%. Only 5% of customers are in market at any given moment but most ad budgets spend like it's 100%. The overinvestment in performance advertising has funneled most ad dollars toward converting demand that already exists — ignoring the 95% of future customers who haven't raised their hand yet. CTV and TV have always been the best format for demand generation. That's the thesis behind Viant's Outcomes product: measurable performance outside the walled gardens, on the open internet. 6:23 – Why the over-focus on performance advertising is suppressing brand growth 7:20 – What the open internet actually means and what inventory it includes 8:57 – Game five of the NBA Finals on the open internet: $120 CPM, nearly 2X the Super Bowl Did you know? According to TVision attention metrics: 30% of ads run to an empty room. Viant can now bid against the ones that don't. TVision — Viant's attention signal acquisition — measures three things: is someone in the room, how many people are watching, and second-by-second eyes-on-screen attention. The NBA Finals comeback moment is the perfect case study: attention collapsed during the blowout, then spiked when the Knicks started climbing back. Viant's platform can now bid up or down in real time based on that signal. 9:59 – What TVision measures: in-room presence, co-viewing, eyes-on-screen attention 10:29 – Why 30% of CTV ads run to an empty room 13:12 – The NBA Finals comeback: how attention data moves in real time within a single program The Viant streaming stack: household ID, content ID, attention signal. Viant Household ID is in 80% of programmatic bid requests and covers 96% of CTV requests — mapped to 95% of US households. IRIS Content ID is at 50% of the bid stream, heading to 70%. At those coverage levels, these stop being proxies and start being currencies. Jon explains what it takes to get a signal from 7% to 50% to 70% — and why scale is everything. 14:29 – The full Viant stack: Household ID + IRIS Content ID + TVision attention signal 15:16 – Why signal coverage below 30% is a proxy. Above 80% is a currency. 16:48 – The grocery store use case: first-party data matched to Viant Household ID at scale Connect with Jon Schulz on LinkedIn · Viant Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #4

  How Broadcast Television Gave Way to Streaming TV with Matthew Keys, Publisher of The Desk

  Aug 11, 202635 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Matthew Keys , Publisher of The Desk , a media outlet covering the broadcast, streaming, and digital media industry that has grown from a hobbyist blog into a publication that industry executives now regularly check — and walk up to strangers at conferences to mention. TheDesk.net started as a survival mechanism. Matthew Keys built The Desk across two different moments of involuntary downtime — first while on paid suspension during a legal situation, then again during COVID when a planned job transition went sideways. Thirteen years later, it's one of the few places covering streaming and broadcasting from someone who actually worked inside both industries. 0:44 – Why the desk is called the desk: the assignment desk as the unsung hero of every newsroom 3:10 – How The Desk started on suspension and grew through COVID 5:45 – The StreamTV show moment: from unknown hobbyist blog to recognized industry outlet What traditional broadcasters are giving away and calling it a "streaming strategy". Every major local news station now has a 24-hour FAST feed. That's not a streaming strategy — it's content distribution without a monetization model. Matthew breaks down why Nexstar's Haystack investment, the NewsNation experiment, and the broader local news pivot to streaming are all variations of the same unresolved tension between reach and revenue. 7:12 – How local broadcasters are addressing streaming: giving the product away 8:30 – Nexstar, Haystack News, and what the largest station group is actually betting on 10:15 – NewsNation: what national ambition looks like when you're built on local infrastructure Are sports the only thing keeping cable alive? Churn accelerates the moment football season ends and partially recovers when it comes back. That's the only thing holding legacy cable bundles together. Once consumers churn out, the data shows they don't come back — they go to FAST, because to them there's no meaningful difference, and FAST offers more options. 15:20 – Why sports is the last thing keeping cable subscribers in the bundle 16:44 – What churn data shows about former cable subscribers and where they go 17:30 – Why FAST is bad at personalization except for Tubi — and why that matters The FASTpocalypse is coming. Two thousand channels will become one hundred. The supply glut is real. Advertisers aren't keeping pace with inventory. Reporting and aggregation are still broken. But the people who work closest to FAST all say the same thing: when the consolidation happens, the channel count drops by 95% and what's left looks a lot like peak cable — around 20 channels that any given viewer actually watches regularly. 18:10 – Why FAST supply has outrun advertiser demand 19:05 – The 2,000 to 100 channel shakeout thesis 20:15 – The Savannah Bananas playbook: YouTube first, then TNT, then the CW The World Cup drew the numbers it did because it was easy to find. The FIFA World Cup pulled massive viewership not just because of compelling storylines or home-field time zones — but because rights were consolidated in a way that made the product frictionless. No "this game is on Netflix." No market blackouts. Just find it and watch it. That's the discoverability lesson the rest of the industry keeps failing to apply. 22:10 – Why the World Cup's distribution model was as important as its storylines 23:00 – The Roku bundle as a frictionless access point 23:30 – What professional women's hockey and Banana Ball prove about the YouTube-to-TV pipeline Connect with Matthew Keys on LinkedIn · Matthew Keys on X · The Desk Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #3

  How AI is Evolving the Streaming TV Ad Pod and Driving Incremental Revenue with James Smith, GM of Monetization at Frequency

  Aug 6, 202621 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! James Smith , who leads monetization at Frequency , joins Tim Rowe to unpack why the ad pod is broken — and why the fix isn't more ads, it's smarter ones. They dive into in-scene advertising, the industry's slow embrace of "fewer ads, better ROAS," and why personalization has to fix the programming guide before it can fix the ad break. Too Many Channels Chasing Too Little Attention FAST channels went from a novelty seven years ago to hundreds per platform today — and that glut is the real source of the ad experience problem. James frames it plainly: when discovery becomes the bottleneck, fill rate suffers, and channels that can't fill inventory resort to slate, black screens, or bloated pods just to hit revenue targets. It's not a content problem. It's a supply-and-attention math problem, and the math isn't working for anyone — viewer, publisher, or advertiser. 02:51 – Why fragmented attention is now the industry's core challenge 03:09 – The discovery problem: hundreds of channels, no way to find yours 04:18 – Tim's own ad-pod horror story, and why it's a business problem too How Frequency's Uses AI to Find the Break Inside the Break (In-Scene Ad Product) Instead of stuffing more ads between segments, Frequency uses video introspection to identify contextually relevant moments inside the content itself — ad zones that fit the scene, not just the runtime. The goal isn't to add inventory. It's to replace some of the pod with better-performing units, then use an ad balancer to right-size what's left for maximum return on ad spend. James connects this directly to Jounce Media's research: fewer, better-placed ads consistently outperform saturation. 05:29 – How AI video introspection identifies in-scene ad zones 06:11 – The ad balancer: reducing the pod without reducing revenue 07:30 – Why fewer ads can mean higher conversion, not lower Fewer Sellers, Fewer Hops: Why 'Proximity to the Stream' Is the New SPO Programmatic's dirty secret is the number of hops — every intermediary between ad sale and publisher payout adds fraud risk and kills transparency. James argues Frequency's position — sitting upstream at channel origination and SSAI — makes it structurally closer to clean supply path optimization than SSPs stacked with resellers. The company isn't trying to own inventory; it's trying to be the shortest path between demand and the stream. 09:26 – Who's adopting in-scene units first: OEMs, platforms, or publishers 09:52 – Frequency caps and the tools built to avoid making the pod worse 12:19 – What Netflix's ad-tier evolution signals for the rest of the industry 80% of Shopping Comes From Feed-Driven Ads - yay or nay? James's bet on where CTV is headed: personalize the electronic programming guide first, and the advertising experience follows — the same way Instagram's feed conditions purchase behavior. He points to World Cup hydration-break ads as proof that endemic, contextually-earned advertising doesn't irritate viewers; it performs. The next frontier is dynamic creative that swaps based on geography in real time — same ad concept, different local retailer, different outcome. 17:51 – What James is most excited about for the rest of 2026 and into 2027 18:35 – The Instagram parallel: personalized feed, personalized ads 13:04 – The Miami Doritos example: one ad, two dynamically different CTAs Connect with James Smith and learn more about Frequency's channel monetization tools at frequency.com . Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes
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  Episode #2

  How to Make the Shift to Audience-First Planning with Emily Williams, Consumer Expert at MRI-Simmons

  Jul 29, 202626 minS4

  Have a question? Send us a text! Emily Williams , Consumer Expert at MRI-Simmons, joins Tim Rowe to unpack why the streaming industry's measurement habits are failing the consumers they're supposed to serve — and why fragmentation isn't a technology problem. It's a consumer experience problem. The Average American Uses 11 Streaming Services a Year MRI-Simmons' Cord Evolution Study reveals that 75% of Americans with traditional cable also stream — meaning the incremental reach marketers assume they're buying is largely the same audience showing up in a different environment. Eleven services a year isn't loyalty. It's fluid movement across platforms following content, not platforms. Media plans built on channel logic haven't caught up to that reality. 1:02 – What MRI-Simmons is and why address-based probabilistic sampling is the gold standard 5:16 – The stacker problem: why adding streaming to a linear plan doesn't automatically add reach 6:28 – 11 services a year, on average — and what that says about churn ' Total Minutes Viewed ' Is the Metric We Need to Stop Using 63% of adults report doing other activities while watching TV. That's not a niche behavior — it's the majority. Emily's argument: total minutes viewed can tell you what platform content ran on and for how long, but it can't tell you whether anyone was paying attention, whether those people were the right people, or whether the campaign moved anything. A hundred million minutes among the wrong audience loses to twenty million minutes among high-value prospects every time. 8:21 – Why total minutes viewed is useful but dangerous as a standalone KPI 9:44 – The attention gap: 63% of adults are multitasking while the TV runs 11:05 – The question every viewing metric headline is missing First-Party Data Tells You Who Watches What. Consumer Insights Tell You Why, How, and How Much. Streaming platforms can see everything inside their ecosystem — completion rates, session length, genre preferences. What they can't see is that the person who watched three video podcasts this week is also planning a trip to Italy, renovating their home, and just bought their first EV. MRI-Simmons' Consumer Canvas enrichment product layers 60,000+ consumer attributes across 250 million adults onto a platform's first-party data — turning behavioral signals into audience understanding that actually informs creative, targeting, and planning. 11:38 – What first-party data can and can't tell a streaming platform 13:15 – Consumer Canvas: how data enrichment makes first-party data smarter 15:07 – Why a unified audience view is a consumer problem, not a technology problem Did You Know? 40% of Adults Feel Overwhelmed by Streaming Choice More services, more content, more FAST channels — the assumption was that consumers want unlimited options. MRI-Simmons measures 170 FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels and adds new ones every wave. Emily's prediction: three years from now, the industry will look back and realize it confused more choice with a better experience. Discovery isn't a measurement problem or a media planning problem. It's what happens when finding something worth watching becomes work. 17:32 – What the industry will look back on as a fundamental mistake 18:07 – 40% of adults overwhelmed by choice: the data behind the scroll paralysis 19:56 – Why fragmentation is ultimately a consumer experience problem, not a tech one Connect with Emily Williams and explore MRI-Simmons research at mrisimmons.com . Thanks to Looper Insights for sponsoring today’s show! Ready to unlock your streaming strategy edge? Head over to mystreamingvalue.com to compare CTV home screens and find out which spaces are worth the most. You’ll even learn exactly why Fox was willing to pay $22 billion for Roku. Stop guessing and start scaling—visit mystreamingvalue.com to get your free insights today!

  ListenShow Notes

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