NAB Show Preview: Beyond the subscriber count and toward smarter monetization
The business of streaming has matured past the point where subscriber count alone tells a useful story. Platforms are now managing complex relationships across advertising tiers, third-party distributors, bundled offers and direct subscriptions – often simultaneously – and the tools used to measure performance have struggled to keep pace with that complexity.
“As the media landscape becomes more fragmented, the link between content and revenue is coming into sharper focus,” said Craig Wilson, principal enterprise specialist for broadcast at Avid.
“At NAB Show, there will be more attention on how organizations understand the performance of their content across platforms, across its full lifecycle. That shift toward visibility and insight is changing how decisions are made, from editorial priorities through to long-term investment,” said Wilson.
Monetization and measurement are expected to be central topics at the 2026 NAB Show, not as abstract strategic discussions but as practical questions about infrastructure, data and the tools needed to make hybrid revenue models function at scale.
A market still speaking two languages
One of the more structural problems facing the industry is that linear and streaming advertising still largely operate on different measurement systems.
Linear television is predominantly traded on impacts, a metric based on audience size, while streaming is measured by impressions, a digital standard. With a significant share of total TV ad spending still in linear, that split creates friction for buyers and sellers trying to plan and transact across both environments.
“The market is split between two main currencies – impacts and impressions – with an estimated 65% of TV ad spend still in linear and traded on impacts, and around 35% in nonlinear environments measured by impressions,” said Steve Reynolds, chief executive officer of Imagine Communications.
“That fragmentation creates inefficiencies and can weaken trust, making the move toward a converged trading model and single currency across linear and streaming essential for more effective trading for both broadcasters and advertisers,” added Reynolds.
Operational alignment between linear and streaming sales is part of how some companies are approaching the problem.
“We see media companies bringing technology, data and processes together to support the monetization of multichannel content distribution. Companies are using hybrid sales processes, unified products and holistic measurement to unite the best of linear and streaming into one,” said Dave Dembowski, chief revenue officer at Operative.