This week we’re pleased to share our interview with Roku’s Senior Director, Global Ad Platform Partnerships and Business Development Miles Fisher. We do a deep dive into Roku’s recently announced partnership with Amazon Ads, which appears to be a potentially significant milestone in CTV realizing its ultimate potential as a full funnel medium.

As Miles explains, key to the partnership’s opportunity is the scale that both companies bring; Roku has 125 million logged in viewers per day on its devices, while Amazon has massive Prime program as well as other user data. Advertisers will be able to tap this impressive scale to target specific viewers with tangible performance outcomes. Roku and Amazon first-party data will be integrated through a custom identity resolution service.   

Roku has been focused on driving CTV to become a performance medium for a while, including programmatic (see panel with Roku and Walmart executives at VideoNuze’s June ’23 CTV Ad Summit). Miles said the companies have conducted early tests of the integration with positive tests. This is a partnership is definitely one to keep an eye on.

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In May, 2025 a milestone was reached according to Nielsen’s The Gauge: total streaming viewership surpassed total broadcast plus cable viewership for the first time. Streaming had a 44.8% viewership share while traditional TV had a 44.2% viewership share. To put these numbers in context, back in May 2021 streaming had a 26% share and traditional TV had a 64% share. 

As we discuss, there have been 4 main drivers of these seismic changes: (1) YouTube’s ascent as the number one destination for streaming content on CTVs, (2) the complete collapse of cable TV viewership, down from 39% four years ago to 24.1% now, driven in part by the disinvestment in cable TV networks by media companies in favor of their streaming services and (4) the rise of free ad-supported streaming services “FASTs” which have become broadly popular, especially among viewers 65 and over, with Tubi alone now having 100 million active viewers per month.

The combination of these factors has upended the TV industry. As we discussed on last week’s podcast, “Dissecting Warner Bros. Discovery’s Split,” Wall Street has taken notice. Just two companies - YouTube and Netflix - now have an estimated combined market value of over $1 trillion. Meanwhile the rest of the industry’s value has atrophied, with media companies now spinning off their cable TV networks. 

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This week we dissect the big news that Warner Bros. Discovery is going to split into two companies, one that will hold its global cable networks and the other that will hold the Warner Bros. and HBO/Max assets. 

It has been a long, winding path for the Time Warner assets, starting with AT&T’s proposed acquisition back in 2016. As Colin and I discuss, there have been a litany of questionable strategic and product/streaming decisons that have led to a significant decline in Warner Bros. Discovery’s valuation. As I detail, WBD’s decline starkly contrasts with the massive appreciation Netflix has experienced since 2016. 

Importantly, we also discuss the structural change that’s occurred in the media industry since 2016. Netflix is now valued at around $500 billion while YouTube’s imputed value - if it were a standalone company - is now around $500-$700 billion. So just two companies have a combined value of over $1 trillion - no doubt way more than the entire media industry’s value pre-streaming. Net, net, Netflix and YouTube have dramatically expanded the value of media pie, but have kept the vast majority of that increase themselves. 

Last but not least, at the beginning of the podcast we quickly review the final decision in the Disney-Comcast arbitration over Hulu’s valuation. I can’t resist mentioning that way back in 2018 I was advocating for Comcast to acquire all of Hulu (here and here). Instead they launched Peacock and have lost billions since.

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New data from Looper Insights illustrates how meaningful percentages of both video executives and viewers now see YouTube as an appealing destination for long-form content, including for premium content - as well as a viable alternative to major streaming platforms. The data underscores YouTube’s amazing evolution from a primarily UGC, short-form outlet to a genuine competitor for premium streaming on the big screen. The Looper data aligns with our podcast last week about Nielsen’s The Gauge data, which showed YouTube’s increasing share of TV viewing time.  

Part of the consequence of YouTube’s ascendance is the decline of broadcast and cable TV networks’ viewership. In the podcast we discuss continuing retrenchment at Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney and NBCU. We wrap up with a discussion of new Magna-Roku data and the Fubo-DAZN sports cross-licensing partnership.

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