Introduction: Streaming Has Entered Its Data-Driven Phase
Sebastian Braun, CEO
Streaming is no longer an experiment, and advertising is no longer an optional monetization layer.
Across media and entertainment, advertising-led streaming has moved from trial to scale. Ad-supported tiers are now a core part of platform strategies, CTV continues to absorb a growing share of brand budgets, and advertisers increasingly expect streaming to deliver both reach and measurable effectiveness. The question facing the industry is no longer whether advertising belongs in streaming, but how intelligently it is executed.
Yet much of the ad tech conversation still defaults to familiar reflexes: more inventory, more integrations, more complexity. Scale is often mistaken for progress. In practice, complexity without intelligence introduces friction, slower decision-making, diluted value, and missed revenue opportunities at a time when margins are under pressure.
What we see emerging instead is a quieter, more disciplined shift. Leading platforms are rationalizing their stacks, unifying data across content, ads, and audiences, and prioritizing systems that help teams decide, not just deliver. The focus is moving away from maximum output toward measurable impact, efficiency, and repeatable performance.
At 24i, this change is visible in how our customers engage with us. The questions have evolved. They are less about adding features and more about extracting signals. Less about volume and more about outcomes. Less about experimentation and more about execution.
These perspectives reflect that reality. They point to an industry moving from expansion to precision, and from possibility to accountability.
Marketing Moves from Storytelling to Proof
Verónica López, Head of Marketing
As ad tech matures, expectations of marketing mature with it.
Today’s buyers are more informed, more analytical, and more accountable than ever. Decisions are scrutinized. Claims are tested. And outcomes matter more than narratives. In this environment, broad storytelling is no longer enough.
The most important shift is this: marketing must reflect operational reality.
Teams face fragmented data, disconnected workflows, and tools that promise automation but still rely heavily on manual effort. When marketing ignores these realities, it becomes noise. When it addresses them clearly, it becomes a decision aid.
What the industry needs less of are abstract growth stories, and more practical explanations of what actually drives impact:
- How unifying content, audience, and ad exposure data improves yield decisions
- How clearer audience signals reduce inefficiencies in CTV campaigns
- How small gains in data quality compound across monetization and experience
At 24i, becoming more data-driven has fundamentally changed how we communicate. Our insights are grounded in platform usage, customer conversations, and the real decisions teams are trying to make every day.
The role of marketing is no longer amplification, it is filtering. Surfacing what matters, explaining why it matters, and connecting technology to measurable outcomes.
Data Becomes the Primary Competitive Advantage
Sebastian Braun, CEO
Access to audiences is no longer the advantage. Understanding them is, and to that end streaming services are investing into well structured first-party data sets as an asset to their business
As streaming matures, the limits of surface-level metrics are increasingly evident. Impressions, reach, and broad demographics describe activity, but they say very little about value. They don’t explain attention, context, or how advertising performs across different content environments, devices, and user behaviors.
What leading platforms are building instead is behavioral intelligence: the ability to connect content metadata, ad exposure, device signals, and user behavior into a coherent, actionable view. Not for reporting’s sake, but to inform real decisions, how inventory is priced, how ad loads are optimized, and how audiences are retained.
This shift mirrors a broader industry reality. With third-party data in decline and measurement expectations rising, first-party data has become central to monetization strategies. But value is no longer defined by data ownership alone, it is defined by the ability to activate data responsibly and consistently across the organization.
That requires discipline. Privacy-first design, consent-aware pipelines, and transparent governance are no longer compliance exercises; they are foundational to trust, scale, and long-term sustainability.
At 24i, our evolution into a data-first company reflects this shift. We see that teams who can translate raw streaming data into clear signals move faster and operate with more confidence. Data stops being a byproduct of delivery and becomes a strategic input, powering smarter monetization, more relevant experiences, and sustainable growth.
Ad Tech Shifts from Infrastructure to Intelligence
David Brown, CTO
For years, ad tech innovation focused on a critical challenge: delivering ads reliably in streaming environments. SSAI, CSAI, stitching, and distribution solved that problem at scale, and those foundations remain essential.
But differentiation no longer lives there.
Today, the bottleneck is decision-making.
Teams manage more signals, demand sources, and variables than ever before, yet many systems still treat intelligence as an afterthought. The result is manual workflows, slow optimization cycles, and insights that arrive too late to act on.
What’s emerging instead are platforms designed as decision engines. Systems that continuously interpret user context, content signals, ad exposure, and performance feedback, and use that intelligence to shape ad experiences in real time.
AI and machine learning play an important role, but they are not shortcuts. Intelligence only works when built on clean data models, transparent logic, and business rules teams can understand and trust. Automation without clarity simply relocates complexity.
At 24i, our focus is on creating the architectural conditions that make intelligence usable: modular components, well-defined data layers, and APIs that support experimentation without fragility. The goal is not to remove human control, but to support faster, more confident decisions.
The Buy Side and Sell Side Begin to Align
Carlos Prieto, SVP Sales
One of the most persistent inefficiencies in advertising today is not a lack of demand or supply, it is misalignment.
Advertisers increasingly talk about outcomes, attention, and effectiveness. Publishers, meanwhile, are still expected to package inventory around legacy metrics and buying mechanics that no longer reflect how value is created in streaming. The friction this creates shows up in pricing pressure, longer sales cycles, and under-realized revenue.
What is changing is not intent, but language, and data is the translator.
Buyers are becoming more explicit about what they value: relevance, context, and measurable impact. At the same time, publishers are pushing back against commoditization and race-to-the-bottom CPMs. The common ground is the ability to describe inventory in terms of audiences, behavior, and performance, not just volume.
This is already reshaping how CTV inventory is packaged and sold. First-party data is used to define smarter segments. Attention and outcome signals are entering commercial discussions. And while parts of the ecosystem simplify, the relationships that matter become more strategic, not more transactional.
From a sales perspective, ad tech is no longer a backend concern. It directly shapes how value is communicated, justified, and defended in the market. The quality of the data and the clarity of the story increasingly determine the strength of the deal.
At 24i, we focus on enabling that alignment, helping publishers translate complex data into propositions that buyers understand, trust, and invest in. When meaningful data becomes part of the commercial narrative, conversations change, and so do results.
What This Means for Broadcasters & Streamers
For broadcasters and streaming platforms, these shifts translate into concrete priorities:
- Data fragmentation becomes a revenue risk: when audience, content, and ad data remain siloed, optimization stalls.
- Ad yield improvement comes from intelligence, not volume: better decisions consistently outperform more impressions.
- Commercial storytelling must evolve: buyers increasingly expect clarity on outcomes, not just reach.
- Technology investments need a longer horizon: short-term fixes often limit flexibility just as the market matures.
The platforms that act now, by simplifying, aligning, and investing in intelligence, will enter 2026 with a meaningful advantage.
Conclusion: Precision Is the Future
The future of ad tech is not louder, bigger, or faster, it is smarter.
Success in advertising-led streaming will belong to companies that:
- Treat data as a strategic asset
- Build intelligence on top of solid infrastructure
- Align commercial strategy with measurable outcomes
- Communicate with clarity, credibility, and substance
At 24i, our journey as a data-first company is shaped by these principles. We focus on helping our customers move from complexity to clarity, and from data to decisions.
The next chapter of streaming monetization has already begun.
