CTV's new ad boss isn't who you think
YouTube Primetime hits a wall. RoseBerry takes premium IP vertical. Inside the Bundle goes live.
š² Library verticalization
Damn, someone I love and respect is getting into vertical video š¬ Meet RoseBerry, the latest kid on the vertical video block.
Where Iām in: repurposing existing IP (so far the company broke deals with A+E Global Media, All3Media International, Banijay Rights, Cineflix Rights and Fremantle) into vertical video formats for a mobile-first consumption.
āBy combining decades of television experience with advanced AIādriven workflows, weāre building a scalable model that delivers brandāsafe, advertiserāready content which we believe will represent real value globally for our industry partners and our direct-to-consumer customers when we launch our App this summer.ā
Guy Hameiri for Deadline
Where I have my doubts: again the pay as you go business model might work as the app launches but no doubt the company will go back to basics (subscriptions and ads) just like HOLYWATER TECH did.
Regardless, Iām keen to get my hands on the app to test this live.
š„ Introducing āInside the Bundleā
Iāve been writing about super aggregation for years now, watching the telcos bundle OTT apps, the broadcasters build their own aggregation layers and the streamers work out going direct and leaning into operators. So when Bango asked me to build a video series around it, I said yes immediately.
The series kicks off May 12th and runs through late June, covering 8 conversations with people doing this for real, at companies you know, in markets that matter. The line-up spans both sides of the bundle equation: operators who aggregate (Telenet, Virgin Media, Liberty Global, MasOrange), streamers navigating the choice of how to play it (Viaplay, Britbox, HBO Max, Stringray).
The first episode drops Tuesday with Vincent Stevens, VP Entertainment at Telenet.
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šļøKids are not alright and we should all play our part now
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šø Four years in, where is YouTube Primetime at?
Since launch, YouTube Primetime doesnāt seem to have taken off. On the contrary, reporting in 2025 from The Information, Pocket-lint confirmed YouTube paused adding new services because it could not solve how to merge paid third-party catalogs with its free creator feed and a long-promised TV-app redesign meant to fix that problem launched in pieces only at the end of 2025.
āThe vision is that when you come to our [TV] app and youāre looking for a show, itāll just blend away whether that show is from a Primetime Channel or that show is from a [YouTube] creator.ā
Kurt Wilms, YouTube senior director of product management
Tubefilter framed discoverability as āthe resilient boogeyman.ā Theyāre right, Iām in this business and half the time I donāt know where to find YouTube Primetime.
Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video Channels has now sold roughly 46 million cumulative subscriptions according to Antenna and Rokuās Premium Subscriptions business already generates $519 million in quarterly revenue, growing 30% year over year.
On paper, YouTube does not need Primetime Channels at all. It already dominates the television screen. Nielsenās Gauge has placed YouTube at number one every month from February 2024 onward and its full-year 2025 revenue crossed $60 billion, overtaking Netflix. Watch time, attention and habit are already YouTubeās. The transaction layer that cable once owned, the billing relationship that sat between viewers and premium content, is exactly what YouTube does not yet control at scale.
The takeaway for the European and U.S. operator audience is that Primetime Channels is currently the weakest of the three CTV channel-store options for distribution scale, but is still likely, as Tubefilter puts it, āto be YouTubeās next big thing ā it just needs to make sure its users know that its subscription hub exists.ā
BONUS: a LOT of data visuals for you to grab and use in your next premium strategy deck!
šŗ Telcos strike back!
Orange Advertising (part of Orange France) keeps enriching its advertising playbook to monetise the big screen like CTV does:
ā with in stream video advertising on linear TV and addressable TV (the latter since 2022);
Announced this week:
ā the launch of a dedicated TV channel (channel 29 in their EPG) dedicated to branded content, a space they describe as a place for brands to tell their stories, immerse their audiences and create truly editorial experiences;
āBecause today, itās no longer just about being seen. Itās about being watched.ā
ā the introduction of new formats āCoverā and āFooterā:
Cover: a premium display format, available exclusively for 24 hours to players in the entertainment industry.
Footer: a sponsored button integrated into the service feed, designed to drive traffic to content consumption.
According to ARCOM, 84% of French people own a smart TV, 82% watch TV via a providerās set-top box and 100% of users of provider set-top boxes access the home screen. Orange Advertising pitches campaigns reaching over 10M households every day.
Operators kept the eyeballs all along. The home button, the EPG, the STB, the billing relationship. CTV platforms spent 5 years convincing the market that the smart TV OS owned the future of TV advertising. Telcos are coming for that ad budget.
Once they productise their inventory the way CTV platforms did, with named formats, dedicated channels and self-serve buying, the line between operator and media owner blurs. The European CTV ad pitch deck is about to get a new logo on the cover.
Thatās it for today but before you go:
š³ļø Poll time
šļø SME Live Tickets
Early bird tickets to attend our next Streaming Made Easy Live event in Amsterdam on September 10th, 2026, are now on sale here. Premium subscribers get 30% off so consider upgrading today.
Thatās it for today. Enjoy your weekend and see you on Tuesday for a Deep Dive edition of Streaming Made Easy Premium.