The media and entertainment industry never stands still, but 2025 proved to be a year defined by many structural and technological shifts. Intensifying competition, rising costs and rapidly evolving viewer behaviour pushed platforms to reevaluate their strategies and embrace new technologies at an outstanding pace. It’s clear that some themes dominated the conversation this year: fragmentation, consolidation, artificial intelligence, personalization and a stronger focus on metrics. Together, these have reshaped how content is produced, packaged, distributed and monetized and set the stage for what’s coming next in 2026.
Fragmentation, Consolidation and the New Competitive Landscape
2025 marked the first time in years that fragmentation and consolidation occurred simultaneously, sometimes even within the same companies.
On the consumer side, viewing habits continued to scatter across an expanding variety of platforms. In 2025, Deloitte found that the average number of paid streaming service subscriptions in the US was 4. Traditional OTT services are competing not only with each other but with FAST channels, social video, live streaming ecosystems and creator-led platforms. In addition to paid subscriptions, FAST continues to explode. Parks Associates shared data that nearly half (45%) of U.S. viewers tune into FAST services. The average viewer is now interacting with more content sources than ever.
For media companies, this level of fragmentation became increasingly unsustainable. Many operators looked to streamline their offerings, bundle services or partner with complementary platforms to reduce churn and simplify user journeys. Consolidation re-emerged not as a power play, but as a survival strategy. From shared tech infrastructure to cross-platform distribution deals, 2025 was a year where collaboration quietly became a competitive advantage.
This dynamic created an environment in which platforms had to work harder to maintain attention and in which the experience itself became as important as the content.
AI Moved From Experimental to Essential
Artificial intelligence has been shaping the industry for years, but 2025 was the tipping point where generative and agentic AI’s role shifted from optional to foundational. One thing we noticed at IBC this year was that most companies were open to the use of AI, compared to other years. PWC found that over 60% of media companies are using AI in some form. This year, it’s now spreading across different use cases.
AI became tied directly to revenue. As ad-supported models expanded and advertising matured, platforms leaned heavily on AI to improve targeting, optimize ad load and personalize journeys that keep viewers engaged long enough to see value. What used to be a technology conversation became a business transformation story.
AI-powered metadata extraction, real-time clustering and semantic understanding became crucial as catalogues grew more unwieldy and viewer behaviour more unpredictable. Content owners increasingly recognised that manual processes couldn’t keep pace with the volume and complexity of modern media ecosystems. This, in turn, helps tailor experiences for each and every user.
Personalization Became the New Battleground
Now, consumers expect personalization, but service providers must get it right. Finding the balance between showing your users you know them and still having your brand shine through. Many services get it wrong, one study by Hub found that only 10% of respondents said streaming services’ recommendations consistently match their interests. When executed correctly, it’s effective in keeping users engaged and returning. AI-powered recommendation systems were a significant driver of user engagement in 2025. An industry guide for the year reported that platforms utilizing this technology experienced an average user engagement increase of 35%.
As catalogues expanded and content costs rose, personalization emerged as one of the most reliable ways to improve efficiency. Platforms no longer focus solely on attracting new viewers, they prioritize getting more value from the audiences they already have. Gracenote’s State of Play 2025 found that 84% of streaming users place a high value on the overall user experience. And personalization is one of the key methods to enhance the user experience.
In 2025, personalization went well beyond the classic “Because you watched…” carousel. It became context-aware, session-based and designed to perform across multiple surfaces. Platforms invested in unified user profiles to ensure continuity across touchpoints, so viewers didn’t have to restart their journey when switching screens or formats.
Go beyond the boring row titles, with our emotive natural language row titles. Appeal to your audiences with unique titles, so that your users always understand what to expect and why. Adding clear, relatable explanations as to why they are receiving certain personalized suggestions. Instead of ‘Because you Watched Modern Family’, it becomes ‘Laughing Through the Ups and Downs of Everyday Life’.
AI has been used for personalization for many years, but in the last few years, it’s become more accessible than ever thanks to the development and adoption of the likes of agentic and generative AI. Throughout 2025, we’ve seen more people prioritize user experiences with personalization and seamless content discovery.
The KPIs Shifts
Another defining change of 2025 was the industry’s relationship with KPIs. After years of chasing subscriber growth, platforms turned their attention toward profitability and for others, sustainability too.
Metrics such as lifetime value (LTV), retention, session length and effective catalog score became the new focus. Content teams and product leaders worked closely to understand how engagement behaviours connected to revenue and how discovery experiences could influence outcomes.
Ad-based models sharpened this focus even further. Understanding when and why viewers dropped off became crucial, as small changes in engagement often translated to significant shifts in ad yield. Rather than measuring success by the size of their catalogues, platforms measured how effectively they could guide viewers through them.
This shift towards actionable KPIs made personalization, analytics and AI-driven decisioning systems more important to demonstrate quantifiable impact. “We think this helps” was replaced by “here’s the lift it generates.”
What to Expect in 2026
Based on what has happened this year, here are a few of our predictions for 2026:
1. Unified experiences will become the standard
Consumers will expect seamless continuity across devices, apps and formats. Platforms that cannot resolve identity or personalize consistently will fall behind quickly. Over the last few years, features like voice search are becoming increasingly important, users will start to expect this and other features as a standard in platforms to help find what they want to watch.
2. AI will become more embedded and more scrutinised
The rise of the likes of agentic AI mimicking human decision-making further enables scaling and the delivery of tailored experiences in real-time. However, with this, there will be a need for more regulation and transparency, while responsible AI practices will become as important as performance. Vendors with explainability and governance built in will have an advantage.
3. Partnerships will multiply
No platform can build everything in-house anymore. Collaboration, especially around data, distribution and personalization, will become an essential growth strategy.
4. Ad-supported models and FAST will continue to expand
The US already has a massive audience within FAST. It’s expected to continue within Europe with the likes of TUBI and other services with hybrid tiers and performance-based advertising. According to COMCAST, FAST viewership is predicted to grow by 21% in 2026. Relevance and discovery will play central roles in driving revenue to keep users engaged.
5. Efficiency will define competitive strength
Budgets will remain tight, but expectations continue to increase. A high demand will be placed on solutions that deliver measurable results quickly.
Get Ahead in 2026
If you are looking to improve your user experiences with personalization and content discovery to stay ahead of the curve in 2026, get in touch with our team. Discover how our AI personalization toolbox can power your teams to deliver tailored experiences to all your viewers through dynamic UIs and beyond the homepages with notifications, upsell offers and more.
