Streaming
State of Play
Revised Nov 1, 2026The moment. Netflix delivered its Q3 forecast, revenue up 12% to $12.9 billion at a 34.6% operating margin, and then lowered its own sights: Variety’s Brian Steinberg reports the 2026 ad revenue projection cut to $2.7 billion from $3 billion, blamed on delays to new ad products while a supply glut hands buyers leverage on price. The Pixel and The Trade Desk are the answer it has offered. The house kept moving: Bela Bajaria and film chief Dan Lin are out, Peter Rice is in, 1,000 jobs are gone, David Fincher has exited, and The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield is already handicapping the film job. Skydance closed its $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger and immediately looked like a company under pressure: a five-day office mandate paired with voluntary buyouts, a mandate to make 30 films a year, a reported $1 billion Elon Musk stake that Puck says is causing friction inside Warner Bros., and a review of whether to keep FreeWheel as its ad server.
The tension. Netflix is being asked to prove the ad tier can carry a slowing business while the engagement evidence goes the other way. Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw reports customers opening the app on fewer days per month than two years ago; The Ankler counts Netflix’s share of Nielsen’s weekly originals chart down from 80% of titles in 2021 to 51%; Nobody Wants This opened its third season to 6.2 million views against 10.3 million for its first. Reed Hastings says the answer to YouTube is more and better shows, while YouTube takes a record 15.8% of US TV usage, more than twice Netflix’s share, and Instagram, Disney, Tubi and Amazon chase it into long creator video. Apple TV is running the opposite bet, with 18% of its catalog unscripted against Netflix’s 25% and HBO Max’s 72%. Sports is where the money still behaves: Thursday Night Football averages 17.7 million viewers on Prime Video through Week 7, up 12%, with advertisers up 6%, while automakers pull out of prime time for streaming and regional spots.
Who’s moving. Netflix, cutting its 2026 ad forecast to $2.7 billion. Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, on fewer qualified play days. Reed Hastings, on out-creating YouTube rather than copying it. Skydance’s David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz, on a five-day office and voluntary buyouts. Elon Musk, with a reported $1 billion stake. Paramount TV Studios, with three of Nielsen’s top four streaming slots in September. Comcast’s Michael Cavanagh, making deeper Peacock-YouTube bundling a priority. Amazon, at 17.7 million Thursday Night Football viewers. Apple TV, holding to scripted. Automakers, leaving prime time for streaming and local deals. Disney+, taking Channel 4’s linear feed in the UK and Ireland in early 2027. TVREV’s Tim Hanlon, on affiliates facing a 6% decline once the political money ends.
What the desk is watching. Whether the $2.7 billion forecast holds once the Pixel and The Trade Desk are live, and whether Skydance keeps FreeWheel or hands its streaming ad tech to Google.
Netflix launches ad-conversion Pixel, adds The Trade Desk as DSP partner
AdExchanger reports Netflix unveiled a Netflix Pixel for conversion tracking and audience targeting, and will add The Trade Desk as a programmatic DSP next month, announced the same morning Netflix reported Q3 earnings showing ad revenue growth fell short of expectations.
F1’s Apple TV deal shows sports rights buyers value more than ad dollars
Madison and Wall reports F1’s U.S. rights moved from ESPN to Apple TV in a 5-year deal worth roughly $150 million annually, up from $90 million under ESPN, even as early viewership figures have declined under the subscription paywall.
FT: Netflix’s hit drought stokes doubts about its $300bn valuation
The FT reports that Netflix faces mounting investor pressure as a dearth of breakout hits raises questions about whether its content slate can justify a market valuation near $300 billion.
Spotify’s ad business still lags despite record user growth
Simon Owens writes that Spotify keeps posting strong earnings and user growth, yet its advertising business stays stuck. He argues audio ads can’t scale across platforms like display or video, and Spotify’s paying subscribers are largely ad-free anyway.
Meta’s media rift gets the paywall treatment from Simon Owens
Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter teases that Meta is paying the price for alienating media companies, part of a paid-subscriber roundup that also covers Substack’s new podcast ad tool and YouTube’s pressure on top creators.
RTL says YouTube partnership grew platform revenue 492%, not cannibalization
Media War & Peace’s Evan Shapiro reports on his MIPCOM panel with RTL Deutschland CEO Stephan Schmitter and YouTube EMEA head Pedro Pina, where Schmitter said RTL’s three-year-old YouTube partnership drove platform revenues up 492%.
World Cup gave NBCUniversal a $224 million Q3 ad boost
Adweek’s Bill Bradley reports that Comcast executives, on a Thursday earnings call, said the 2026 FIFA World Cup generated $224 million in incremental advertising across Telemundo and Peacock in the third quarter, bringing total World Cup ad revenue to $664 million.
Comcast Q3: cable write-offs loom as NBCU preps to split off
The Ankler’s Sean McNulty reports that Comcast’s cable business still drives most profit, $7.6 million compared with NBCU’s $1.8 million in Q3, even as cord-cutting worsened and broadband growth stalled.
Hollywood studios rent out empty soundstages for $100,000 bar mitzvahs
The Ankler’s Degen Pener reports that L.A. families are booking Universal and Paramount soundstages and backlots for bar and bat mitzvahs costing $100,000 to $300,000, complete with custom sets, prop-house decor and backlot tram tours.
Netflix posts slowest revenue growth in three years amid leadership overhaul
The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Toonkel reports that Netflix’s third-quarter revenue rose 12% year over year to $12.9 billion, its weakest quarterly growth rate in three years, even as net income jumped roughly 44% to $3.66 billion.
A24 doc ‘You Can See Everything’ splits Oscar documentary branch
The Ankler’s Katey Rich reports that Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary has the biggest documentary opening in over twenty years with a 97 Metacritic score.
Netflix leans on new ad measurement tools as engagement growth stays modest
AdExchanger’s Alyssa Boyle reports that Netflix posted 12% revenue growth in Q3 but ad revenue growth of over 80% fell short of its goal to double ad sales again this year.
Anonymous Content CEO open to outside investment, but not private equity
Axios’ Sara Fischer and Christine Wang report that Anonymous Content CEO Darren Walker said the studio is open to raising capital from third-party investors beyond Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective.
Leaked accounts hint HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ rivals Game of Thrones budget
Deadline’s Jake Kanter reports that UK filings for Plum Jam Productions, the show’s special purpose vehicle, show revenue of £130.6 million in 2025, the year Season 1 shot.
Streaming analysts: ad tiers now make or break profitability
AdExchanger reports that at NAB Show in New York, J.P. Morgan’s Eric Menell and Bank of America’s Jessica Reif Ehrlich told investors streaming underdelivers versus linear TV, with ad revenue now critical to platform profitability.
Netflix beats Q3 targets, then cuts 1,000 jobs and two creative chiefs
The Ankler’s Sean McNulty reports Netflix matched or beat its Q3 forecasts and touted a working “business flywheel” on the earnings call.
California’s $750M film credit fails to halt production slide
Variety’s Gene Maddaus reports that FilmLA data released Wednesday shows California production fell 3.7% in the third quarter despite the state’s expanded $750 million film and TV tax credit.
Netflix’s theatrical push widens even as it insists streaming comes first
CNBC’s Sarah Whitten reports that Netflix plans 30 theatrical releases in 2027, on par with 2026, including a wide 49-day exclusive window for Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia.”
DC’s low-budget Clayface tests a cheaper fix for superhero flops
The Ankler’s Matthew Frank reports that DC’s $30 million horror film Clayface could match Supergirl’s disappointing $126 million worldwide gross and still count as a win, unlike the costlier flop.
Hollywood coalition pushes Congress to force streamers to share content spend
Puck reports that a new coalition including CAA, WME and UTA is lobbying Congress for fin-syn-style rules forcing streamers with 10 million-plus U.S. subscribers to direct half their content spending to independent producers.
Medill study: local TV news shows early signs of a newspaper-style crisis
TVREV reports that Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative, in its newest State of Local News report, has for the first time analyzed local TV news production and consumption, finding consolidation and retransmission pressure echo newspapers’ earlier decline.
Smart TVs stick to a handful of apps despite streaming sprawl
The Measure’s Eleanor Semeraro reports that streaming TVs used an average of 3.5 apps per month in Q2 2026, per Inscape data.
Fox’s $22 billion Roku deal clears shareholder vote
TVREV’s Jason Damata rounds up that Fox’s $22 billion acquisition of Roku has secured shareholder approval from both companies, and the deal is still expected to close in the first half of 2027.
Netflix makes monetization a top priority as viewing time slides
The Verge’s Emma Roth reports that Netflix’s Q3 2026 shareholder letter names monetization improvement as a top priority, alongside entertainment value and new technology.
Political ad buyers still treat CTV like broadcast, op-ed warns
AdExchanger’s guest columnist Mark Jablonowski argues that campaigns spending part of $11 billion in midterm ad dollars on connected TV keep using broadcast-era targeting instead of precision tools.