Industry Insights: How platforms are balancing ads, subscriptions and viewer demands

As the streaming landscape expands, monetization strategies are evolving just as quickly.

In part three of our Industry Insights roundtable series on streaming, broadcast vendors discuss the most effective ways to generate revenue across streaming platforms. From the rise of hybrid models combining subscription and advertising to the critical role of dynamic ad insertion and programmatic sales, participants explore how broadcasters and streamers can adapt their models to meet changing audience expectations while maximizing revenue.

The discussion also highlights the balance between monetization and viewer satisfaction, the impact of personalization and strategies for optimizing revenue across multiple distribution channels.

Key takeaways from this Industry Insights roundtable

• Hybrid models dominate: Combining advertising and subscription tiers is becoming the most sustainable approach for streamers looking to maximize both reach and revenue.
• Programmatic advertising surge: Automated ad buying is helping OTT services better monetize long-tail inventory and small advertisers, though privacy shifts are forcing new data strategies.
• Personalized ad experiences: Dynamic ad insertion and AI-driven personalization are critical to increasing viewer engagement and boosting ROI for both broadcasters and advertisers.
• Multichannel optimization needed: Content creators must build workflows that allow flexible, efficient distribution across OTT, FAST, CTV and social platforms to fully capitalize on content assets.
• Balancing revenue and satisfaction: Offering multiple monetization options, maintaining high content quality, and minimizing ad disruption are key to keeping viewers engaged and loyal.

What are the most effective monetization models currently used in streaming?

Dave Dembowski, VP of global sales, Operative: The most effective model depends on the individual media company. Some streamers have huge catalogs of classic movies or exclusive premium shows which people are willing to pay premium subscription rates for while other streamers might feature live events like sports and popular reruns, which are often better monetized with advertising. Many streamers are experimenting with tiers to determine the best combination of subscription and advertising.

How can broadcasters look to maximize revenue?

Dave Dembowski: Broadcasters can maximize revenue best when they have a complete view of their product catalogue, projected audience and advertiser demand. Broadcasters need to balance pre-sold or up-front sales at premium prices with spot sales that can be sold dynamically. They also need to determine how best to bundle inventory into product offerings that maximize CPMs while still leaving room for open-market bidding.

What impact does programmatic advertising have on OTT monetization?

Dave Dembowski: Programmatic is a great way for OTT to automate media sales and delivery. While not all inventory should be or needs to be sold programmatically, many OTT media companies are interested in selling to smaller advertisers and selling their long tail or unsold direct inventory this way. What’s more, combined with self-service media buying programmatic can be a highly efficient way for OTT media companies to bring in extra demand efficiently.

What role do dynamic ad insertion and personalized advertising play in revenue growth?

Dave Dembowski: Advertisers look at CTV and streaming as addressable platforms, and they want to target audiences and personalize creative messaging and buy the right impressions to reach them at the right time. At the same time, media companies want to increase their agility and ability to deliver relevant ads. Dynamic Ad Insertion gives media companies that ability, so they can layer in advanced targeting to deliver different ads to different audiences and make faster ad placement decisions and real-time optimizations.

How can content creators optimize revenue streams across multiple distribution channels?

Dave Dembowski: The main component for multichannel optimization is a unified view of the entire business. Understanding revenue, audience and product information across channels helps content creators spot opportunities to deliver the right content to audiences where they want it and bundle products effectively for advertiser demand and scale. What’s more, distribution and revenue partnerships that help content creators reach new audiences or bring in incremental demand can only be effectively evaluated when they have a cohesive understanding of their entire business.

What strategies are effective in balancing monetization with viewer satisfaction?

Dave Dembowski: Viewers are fickle and notoriously contradictory because what they really want is free content with no ads. Ask them if they like ads and they will say no. Ask them if they want to pay a fee to get no ads and they will also say no. The right strategy is to give audiences a choice so that they feel like they are in control and that they are getting good value. That doesn’t mean they have to be perfectly satisfied, because the goal is to also maximize revenue by encouraging audiences to trade up to a more premium tier.

Read More to see what other industry leaders are saying.