Disney+, Max, Peacock, Paramount+ and Tubi ad leaders predict streaming’s future

Streaming seemed to reach a turning point this year. Companies including Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney reported profitability in their direct-to-consumer divisions, with greater gains predicted for 2025, sparking optimism even as traditional media has faced layoffs, mergers and acquisitions and general business volatility. While streaming ads are still in their early stages, media ad leaders envision a future driven by AI innovation, scaling live sports franchises and growing monetization through advanced capabilities. In conversations with Ad Age, leaders also responded to common market gripes such as high pricing and a lack of audience transparency in streaming. One media ad sales leader, who spoke with Ad Age on condition of anonymity, said that from a cash perspective, their ad business’ best quarters were in 2018 and this year. The difference is in the composition of the business. While entertainment made up half of the executive’s business in 2018, it now makes up about 30%, particularly due to declines in cable. But in that time, the company has built ad-supported streaming and grown its sports offerings, offsetting the difference in traditional entertainment. Overall, the ability to bring new advertisers into TV through streaming, along with more valuable targeting and format capabilities, means the monetary “promise of streaming is potentially much greater than just what TV was 10 years ago,” said John Halley, president of advertising, Paramount. Ad Age Tech Power List 2025 We’re looking for top digital innovators from agencies, brands, platforms, ad tech companies and tech startups Enter here Responding to feedback Speaking with Ad Age about the top obstacles to increasing spend in streaming, multiple media buyers put lack of show-level viewership transparency and high pricing at the top of their lists. “There’s probably more show-level transparency than the buy side understands there to be,” said a second streaming ad sales leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The executive, who said their streaming platform has provided show-level breakdowns to advertisers for years, noted that the issue is, in part, worsened by the fragmented nature of buying streaming inventory. The further an advertiser gets from buying directly with a streaming operator through inventory aggregators or CTV platforms, said the executive, the less transparency marketers can receive. “Roku may not be allowed by their content partners to show show-level data, because Roku is a platform that is in market competing with its content partners,” said the executive. “If you want more transparency, then buy from a content player. If you want less transparency, buy with the platform.” Roku declined to comment for this story. TV and streaming ad prices in 2024-25 Primetime TV ad prices Cost of ads on Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu TV ad cost trends over the past decade On Max, advertisers can customize the percentage of marketing that runs in certain content verticals, such as HBO originals, as well as in specific show sponsorships and across the entirety of the platform, said Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer at Warner Bros Discovery, who is set to depart the Max parent company by the end of this year. The transparency issue is a result of the rapid expansion of the streaming market, which will mature and contract over time, according to Steinlauf. He added that the problem lies in managing performance across platforms rather than with reporting from individual streamers. “Hulu had ad-supported streaming all to itself for a long time, and then over the last four years, seven different companies started their own streaming services,” said Steinlauf. “Streaming needs time.” Also read: Media buyers to watch in 2025 In the past, media buyers wanted to see audience demographic breakdowns for each streaming show their clients’ ads ran during, to evaluate reach across platforms, but this data hasn’t been consistently reported. The price to advertise in streaming was the talk of this year’s upfront, and buyers described this year’s negotiations as a reset for CPMs, or the cost per 1,000 viewers reached. The cost of inventory in Disney+, for example, declined 25% year over year, and prices on Max decreased 16%, Ad Age previously reported. “[Streaming prices] are evolving to become more like what linear television has been for a long time: a wide spread of CPMs, different choices, different things to sponsor and different quality audiences,” said Steinlauf. While Steinlauf said there was a correction in the base price of streaming inventory this year, the shift is more representative of a change in the pricing model. The shift means that while the base price to advertise on Max has become more accessible, there’s increased flexibility to customize budgets based on scaling costs for more granular audience targeting or to buy an expensive, bespoke sponsorship, such as NerdWallet’s custom partnership for “The Penguin.” Similarly, the second ad sales leader who spoke on condition of anonymity said the future of streaming pricing will be determined by the marketer’s desired use of data and depth of audience targeting more so than by CPM. The launch of ads on Amazon Prime Video disrupted this year’s ad market, creating a massive amount of new inventory and a reach of 115 million U.S. users, per Amazon. During the upfront, media buyers described the new inventory as a tool for driving down pricing across other streamers and reducing demand for streaming in scarcity-driven markets such as the upfront. But the first streaming ad sales leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity said this thinking could be harmful to the market. The executive said their streaming platform is consistently about 90% sold out of ad inventory. Lower numbers of ads per hour increase the effectiveness of streaming ads, said the executive, and thinking of platforms as sources of infinite inventory would diminish their value. “The CPM conversation—there was a lot of noise made about what we were or were not doing,” said Rita Ferro, president of global advertising at Disney. Ferro similarly said that Disney’s streamers are consistently 90% sold out on a month-to-month basis, “so I don’t have the flexibility that some of the other platforms have to go out and put out some significant volume discounts.” Ferro described the streaming ad marketplace as “far more aggressive than the linear marketplace” because of the larger variation in uses of data and customization of measurement to prove out specific goals, both traditional brand-building as well as outcomes-based. “Ultimately, price is one lever—it’s engagement, it’s scale and it’s the advertising experience you bring to the marketplace.” The future of streaming advertising The pricing conversation may also continue to evolve with the growth of AI, said Ferro. Innovation in automation could develop capabilities for dynamic pricing and creative based on varying levels of real-time demand as well as curating marketing for the context it’s airing in. For example, Ferro imagined placing an ad in “Dancing With the Stars,” but using AI to develop the asset in the moment based on whether an athlete was just awarded a spot in the finale rather than a TikTok influencer. Or having an ad that celebrates in real time the team that just won a college football game. AI has also been a tool in planning TV buys across linear and streaming platforms. Major media companies including Disney, NBCU, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox have launched products to do so over the past few years, selling the total reach of cross-platform TV rather than previous ideas that spend should be relegated to either linear or streaming. In January, NBCU announced One Platform Total Audience, an AI tool for cross-platform audience planning. Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, said this type of buying is representative of the future of streaming ads, not a temporary fix for the lower reach of streaming. “Part of the reason you haven’t seen more dollars continue to go to streaming at a faster pace is TV still performs,” said Marshall. “And TV is efficient, especially cable, so in walking away from cable, you lose that efficiency from a CPM standpoint. If [an advertiser] can buy against an advanced audience to get more efficient cable, plus the reach of broadcast and the targeting of streaming, we think that's what [the future of TV] is.” Marshall said broadcast spending was up in this year’s upfront for NBCU, contrary to prior trends, adding that the company is increasingly programming its streamer, Peacock, as the broadcast network of streaming, with a growing slate of live news and sports. This will get a bump next year when NBCU takes on a portion of the NBA’s broadcast rights. The way of thinking is also inherently in traditional TV companies’ favor as they pitch against tech companies increasingly stealing share in the video space. While YouTube, Netflix and Prime Video topped the list of Nielsen’s most recent ranking of individual platforms by share of viewership, Nielsen’s recent report ranking media companies by cross-portfolio reach was topped by Disney, YouTube and NBCU. Continuing to scale the ad-supported audience of each platform in the direction of rivaling traditional TV reach is a major push for streamers. Paramount’s Halley said this is why many platforms, such as Disney, Roku, Paramount and NBCU, are launching and expanding capabilities for non-traditional TV advertisers to buy streaming inventory. Paramount is able to support 100 times more advertisers in streaming than in linear, said Halley, adding that Paramount+ and Pluto TV see 30,000 to 40,000 unique brands each quarter. Overall, the next frontier for streaming growth lies in live content, particularly sports, in order to drive larger aggregate reach and higher engagement, according to Ferro. As media companies focus on the aggregate reach of their platforms, Ferro said “Monday Night Football” is a prime case study they’ll look to bring to other verticals. Games are simulcast on ABC and ESPN, there’s the “ManningCast” on ESPN2, and the games stream on ESPN+ and Hulu + Live TV, with more headed to Disney+ now that ESPN has been added as a tab on the streamer. The company has also been creating kids-oriented simulcasts on Disney+, such as a “Toy Story”-themed NFL game last year, and an upcoming “Simpsons” game on Dec. 9. This model also applies to Disney’s NBA, NHL and college sports franchises. “The reach of [streaming] doesn’t cannibalize—it adds incremental opportunity because there are different audiences consuming on those platforms, and we want to be the experience that they want to consume on those platforms regardless,” said Ferro. Netflix has also been amping up its presence in live events, most recently hosting a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, which was criticized for connectivity issues during the livestream. Netflix will host two NFL games on Christmas Day, including a performance by Beyoncé. Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Click here Buffering Building ad-supported scale is also why so many media companies have bundled their streamers with one another (Disney+, Hulu and Max), with utility services (Paramount+ and Walmart+), in aggregators (Apple TV, Verizon, Prime Video) and increasingly as part of cable subscriptions. Platforms such as Peacock and Max also featured hefty annual ad tier discounts for Black Friday. Steinlauf said the main feedback he hears from the ad market is that “it’s harder to reach young people in traditional cable and broadcast unless it’s sports. So we need places in the streaming side that are ad-supported, that are skewing younger, that are reaching the cord-cutter so that we can increase our reach over the course of a campaign.” In some ways, content is the answer to the problem, with upcoming franchises such as “Harry Potter” skewing younger than the traditional HBO fare. This is the niche Tubi focuses on, claiming that more than 50% of its reach is among young, multicultural audiences. While broadcast has seen a resurgence, according to Jeff Lucas, chief revenue officer, Tubi, the free ad-supported streamer is able to offer a younger audience to advertisers buying Fox’s linear sports inventory. “The reason why people talk to us is because [Gen Z] is an audience that can’t find, they know they have to find it, they know that is the future and, at the same time, they need that massive one shot reach of network, which then complements what they're doing with Tubi,” said Lucas. NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today But despite lacking the instant broadcast reach, Steinlauf said Max audiences are more engaged than cable viewers. Rather than watching shows such as “90 Day Fiancé” on TLC because it’s what’s on, consumers are subscribing to Max because those are the shows they’re seeking. Steinlauf said “90 Day Fiancé” is one of Max’s consistently top-performing franchises. Steinlauf said TLC is a primary pipeline for Max content in the same way Bravo was identified by Comcast as a main draw for Peacock when it announced plans to spin off every other NBCU cable network that doesn’t serve growth in streaming into a separate entity next year. That increased engagement, according to Steinlauf, makes streaming inventory more valuable. He sees the higher price of streaming, including the adoption of advanced capabilities, as enough to offset the declines of the cable ad business in the future. Advertisers, however, have been slow to adopt TV buys on advanced audiences. Steinlauf said about 10% of WBD’s ad revenue is streaming, and of that percentage, about 40% is bought on advanced audiences. Similarly, Marshall said that the transition of spend to advanced audiences has been slowed by the traditional buying structures embedded in the TV market. Traditional media mix modeling and procurement terms between agencies and clients limit the use of currencies and dayparts, stunting innovation in the space, said Marshall. NBCU announced that it surpassed its goal to transact 50% of its inventory on advanced audiences in this year’s upfront. Also read: 11 marketing procurement executives to know The streaming ad experience is constantly in flux, said Ferro, who oversees both one of the oldest and youngest streaming ad tiers in Hulu and Disney+. Ferro said that despite the misconception that Disney takes a set-it-and-forget-it approach to ads on Hulu, the platform is a “live, dynamic, real-time workflow.” The Hulu audience, which is majority ad-supported, provides Disney with an expansive space to test and launch new ad products before rolling them out to Disney+ and Hulu. Ferro said they’ve gotten very granular with different ad experiences to help reduce ad burnout for streaming audiences weary of the cable experience or the transition from ad-free tiers that many streamers were built on but are becoming increasingly expensive. For example, Ferro said ads during Hulu content on Disney+ will be different than those native to Disney+ and different from those who subscribed to the platform directly versus in a bundle. “I get very excited about how technology is driving innovation in the streaming marketplace, but people come to watch their favorite shows or stream the big game—you’ve got to get [audiences] there first,” said Ferro. “The amount of quality content that you have on your streaming platform really sets you apart in a marketplace as competitive and as dynamic as this one is.”

Disney+, Max, Peacock, Paramount+ and Tubi ad leaders predict streaming’s future

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