Media Companies Capture Innovation and Legacy Value With Linear Streaming
As traditional TV viewership migrates to streaming platforms, media companies are facing a new challenge – how to capture revenue from a growing streaming business while maximizing revenue from a still-large legacy linear business. What was once viewed as a distant threat from digital-first companies like Netflix and Amazon has now become a direct competitive reality, especially as these platforms secure rights to the crown jewel of broadcast content: live sports.
In the U.S., Amazon and Netflix have recently inked deals to stream NFL and NBA games, while Europe is seeing record streaming audiences for major events including the Paris Olympics and UEFA. To harness this exciting growth, international sports leagues such as France’s Ligue 1 and Italy’s Serie A are developing their own direct-to-consumer streaming platforms, signaling a global acceleration of this shift.
As live sports migrate to streaming, so does advertiser demand. While this is a revenue opportunity for media companies, it creates new operational complexity for media companies who need to bring these two audiences together to sell profitably and deliver a single campaign for an advertiser across different channels and platforms.
The Rise of Linear Streaming
To address this new landscape, media companies are turning to “linear streaming,” a strategy that combines the upfront premium sales process of traditional linear TV with the dynamic execution capabilities of digital advertising. This hybrid approach enables media companies to maximize yield while delivering impactful, ROI-driven solutions to advertisers. Linear streaming also provides media companies with the ability to lock in premium prices and secure predictable revenue streams with more traditional direct sales processes but combine it with long tail automated sales and dynamic multichannel ad delivery.
At its core, linear streaming requires a unified operational and sales workflow. Advertisers today care less about the specific platform and more about reaching their target audiences wherever they are watching. Media companies with fragmented systems for streaming and traditional TV will struggle to meet these expectations. By consolidating product, pricing, and proposal management into a single hybrid workflow, media sales teams can deliver streamlined, multi-channel proposals that deliver internal efficiencies and meet advertiser needs.