Marketing BS Mini Briefing: FAST is fast
Free ad-supported TV is growing fast
Mini-briefing #3! And a warm welcome to subscribers of Startup.curated. I have been running startup.curated since October 2020, double-posting everything from here. It is finally consolidated. Welcome to the original formatting!
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TechCrunch reports that Tubi, the free, ad-supported streaming service has hit 64 million active users. Their last reported number was May 2022 when they had 55 million active users. When they were purchased by Fox in March 2020 they had 20 million active users. That is a compound growth rate of almost 50% from 2020 and about 20% from last year.
It has been clear for a decade now that traditional TV has been on a slow downward decline. That decline was exaggerated by most marketing pundits, but it was still real. The open question was what would replace it. Digital ads are great, but mostly just for end of the funnel activation activities. Podcasts could be used for top of the funnel brand marketing, but audio is much lower fidelity than video. Streaming was growing, but almost all of it ad-free.
It is now becoming clear that ad-supported streaming will be a big business. And now all of those traditional TV ad dollars have a place to go.
If your product is still interesting to older consumers, traditional TV is still significant and has lower CPMs. But otherwise, connected TV (“CTV”) is rapidly becoming the new way to build a brand.
Keep it simple,
Edward