Episodes

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Simeon McMillan, Principal of Accrued Interest, to work through four of the most consequential questions in streaming right now — the Netflix engagement panic, the YouTube revenue parallel nobody is drawing, what Fox/Roku actually means for the home screen, and whether the Paramount/WBD deal ever closes. Netflix and YouTube are in the same weight class but Wall Street hasn't noticed. Strip away the noise and compare the revenue. Netflix and...

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 d...

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 bi...

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 si...

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 ...

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 ...

Have a question? Send us a text! Justin Ruiss, SVP of Media at BWG Global, joins Tim Rowe to break down three of the biggest deals in streaming right now — Walmart's acquisition of Vibe.co, the Comcast spinout of NBCU and Peacock, and Fox's $22 billion move on Roku. Justin hosts 30 primary research forums a month with senior industry executives, and brings a synthesized, cross-vertical read that goes well beyond the headlines. Why Walmart Acquired Vibe and How They Declared War on Amazon The ...

Have a question? Send us a text! The conversation is a companion to Nathaniel's recent piece on microdramas. Nathaniel Danziger, Founding Voice at State of Streaming, joins Tim Rowe to unpack what makes a microdrama possible, the operational realities driving this mobile-first shift, and what the partnership between Peacock and ReelShort means for the broader media landscape. On the Microdrama Boom Microdramas have rapidly grown into a $30 billion global phenomenon, defined by short, hyper-me...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Josh Matthews, Founder of StreamScoop, a Substack publication that aggregates open-source viewership data across streaming, broadcast, and cable into weekly data dumps, monthly deep dives, and the best streaming TV guide being published right now — which SOS syndicates weekly. 📺 Get This week's StreamScoop Streaming TV Guide Here Nobody was aggregating open-source streaming viewership data in one place. So Josh built it. StreamScoop s...

Have a question? Send us a text! Wim Sweldens, co-founder of Kiswe, built a direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming company because he unplugged his cable box — and never plugged it back in. Twelve years later, the technology he knew was coming has arrived, and the sports organizations smart enough to own the relationship with their fans are the ones pulling ahead. The RSN Collapse Created a Blueprint Problem, Not Just a Revenue Problem When regional sports networks (RSNs) fell apart, teams...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Russell Fink, a two-decade veteran of regional sports networks, to dig into the measurement crisis hiding in plain sight inside sports streaming. The conversation pairs directly with Russell's piece published in State of Streaming this week — Too Much of a Good Thing: Sports' Measurement Problem — and uses Jurassic Park to explain why having the data isn't the same as using it. The RSN Era Was the Last Time Everyone Won at Once Russel...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Lucas Bertrand, CEO of Looper Insights, to break down what Looper's Q1 Media Placement Value ($MPV) data reveals about how connected TV home screens are being used — and misused — heading into the biggest sports quarter in recent memory. Recorded the day the FIFA World Cup kicked off, the conversation pairs directly with the Preston Smalley/Roku episode released earlier that week. The CTV Home Screen The Arbitrage of Streaming Looper's...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Preston Smalley, VP of Viewer Product at Roku, unpacking the first new Roku home screen in a decade — how it was designed for 100 million+ households, what the hub methodology means for sports fragmentation, and why "delight" isn't just a brand word at Roku. It's a measured KPI. 82% of streaming viewers want you to read their mind Roku built a home screen with a billion possible configurations to get closer to doing exactly that — and ...

Have a question? Send us a text! The conversation is a companion to Hemant's recent piece on AI personalization at scale. Hemant Soni, AI Architect and SOS. contributor, joins Tim Rowe to unpack what streaming platforms can learn from the infrastructure telecom companies built under survival pressure — and how to start applying it now. On Combatting Churn Streaming platforms collect mountains of behavioral data — what you watch, what you skip, when you disengage — and respond days or we...

Have a question? Send us a text! Bonus Episode: Tim Rowe on the FPC Podcast — Open Infrastructure, Closed Loops, and the Ad Tech Middle Tim joins Kevin Flood, Rich Ashton, and Ciarán O'Kane — General Partners at First Party Capital — for a conversation on their investment thesis and what it reveals about where streaming advertising infrastructure is actually heading. FPC crossed State of Streaming's radar when their corporate innovation model announcement landed the same week as a notable pro...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Seth Mittman, VP of Integrated Sales at Ampersand, unpacking how the ad infrastructure jointly owned by Comcast, Charter, and Cox unifies linear and streaming inventory — and what that means for brand marketers, agency planners, and anyone trying to understand where Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD) inventory fits in a modern media mix. Did you know streaming-only buys are leaving reach on the table? Brands that added linear ...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with David Sanderson, Founder of Reelgood, unpacking how content availability data reveals where attention actually goes on streaming — and what that means for media buyers, platform teams, and content strategists. Content availability isn't a metadata problem. It's an attention problem. Most of the industry is making catalog, licensing, and buying decisions based on incomplete information. Reelgood built the infrastructure to fix that — an...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Mark Holland, SVP Media Products at Sportradar, unpacking their new sports media report and the five pillars powering the next generation of sports viewing — from real-time probability overlays to AI-driven personalization at scale. Data isn't a stat — it's a story machine. The box score is table stakes. What Sportradar is building goes further: real-time context that turns an ordinary hit into a career milestone, a routine shot into a geome...

Have a question? Send us a text! Tim sits down with Kris Johns, Founder of AdGood, a 501(c)3 that aggregates unused premium streaming inventory from Samsung Ads, LG, A+E, and Scripps — making it available to nonprofits at 70%+ off, with budgets as small as $250. Key Takeaways The donated media model is broken. Most nonprofits never get access, and those who do receive a one-time impression dump with no way to iterate or optimize. 1:26 – Why the existing pipeline leaves most nonprofits behind2...

Have a question? Send us a text! We talk about The Aggregator Paradox in today's episode, get that article here - https://www.stateofstreaming.com/articles/the-aggregator-paradox In this episode, Tim Rowe sits down with Lucas Bertrand, CEO of Looper Insights, a merchandising intelligence company auditing connected TV platforms across 25 countries and 250 devices to help streamers understand where their content shows up and what that placement is worth. The conversation covers why streaming co...

Have a question? Send us a text! Download Todd's Research on The Creator Economy Here: https://podcast.stateofstreaming.com/downloads/rts-creator-economy/ In this episode, Tim Rowe sits down with Todd Nicolini, a research and insights veteran who spent over two decades at the Washington Post connecting data to decision-makers across advertising, digital subscriptions, content licensing, and the newsroom. The conversation covers where streaming is headed, why the creator economy is poised to e...

Have a question? Send us a text! In this episode, Tim Rowe sits down with Johnathan Barnes, Founder and CEO of Supply Monitor, to tackle one of Streaming TV advertising's biggest problems: waste. A recent Truthset report estimates that advertisers will waste $7.4 billion in the Connected TV market in 2026, roughly 40% of all open programmatic ad spend, because the audience data guiding those buys is only accurate 13% of the time. Johnathan Barnes breaks down where that waste comes from,...

Have a question? Send us a text! DOWNLOAD THE EMARKETER SPORTS VIEWERSHIP REPORT REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE HERE: https://podcast.stateofstreaming.com/downloads/the-sports-report/ In this episode, Tim Rowe sits down with Ross Benes, Senior Analyst at EMARKETER, to separate the hype from reality in sports streaming. Ross's research reveals a striking disconnect: while streaming dominates nearly two-thirds of total TV screen time, live sports viewing on streaming platforms accounts for just 10%...

Have a question? Send us a text! https://2026.marketecturelive.com/e/u/checkout/marketecturemedia/tickets/order Use discount code FINAL30 for 30% off general admission. Brands and agencies attend free. In this episode, Tim Rowe sits down with Sam Khoury, Chief Strategy Officer at Marketecture Media, to go behind the scenes on one of ad tech's fastest-growing media companies and preview their upcoming flagship event, Marketecture Live 3: Consumers in Control. From the origins of the comp...