By Joshua Woods, Strategic Solution Architect, Red Bee Media

Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels are becoming increasingly prevalent and influencing viewing decisions of both movie and television content.

They are meeting a growing demand for content outside traditional linear TV and VOD windows, offering original content, theatrical releases, and other popular properties. 

As their rise in popularity and reach shape content provider’s distribution models and consumer habits, content discovery has an increasingly relevant role for platform operators and consumers alike.

 

 

How has streaming evolved?

The growing demand for streamed content and an increase in cord cutting, has led to major content providers compartmentalizing their television and movie properties and releasing them exclusively on own-branded platforms like MAX, Disney+, Peacock, and Paramount+.

Increasingly, viewers are left with a plethora of streaming options. The problems that streaming solved – cheaper costs for the consumer, on demand viewing, consolidated viewing experience and ease of use – have devolved back into the problems that cord cutting was meant to solve in the first place. Steadily increasing prices and an overwhelming overabundance of choice have become burdensome.

As costs continue to rise – Disney+, Hulu, and Apple TV are the most recent to increase pricing in 2023 -consumers are rationalizing their subscriptions as they seek content most tailored to their tastes and needs.

As consumers pare down their paid options, they are still searching for content that their streamers of choice are not hosting.  Through free-to-consumer platform options like Pluto, Roku, and Tubi, as well as FAST channel options on other native streaming services, providers have opened a new avenue for consumer accessibility to their content. They are offering a free solution to viewers who reject the limitations of traditional linear television. With a reported 74 million monthly active users on Tubi alone in 2023, FAST channels are reaching a growing number of viewers who are supplementing the content pipelines they are choosing to retain, with free alternatives.

 

 

Why are viewers shifting to FAST content at an increasing rate?

Samba’s 2023 State of Viewership analysis reports that FAST platforms have “tracked year-over-year growth in viewership.”

This growth is supported by a willingness for consumers to accept advertising if it means a decrease or elimination of subscription costs.

This has brought a flood of accounts signing up for Disney and Netflix’s ad-supported subscription tiers in 2023. Interestingly, ad-supported content provides the cost cutting factors that led many to cord-cut in the first place, while still maintaining the “on-demand” benefits of traditional SVOD streaming models.

FAST channels bridge the gap further between “tune-in” and “on-demand” viewership, offering the comfort of traditional linear “channel surfing” with scheduled content, while still providing content options that can specifically suit the tastes of a user. The scalability and flexibility of the content offering providers can make available within FAST channels offer a much more personalized experience for viewers. This experience packages content and provides channels that can meet both niche and wide-reaching audiences with the same care and attention. The volume of FAST channels available to consumers continues to expand, with many platforms offering hundreds of options to their users.

As the services expand within the FAST arena and the content offering continues to grow, consumers are increasingly overwhelmed by the wide ranging choice. Alongside the increasing number of services available to consumers, content owners are now consolidating their own platforms.

Many content owners are reshaping their services into larger, singular offerings, like HBO Max and Discovery+ becoming Max, and Disney+ and Hulu soon to merge into a streamlined service. Content that users are familiar with watching is being, brought into first party streaming options, or moved exclusively onto FAST channels, as was done with Warner Brothers properties on Tubi in 2023, including Westworld and Raised By Wolves.

This constant shuffling of properties alongside the growth of FAST channels poses similar problems that the growth of linear television and streaming services presented to consumers.

 

Where can consumers find the movies and TV shows they want to watch?

While FAST provides accessibility and affordability, consumers still need a way to identify when programming is available on FAST channels.

Fortunately, universal search capabilities offered by metadata providers deliver solutions to platforms that provide consumers with the tools they need to discover which platforms are hosting the content they want to watch.

Universal search options, using persistent ID structures, tie together FAST, Linear, and SVOD data to simplify the content discovery process. Identifying where, when, and how to watch content is increasingly vital to any platform’s commercial success.

Providing FAST airing information within a platform’s search functionality and integrated with linear and VOD content guarantees users are not reliant on out-of-platform sources for their search needs.

This provides security for platform owners that the FAST content they are providing access to is prioritized over other platforms or competitors and is a net benefit for consumers who already object to the complexity of finding their content of choice.

Universal search and metadata integration across all content types on a platform has already provided excellent experiences for platform users across linear and VOD services, and with the rapid expansion of FAST content, folding that metadata into the content discovery experience can only be a positive for platforms and their users.

Red Bee Media’s Content Discovery proposition provides the highest levels of data integrity and flexibility, seamless cross-platform configuration, and universal search capabilities. These features provide robust solutions to the challenges posed by the evolving entertainment media landscape, and we would be delighted to discuss this with you. For more information, feel free to contact Joshua Woods, Strategic Solution Architect at Red Bee Media.