Ted Is Back

🙌 - Weekend Wrap Up Edition - Week 10/2025

Retail subscriptions almost at the top: real growth or just Prime skewing the numbers? Meanwhile, YouTube is going head-to-head with BBC iPlayer on set-top boxes, Spotter is stepping on YouTube’s turf, and RTL is pushing its Pan-European agenda. Oh, and Ted Lasso is back and that makes me happy. Let’s dig in.

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🛒 Retail Subscriptions

Came out 2nd on the list of subscriptions Americans have today according to Bango’s latest research “Subscriptions Assemble”. No surprise SVOD came out on top at 75% but Retail at 62%?! I couldn’t believe it. It’s ahead of music, gaming and more. Then slow lightbulb moment (granted I’m a bit tired at the moment 😬): in that 62%, surely a big chunk comes from Prime.

Two things come to mind:

→ Fantastic opportunity for streamers to get in on the action (beyond Prime of course). Paramount+ is bundled with Walmart+. In Europe, except for a partnership between Carrefour & Netflix last year, I haven’t seen many Retailers x Streamers partnerships. Have you?

The challenge? Like any hard bundles, both partners need to work to turn subscribers into active users, otherwise it’s moot to be bundled.

→ Retailers need to beef up their membership programs. I had a delivery bundle with my Dutch retailer and besides free delivery there was no perks. I ultimately cancelled and move on to someone else.

Hungry for more data? 👉 Snatch the deck here. Listen or watch our convo with Bango here.

💵 Lines Blurring

Upfronts Season is upon us and Spotter (backed by Amazon) will hold its own event “Spotter Showcase” with top creators Mr Beast, Colin & Samir, the amazing Kinigra Deon and more on March 27th.

“Creators will share their content calendars, formats, tentpole series, audience data, and upcoming ideas. It’s not just about ad placements — it’s about deep consumer attention and fostering authentic collaborations that give brands access to the unrivaled scale, trust, and engagement of Creator audiences.”

Aaron DeBevoise, CEO and founder of Spotter

What I love about that move? It sits nicely alongside YouTube’s Brandcast event. YouTube Creators are over reliant on YouTube. It’s crucial they position themselves as platform agnostic Creators and embrace more than ad-supported business models.

Spotter is an interesting beast as it acts as an advisor to Creators, helps them raise capital and now even provides them a technology stack.

🥇🥈Head To Head

Speaking at the CTV Summit in London this week, Virgin Media O2’s Chief TV & Entertainment Officer, David Bouchier, shared that YouTube and BBC iPlayer were head to head as the most used apps on their set-top boxes.

As much as I see the value of adding YouTube to an operator’s TV & Entertainment offering, one should learn from CTV platforms. Why? CTV platforms have invested in their own & operated ad-supported hubs because they all had YouTube as a top 3 app grabbing a lot of users’ time spent on their platform. YouTube is not notoriously generous with its distribution partners so their growth on your platform isn’t a healthy sign for your business.

Distributing YouTube yes but only while building your own hub (which Virgin Media is doing with its FAST hub). Roku understood that years ago (yet it’s hard to dethrone Netflix & YouTube):

In Q4, The Roku Channel reached U.S. households with approximately 145 million people and remained the #3 app on our platform by both reach and engagement, with Streaming Hours up 82% YoY.

Q4’24 earnings

🇪🇸 YouTube & Spaniards

34.5M Of Spaniards used YouTube in December 2024 according to Comscore. Curious to know if CTV consumption’s growth rate or the device mix? Here goes.

🇪🇺 Self-Service Is Trending

When you hear day in day out that digital advertising is easy to buy and TV and streaming aren’t then your head goes straight to : let’s fix it but easier said than done.

After Comcast’s Universal Ads in January, here comes RTL Ad Alliance with its self-serve ad buying platform dubbed “Ad Manager”. It gives access to Addressable TV, Connected TV, BVOD and streaming inventories.

“Today, advertisers and agencies have a fundamental need for simplicity in European media buying. By introducing the AdManager by RTL AdAlliance, we take a significant step to make navigating through our total video universe in all European markets as simple as possible, providing key information, guidance for media planning and buying: Reach the audiences you want, pay only for what has been delivered, and access all relevant campaign information with just a few clicks”.

Oliver Vesper, CDO and Deputy CEO RTL AdAlliance

• The markets? Germany, Italy, Spain, the Nordics and France

• The playground for advertisers? 77 million active smart TV sets, 40 million monthly BVOD users and access to over 5,000 web properties. It’s named RTL but it goes beyond the RTL Group’s portfolio, see for yourself their partner portfolio.

• The ultimate ambition? To become the premier entry point to European audiences for advertisers.

  

📺 Sonos Streaming TV Player Gets Axed

The Audio technology company has been going through turbulent times (the app update fiasco of 2024, a series of C-suite departures including its CEO, lay offs). So it’s no surprise to see the new management team cleaning up the roadmap and the 1st project to get the axe is their over-priced, coming in too late, streaming TV player.

Thing is, Sonos was the 1st partner confirmed by The Trade Desk so where does that leave them? If Sonos was the only client signed, it’s another uphill battle for the ad technology company.

→ Read my take on The Trade Desk entering in the TV OS wars.

⚽️ 😱 🏃🏻‍♀️ Ted Lasso Is Back!

And what a cool move to have him managing a woman football team. The arc of the new season was confirmed by Jason Sudeikis himself on The New Heights podcast. This is the mood in the Ranchet house:

Yes we’re massive Ted Lasso fans and of course Apple TV+ folks are excited too. Of course, it will bring a bump in subscriptions but it won’t fix the fact that they’re stuck between the big mainstream players and niche streamers. A shame, it’s my number one source of must watch shows today.

“Ted Lasso has been nothing short of a juggernaut, inspiring a passionate fanbase all over the world, and delivering endless joy and laughter, all while spreading kindness, compassion and unwavering belief. Everyone at Apple is thrilled to be continuing our collaboration with Jason and the brilliant creative minds behind this show.” - Matt Cherniss, head of programming for Apple TV+

That’s it for today but before you go, tell me:

Enjoy your day and see you on Tuesday for a Deep Dive edition of Streaming Made Easy Premium where I’ll be digging into ITV’s earnings. It’s the latest addition to the Earnings Hub build for my premium subs.

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