New TVREV Special Report Provides A Primer for the Booming FAST Ecosystem
TVREV looks to enhance readers' understanding of the FAST ecosystem by examining the key players, their relative strengths, their relationships with each other and with rights holders and consumers.
In its newest report, FASTs Are The New Cable, analyst firm TVREV has created a primer designed for those who are curious about the rapid growth of free ad-supported streaming TV services (FASTs) as well as those who are deep in the thick of it.
“The FAST ecosystem is massively confusing,” noted TVREV Co-Founder and Lead Analyst Alan Wolk, who coined the term “FAST” back in March 2019. “This report is designed to help untangle a lot of that confusion.”
The report, which is sponsored by Amagi, LG Ads Solutions, Magnite, Pluto TV and VIZIO walks readers through key issues, including:
There’s also a look at the future of FASTs that explores:
And of course, Evan Shapiro’s latest map of the FAST ecosystem, created specially for TVREV.
Inside The Report
TVREV looks to enhance readers’ understanding of the FAST ecosystem by examining the key players, their relative strengths, their relationships with each other and with rights holders and consumers. They explain who holds the power in various relationships, how the apps are built and why data, which informs user experience, is so important.
One area of focus are the linear channels that have come to define many of the FASTs. Their popularity took many in the industry by surprise as the assumption was that streaming would be the death of linear TV.
Consumers had other plans however. “People love channel surfing,” noted Pluto TV Co-Founder, Tom Ryan, whose goal with Pluto TV was to make the experience feel as much like traditional TV as possible. “The ability to just channel surf and switch the dial quickly and easily without having to go into a program menu with thousands of options gives people a low stakes way to try additional content without spending 20 minutes studying the program guide.”
The report also looks at the role data plays in the programming decisions the FASTs make, something that differentiates them from their cable TV predecessors. “As OEMs we know what people like to watch on linear TV via our ACR data,” observed Raghu Kogide, President of LG Ads Solutions. “That has allowed us to pick and choose the type of content we want to put in front of users as well as the ability to experiment with the type of linear channels we put up.”
The way the FASTs use all that data to optimize the user experience was another key factor in the FASTs rising popularity.
“We’ve heard for a long time that content is king,” said Katherine Pond, Group Vice President, Platform Content and Partnerships at VIZIO. “But in the FAST ecosystem, context is really king. It’s all about the user experience and presenting that content in a way that consumers want when they’re ready for it.”
Better data also allows for more experimentation: FASTs, which pride themselves on their curation ability—Ryan noted that 70 percent of the linear channels on Pluto TV are curated channels—can easily stand up and take down channels as they test what resonates best.
“By lowering the cost of entry, we are allowing rights holders to experiment a lot more,” said Amagi Co-Founder, Srinivasan KA. “And we do that by providing them with the data and analytics to understand what’s being watched and how they should program, promote and distribute it.”
While the FASTs are awash in their own data, there’s very little standardization in the way all that data is used and measured across the various services.
That may be changing however, as the industry matures, according to Sean Buckley, Chief Revenue Officer at Magnite. “There’s a real need for standards and we’re definitely starting to see those emerge. The industry is maturing in a positive way, and has moved meaningfully forward over the last couple of years.”
The report also details what to expect in the years to come, based on TVREV’s largely off the record conversations with around one hundred key industry executives. Among the more surprising predictions are that the remaining SVOD services will follow the lead set by Paramount+, Discovery+ and Peacock and roll out the linear channels so popular on the FASTs and that many of the FASTs will begin bidding on live sports rights soon, albeit for smaller leagues and conferences.
Another notable prediction is that as they expand globally, all of the major streaming services will end up with a three-tier system consisting of a FAST, an ad-supported subscription service and an ad-free subscription service.
“Peak TV doesn’t no longer describes the incredible volume of content being produced,, the incredible connected device that cost less than tickets for four to an NFL game that comes with endless premium content, data informed discovery and interconnection with the home,” explained TVREV publisher Jason Damata. “FASTs represent the watershed moment that everyone in old TV has been waiting for.”
“Probably the biggest complaint we heard was that everyone seemed to have their own definition of what a FAST was, which created a Tower of Babel effect where no one was speaking the same language,” said Wolk. “What we found was that the key differentiator was still ‘free’ versus ‘not free’ and that ‘free’ was what made a service a FAST, especially given that they all have linear and on demand viewing options available.”
