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Our take: With global streaming growth slowing significantly—more than 25% of the world population will pay for over-the-top video this year—markets with significant ground to be captured are hotly contested. With a glut of subscription offerings in the market, acquiring the free MX Player service will give Amazon a significant leg up.

The news: OpenAI is looking to raise prices for ChatGPT Plus subscriptions with a $2 per month increase this year and up to $44 a month in five years, per documents reviewed by The New York Times. ChatGPT Plus, which currently costs $20 a month, could follow the lead of popular streaming services that periodically raise prices with hopes that customers will pay extra to retain their subscriptions.

The over-the-top (OTT) streaming landscape is rapidly becoming as crowded as the early days of cable TV. It is vital that marketers understand the scale, reach, and prospects of the various players in the industry.

The news: CNN launched a $3.99/month digital paywall for US users, requiring a subscription after a set number of free articles. Hinted at in July, the move aligns with a growing trend among media outlets like The New York Times, which have had success boosting digital revenues through subscription models.

CTV broadly, and subscription over-the-top (sub OTT) specifically, are doing extremely well, but life is tough for individual players because the competition is so fierce. Dozens of service providers will vie for a slice of this year’s $26.92 billion in spending.

It’s an ad business: The ad-supported subscription offering continued to gain traction, unlocking a new revenue stream. The tier had a 65% rise in quarter-over-quarter adoption; nearly 4 in 10 sign-ups in markets offering ads were for an ad-supported subscription. We forecast the company will see a 75.2% surge in viewership for its ad-supported tier this year.

NBCU and Macy’s deal highlights live events as crucial opportunities: Advertisers reach massive audiences through events like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Despite the rise of connected TV, over-the-air programming remains a vital part of the television ecosystem, engaging millions of viewers outside the scope of big data. Learn how comprehensive measurement strategies can ensure that every viewer counts, no matter how they choose to watch.

Amazon’s $1.8 billion ad milestone solidifies a streaming leader: The launch of ads on Prime Video and Thursday Night Football are responsible for a meteoric rise.

And other mostly ad-free services are still competing. Recent trends in TV time spent follow a longer pattern. Average daily time spent with TV peaked at 4 hours, 37 minutes in 2012. Since then, it has trended downward every year except 2020, when people in lockdown spent considerable time watching TV and streaming services.

A streaming service that underindexes on advertising may be doing so intentionally because it relies most on subscription fees to fund content production and it doesn’t want to increase churn by opening up the advertising firehose too widely. Meanwhile, other services are free and serve ads to all viewers.

Within a few years, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video will likely be the leaders in sub OTT ad revenues.

Looking forward: 2023 marked the start of a major effort among streaming services to crack down on password-sharing and drive consumers toward ad-supported subscription tiers. Those efforts led to strong revenue and subscription growth for companies like Netflix and others, which offer large libraries of content akin to pay TV providers, albeit at a much lower cost.

A good portion of subscription spending will occur within over-the-top (OTT) video platforms that also have ad-supported tiers, so increased subscription spending shouldn’t significantly dent IAA. And subscription fatigue among consumers will keep growth in the single digits. Privacy rule headwinds will lead apps to look for additional sources of revenues.