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We are so grateful to everyone who attended our inaugural Streaming Made Easy Live event last week. Itās not lost on us how many travelled a day before IBC 2025 and took time away from their desks to hang out with us.
And to the readers who couldnāt make it, please know that none of this would be possible without you either. Thank you for your support via DMs and WhatsApp.
What now? The SME team is hard at work in the editing room. We got footage of the sessions and plan on releasing them over the next few weeks. If you are not a premium subscriber, we got a free month of SME Premium right here.
Today, let me share some big picture takeaways from the event and share three special announcements about whatās coming next.
At a glance:
The vision
The delivery
The future
The vision
Over 150 executives (from 90 companies) joined us in Amsterdam for an afternoon of talks and networking.
Organising an event on the day before IBC opens was a gamble as executives are about to start a brutal 4-day marathon made of 30ā meetings and parties (that part is not so hard I know but hey weāre not getting any younger) in a venue which this year registered 43 858 visitors.
Our goal was therefore to offer a totally different experience, one where you donāt have FOMO because you couldnāt choose between 3 different sessions taking place at once or had no time to meet all the attendees. We focused on short informative talks & presentations, a balanced audience in the industry constituency represented (attendees were from CTV, broadcasters, streamers, telecom operators and technology companies), a diverse audience both on and off stage (a big challenge for IBC as a technology conference), and finally multiple down time to focus on networking. Itās all about being complimentary.
The delivery
Judging by the immediate feedback we got (and the word of mouth afterwards on the IBC show floor), we delivered on this ambition.
Now letās get to our amazing speakers and partners and dig into some of the top takeaways.
#1 - The power of collaboration
was the nĀ°1 theme underlying all sessions. In EMEA, Netflix collaborates with 80 partners. Netflix doesnāt win alone, each of these partners can take credit for Netflix being the leading streamer in the region and beyond. YouTube admits itās bad at producing content and thrives to build the best platform for content creators.
#2 - The ego trap
Partnerships will underdeliver if you donāt leave your ego at the door and keep building siloes around your media businesses. Media Press Group puts the IP at the centre of everything (discoverability, monetisation) with Open ID (a non proprietary ID to cut through the fragmentation of our ecosystem).
#3 - Simplicity as a core value proposition
Stop talking about fragmentation, fix it. Telenet Group has seen a double-digit decrease of the churn rate amongst its bundled customers since launching Bangoās Digital Vending Machine. Why? Simplicity before anything else.
#4 - The new playbook
Channel 4 and Webedia Creators are the new media playbook building flywheels without fearing cannibalisation. French YouTuber Inoxtag is the living proof that you can release a documentary in movie theatres, on TV and on SVOD while itās up on YouTube (wait until you see the performance number in our recorded session). Different platforms = different viewer behaviours and ultimately incremental audiences. Itās called a windowing strategy. Our industry has done it over and over again and yet YouTube and Social media are a step too far?!
#5 - The big screen
Speaking of audiences, Gen Zers and Millennials arenāt turning their back on the big screen. As they grow up, they grow fond of a TV living room experience but are ready for more (voice controlled conversational interface, integrated vide cameras etc.). The industry has tried but these features never really picked up until now. Proof of concepts with Gemini or ChatGPT in TVs and STBs are coming to market.
#6 - The AI driven media discovery
The media industry is fracturing into four completely distinct worlds, each operating by different rules, optimising for different metrics and built on fundamentally different monetisation models. In his keynote, Ezra mapped the new landscape revealing how content discovery is splitting across two critical dimensions: Architecture (centralised vs. decentralised) and Function (predicting vs. answering). Companies that master this transition will own the next decade of audience engagement.
The future
The 1st edition wasnāt even wrapped that we announced our next events!
ā In November, weāre organising Streaming Made Easy - After Hours for local executives (think one fire side chat + lots of bites & drinks in a cosy location). If you are interested in attending, sign up here.
ā In April, weāre heading to Lisbon. Yes you read that right. Weāve partnered with Stream TV Europe (taking place April 13-15th) to host SME Live on April 13th.
ā Then again in Amsterdam on September 10th ahead of IBC 2026.
If you are interested in partnering around any of these 3 events, respond to this email or ping us at contact@thelocalact.com. Donāt take our word for it, ask any of our partners (Media press Group, Bango, FX Digital and Irdeto) what itās like to work with the Streaming Made Easy Live team.
āThatās it for today but before you go: comment, likes or shares come a long way.
Enjoy your week and see you on Thursday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
Well done Marion for "owning" the European space and with your unique "not trying so hard" coolness - shame I missed your event but I now have my eyes on Lisbon!