Future of TV Briefing: How TV networks’ streaming and linear ad businesses fared in Q4 2024

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at what TV network owners’ latest quarterly earnings reports indicate about the state of the TV and streaming ad business.

• Fourth and long
YouTube’s original programming, A+E Networks’ new name and more

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Fourth and long

Time to check in on how TV network owners’ advertising businesses are faring as they shift to streaming.

As has been the case, the companies’ streaming ad businesses are growing but not to the extent of meaningfully offsetting their shrinking traditional TV ad businesses. Although not every TV network’s traditional TV advertising business shrunk in the fourth quarter of 2024. (Disney is omitted from the list because Disney continues to omit overall ad revenue from its quarterly earnings reports).

• AMC Networks (U.S.): -12% change in ad revenue year over year
• Fox: +21%
• NBCUniversal: Flat
• Paramount: -1%
• TelevisaUnivision (U.S.): +2%
• Warner Bros. Discovery: -12%

Fox is clearly the outlier in the group above. But that’s because Fox seems to most clearly represent the aspects of the traditional TV ad business that are working, or at least worked especially in Q4 2024. For one thing, it benefitted from the U.S. presidential election driving political ad dollars as well as cable news viewers its way. For another, it benefitted from broadcasting the Major League Baseball playoffs, including the World Series. Live programming continues to be the buoy for the traditional TV ad business.

Fox also indicates the strengthening of streaming ad businesses. Its free, ad-supported streaming service Tubi saw its ad revenue increase by 31% year over year and grew “even when excluding political revenue,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said during the company’s latest quarterly earnings call.

That’s kinda to be expected, though. Streaming ad businesses are still relatively young, so like children, they should be growing. And they are. But still not enough to offset the aged and aging traditional TV ad businesses. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery provides the clearest view of how TV networks’ traditional TV and streaming advertising businesses are faring by comparison.

For Paramount, streaming ad revenue increased by 9% year over year, and traditional TV ad revenue decreased by 4%. Meanwhile, WBD saw streaming ad revenue increased by 26% year over year, while its traditional TV ad revenue fell by 17%.

However, for each company, streaming ad revenue continues to account for a fraction of overall ad revenue. Paramount’s streaming ad revenue represented 26% of its traditional TV ad revenue. And WBD’s streaming ad revenue represented 15% of its traditional TV ad revenue.

And it’s not just Paramount and WBD seeing this dynamic at play. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal attributed its 0.4% year-over-year growth in overall ad revenue “primarily due to an increase in revenue at Peacock, offset by lower revenue at our networks,” according to Comcast’s latest quarterly earnings report.

Although Disney does not report much on its ad business, it did provide some numbers for its streaming ad revenue. Disney’s overall streaming ad revenue increased by 16% year over year when excluding the Disney+ Hotstar service that Disney spun out last year. The company attributed the ad revenue increase for the combination of Disney+ and Hulu to “more impressions, partially offset by lower rates,” Disney said in its quarterly earnings report.

What we’ve heard

“There is this sense that everywhere we go we’re making a case for ourselves and for our industry. It’s getting the industry to catch up and understand what’s happening here and how they could be a part of it.”

— Link Neal from creator duo Rhett & Link on creators’ presence at SXSW

Numbers to know

125 million: Number of paid subscribers that YouTube has.

$7.99: Monthly subscription price for YouTube’s new ad-lite tier.

3: Maximum length for videos that can be uploaded to Bluesky.

4: Number of groups in talks with the U.S. about buying TikTok from ByteDance.

69%: Percentage share of survey respondents that stream live games.

What we’ve covered

Creators on edge about Meta’s reported Reels spin-off:

• The Information reported that Meta is considering splitting Reels off from Instagram into its own app.
• The change could affect creators’ Reels viewership as well as their brand deals.

Read more about the potential Reels spin-off here.

Why marketers should pay attention to SXSW’s embrace of creators:

• This year SXSW hosted 73 sessions for the creator economy.
• Creators are still having to educate brands on sponsorship opportunities.

Read more about SXSW’s creator embrace here.

Roblox’s ad expansion sparks backlash from creator studios:

• As Roblox has increased direct ad sales, it’s pushed fewer brand deals toward creator studios.
• The studios serve as intermediaries that employ individual creators to build branded experiences in Roblox.

Read more about Roblox here.

Whalar Group bets on 24,000 square-foot creator campus to broker brand deals, recruit talent under one roof:

• The influencer agency charges creators a membership price of $5,750 per year to access The Lighthouse.
• The creator campus features production studios, co-working spaces and a 50-person theater.

Read more about Whalar here.

Brands hire Gen X and boomer influencers as the ‘power of the silver influencer’ rises:

• Progresso Soup and Harmless Harvest are among the marketers working with old influencers.
• Edelman has formed a group of 55 years old and older influencers to work with brands.

Read more about boomer influencers here.

What we’re reading

YouTube’s original programming (lack of) ambition:

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said the platform wasn’t “good at picking content” — despite former YouTube Original series “Cobra Kai” going on to become a hit on Netflix — as YouTube has decided to stay out of the original programming market it effectively exited three years ago, according to Variety.

A+E Networks’ new name:

The cable TV network collective has decided to rebrand as A+E Global Media in a bid to reinvest its business as oriented around digital(?) and inclusive of live sports(???), according to Ad Age.

YouTube’s long, long tail:

For every MrBeast banger, there are countless videos on the Google-owned video platform that have less than 100 views; in fact, the median video’s estimated view count is 41 views, according to BBC.

Paramount+ plus Pluto:

Paramount plans to put its flagship streaming service and its free, ad-supported streaming TV service on the same tech stack but likely won’t combine the two into a single service for at least a couple years, according to Bloomberg.