Technology

Basics of Streaming explains how short-form platforms use preloading, adaptive quality, and recommendation ranking to make every swipe feel instant. That speed comes at a cost, turning better ranking and smarter delivery into key levers for reducing wasted bandwidth, CDN…

From the Archives revisits how Viki turned fan-powered localization into a distribution advantage, using community subtitling to expand into new markets while revealing where demand was forming. As AI makes translation cheaper, Viki's bigger advantage remains the community intelligence that…

Skip examines how AI-powered TV discovery is turning recommendations into premium inventory, making accurate metadata, entitlements, and deep links critical to winning visibility before paying for placement.

Roku sits at the center of a broader push by retailers, media companies and ad-tech firms to control more of the TV interface, from discovery and subscriptions to advertising, data and payments. Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy and The Trade Desk…

McDonald’s is testing third-party ads on drive-thru screens as it builds a broader media network across its restaurants, app and kiosks. The company sees a billion-dollar opportunity in monetizing traffic and screens its core business already pays to generate, with…

Bango, Paramount, and AT&T show how growth gets more profitable when companies can reuse infrastructure, systems, and customer relationships they’ve already paid for. The real leverage comes from adding revenue without adding another stack, vendor, workflow, or team.

Basics of Streaming examines how global expansion multiplies complexity across rights, localization, pricing, payments, regulation, and devices. Services that standardize and automate those workflows can add markets without adding proportional cost and headcount, improving operating leverage as they scale.

Looper Insights’ Lucas Bertrand breaks down the economics of TV home-screen real estate, where every premium placement comes with a tradeoff between paid promotion, partner commitments, owned programming, and personalized discovery. With 71% of surveyed executives saying measurement gaps are…

Paramount’s $6 billion-plus synergy plan now has to work around protections for theatrical output, production spending, studio lots, and cable negotiations, putting more pressure on duplicated corporate and technology operations. With roughly $79 billion of net debt expected at closing,…

Skip examines how mid-sized streamers can navigate TV operating systems that increasingly control discovery, distribution, and customer acquisition. The key is understanding where they have leverage, what they’re giving up, and whether the economics ultimately drive profitable growth.