Reinventing TV: AI, programmatic and the overlooked battle for your biggest screen
At first glance, the suited-up executives roaming the halls of Amsterdam’s RAI convention center for IBC2025 looked cut from the same cloth. But their paths to the TV industry’s biggest tech showcase couldn’t have been more different.
For years, their strategies diverged: Broadcasters, especially outside of the U.S., often clung to the status quo with their linear TV playbooks, while streamers pushed forward, building on data integrations, programmatic ad buying and, more recently, AI.
Now the gap is narrowing. At last week’s IBC2025, broadcasters showed how they are racing to adopt streamers’ playbooks, from programmatic to data integrations. And streamers laid out opportunities to further accelerate AI-powered ad formats and personalization.
But beneath these big shifts is an even bigger question, one that may be overlooked by marketers as AI dominates their attention: Who controls the pipes powering content discovery and advertising in this next era of TV? And perhaps more importantly: Should anyone?
Broadcasters bet on programmatic
Broadcasters’ move to programmatic augurs the new era of TV.
“We’re a little late … but it’s a good time to get into [programmatic],” said Hamid Davari, director of advertising, TV and CTV at OSN, during a panel.
When framing the opportunity, he explained that as broadcasters cut costs, programmatic can positively impact the bottom line. “Linear TV is very undervalued in our market. … Unlike some European broadcasters who are worried about losing revenue by moving to a CPM model … we stand to profit more.” Davari said that for big shows, especially, programmatic means less pitching for ad budgets, faster deals and, potentially, more revenue.
Indeed, if broadcasters are increasingly willing to make the leap into programmatic, it’s because the demand is there. “There is huge appetite from [holding groups] to continue this push into the programmatic world,” said Sam Wilson, EMEA vice president at SpringServe, part of Magnite, as he joined Davari onstage.
In a separate panel, Julie Triolo, senior vice president of product marketing, advertising sales at Fox Advertising, confirmed the trend. “A lot of buyers would like to transact in that manner,” she said, adding that about 30% of Fox’s inventory was already activated programmatically.
And it’s not solely big brands clamoring for programmatic adoption. The next wave of programmatic ad budgets is just as likely to come from small and medium businesses (SMBs) as it is from big media buyers. Magnite is among a handful of ad tech players, like Comcast Advertising, that have invested in ad buying tools aimed at SMBs in the past year, hoping to pull spend from social. The goal is to bring “net new money into the TV world,” Wilson said.
AI unlocking new content, ad formats
Buzz swirled around AI and the efficiency and personalization it’s poised to unlock.
In a session on the future of live sports, James Pearce, senior vice president of broadcast and streaming at DAZN, cited classic ad formats like L-shape screen banners and billboards around soccer-pitch perimeters as candidates to reinvent with AI-powered personalization. “I definitely think there’s more opportunity to monetize and do advertising in a more clever way,” he said.
AI could also help with cutting content delivery costs by optimizing ad break placement across vast libraries, said Paul O’Donovan, senior director of product at MediaKind, as he joined Pearce onstage.
AI commentators can also help make niche sports financially viable by boosting engagement. “It makes it easy to create content … and you can justify putting content on the platform that normally you wouldn’t do,” Pearce said.
Though, an AI commentator may only work up to a certain point. “For your absolutely top-tier content that you want to look as good possible, I think it would be quite brave to go and say that, for the World Cup final, I’ll just have commentary done with AI,” Pearce said.
Smart TV discoverability — an overlooked battleground
Questions of programmatic buying and AI-driven experiences, though, are ultimately eclipsed by the existential question of who will control access to content on smart TVs.
As smart TVs dominate living rooms and streamers like Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly mull consolidation, smaller content providers risk being squeezed out if they can’t compete for prime OS placements — with potential impacts on content and ad inventory diversity and quantity.
It’s a familiar story in tech: From Apple’s iOS to Google’s search results, those building on a platform must play by the platform owner’s rules.
During a panel on the future of smart TVs, Frank Rippl, global head of TV product at Vodafone, and Sidharth Jayant, chief product officer at Rakuten TV, both cited ongoing platform support — or the lack thereof — as a major concern for their smart TV apps.
“It increasingly difficult to maintain a good user experience on all devices. There’s a lot of changes happening from version to version every year,” Rippl said. That lack of platform support is something that, in the case of the big [operating systems] OSs, can’t really be helped.
“When we think about … the OSs at Google and Amazon, they are, generously, the 187th most important product that they’re working on,” said Matthew Henick, senior vice president of Ventura TV OS at The Trade Desk.
These platforms’ grip on the infrastructure powering CTV is something that Henick is hoping to chip away at with the Ventura OS. That mission carries increased urgency when players like Vodafone say that smart TVs are “currently not growth drivers.”
“This simply doesn’t work today with the revenue shares which are applied on the app stores for us,” Rippl echoed. “If you have an amazing show that came out of nowhere, that should get as much play as a really big Netflix show. So, we won’t do pay to play. We won’t have our own service that we’re trying to put first, and that way, hopefully everyone can compete,” Henick said.
The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.