Blue Tiger Engage Nov 2024

Freely, a new streaming service backed by British public broadcasters, will be available on Amazon Fire televisions following a “landmark deal” with the U.S. technology giant, the companies have reported.

The deal is a win for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, whose joint venture, called Everyone TV, launched Freely earlier this year, allowing viewers to stream both live TV and on-demand content for free when they purchase smart TVs carrying the service. The tie-up will help take content from the four public broadcasters – which are required by UK law to offer programming beneficial to the public interest – to more British households, through smart TVs using Amazon’s popular Fire operating system.

“A deal of this kind, between a technology giant and those working in the public interest, is remarkable,” Everyone TV Chief Executive Jonathan Thompson said.  “It represents a significant development in widening the availability of Freely and therefore ensuring UK audiences can access free TV well into the future.”

In an unprecedented move, this month saw Amazon take the decision to close Freevee, its free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service and is set to fold its content into its Prime Video service. 

Freevee originally launched out of Amazon-owned IMDb in 2019 as IMDb Freedive and was rebranded a few months after launch to IMDb TV and then to Freevee in 2022.

Freevee will reportedly be phased out over the course of several weeks. Its role in Amazon’s stable had grown increasingly unclear after Prime Video introduced advertising this year. This decision is part of Amazon’s broader strategy to simplify its streaming services and provide a more unified experience for its users.  

November 2024 makes five years since Disney+ became the go-to streaming platform for Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and all Disney-branded content and 1 year of the ad tier on Disney+ in Europe. Unveiling its fourth quarter results, Disney announced that it has 122.7 million Disney+ core paid subscribers, up by 4.4 million subs over the previous quarter.

Disney, which also owns the Hulu streaming platform, ended the fourth quarter with a total of 174 million Disney+ and Hulu subscribers.

CEO Bob Iger said that Disney’s ad-supported tier is responsible for approximately 60% of all new subscribers. He added that the ad-tier – which was launched in December 2022 (in the US) – is responsible for 37% of subs in the US and 30% globally.

ITV continue to promote the growth of their on-demand channel ITVX. Now boasting some 40m registered users in the UK with over 20,000 hours of content all for free. Broadcaster VOD (BVOD) advertising is a great way to target your chosen audience with relevant content as they tune in to watch high quality content on trusted platforms.

Looking ahead to 2025, ITV are promoting the launch of their new ad format ‘pause ads’, a type of ad that appears on a viewer’s screen when they pause their content on a connected TV device. The ad remains on screen until the viewer resumes watching or hides the ad. Pause ads promise to enable advertisers to connect with viewers at a key moment and are described by ITV as an “addressable billboard” in the living room.   Although pause ads are a relatively new advertising format, they have been used on Channel 4 in the UK for some time and Netflix has also recently started using them in the US.  One thing is for certain however, this premium advertising environment allows advertisers to have a conversation with viewers without needing the budget of the big screen.

Netflix now has 70m global monthly active users for its ad tier, the streaming giant has announced.  It amounts to a 75% increase in users since Netflix last provided an update on the number of ad tier members in May (40m). This time last year, amid the one-year anniversary of its ad tier, Netflix had just 15m users.

According to Netflix, over half of new sign-ups in ad-supported markets are for the ad tier plan. In its Q3 earnings released last month, Netflix reported ad tier membership grew 35% quarter on quarter; however, it did not release an update on the total number of ad tier subscribers, nor did it announce ad revenue figures.

Netflix will stop reporting subscriber figures as part of its quarterly earnings beginning in Q1 2025, a move by the CTV giant to shift investor attention away from subscriber growth and toward other metrics, such as revenue growth and profit margins.