Markets

In a packed Emerald Ballroom at NEM Zagreb, Guy Bisson, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Ampere Analysis, delivered a session titled: “Distribution Strategies When TV Meets YouTube.” His presentation offered a clear, data-driven snapshot of a global entertainment economy split between the accelerating growth of “New World” media and the structural decline of legacy platforms, while outlining the strategic dilemmas facing broadcasters, producers, and digital players in an era of collapsing boundaries between TV and social video.

Bisson opened with a stark macroeconomic picture. According to Ampere’s 2024–2029 forecast, traditional media revenue—spanning theatrical, transactional, and broadcast TV—represents a sizeable US$394 billion market, but all its exploitation windows are shrinking. In contrast, “New World” media, including streaming and online video, is now valued at US$399 billion and expanding across every revenue line. This divergence sets the stage for what Bisson called “a market of two halves.”

A notable exception emerges in Central and Eastern Europe. Traditional platforms in the region are still growing, rising from US$10.9 billion in 2023 to a projected US$11.8 billion in 2027. Yet, new platforms dramatically outpace them: streaming and online video are forecast to increase by 68% over the same period, reaching US$5 billion. The takeaway is unambiguous: even in markets where legacy television remains resilient, the momentum is decisively with digital-first distribution.

Bisson challenged the “popular belief that there is only one future for TV” by demonstrating how convergence on connected devices has forced broadcasters, streamers, and social platforms into direct audience competition. The limiting resource is no longer spectrum, schedule, or shelf space—it is consumer attention.
This convergence, however, dismantles the two traditional pillars through which the TV industry historically extracted value: control of distribution and scarcity of inventory. As these structures erode, success increasingly depends on understanding one’s competitive ecosystem and strengthening what Bisson termed “fitness”—a blend of adaptability, strategic positioning, and willingness to borrow tactics from adjacent sectors. His visual framework showed players across content and distribution ecosystems converging, competing, copying, collaborating, and even combining.
For producers, the consequences are profound. They must rapidly reposition themselves in a landscape where global and regional platforms intermingle, and where boundaries between content creation and distribution are increasingly porous. This shift has also triggered the rise of micro-dramas and short-form serial content designed specifically for platforms like YouTube and TikTok—formats that exemplify how distribution logic now shapes narrative form.

Yet as Bisson warned, when TV meets social platforms a significant “ad value conundrum” emerges. YouTube’s economic model is optimized for low-cost content, generating CPMs dramatically below those of broadcast and premium streaming. The cost-per-thousand disparity—often three to five times lower on social video—threatens the financial sustainability of high-budget TV content.
This dynamic forces broadcasters into a dilemma. Doing nothing leads to predictable decline: lower audiences, shrinking advertising revenue, reduced investment capacity, and—crucially—the loss of younger viewers. But distributing content on social and streaming partners can reverse this trend only up to a point. Additional reach becomes counterproductive when it begins to cannibalize owned-and-operated (O&O) services, eroding higher-margin revenue streams.

Bisson presented three strategic levers that can help rebalance value:
Using lower-CPM platforms purely as promotional funnels to drive traffic back to owned services.
Increasing ad loads where appropriate.
Creating a two-tier CPM structure that differentiates high-quality TV content from lower-value inventory.
Finding the equilibrium between reach and monetization demands nuanced planning. Ampere’s guidance emphasizes:

Partnering with a diverse mix of platforms—not only YouTube—to recover “missing audiences.”
Deploying full-length content strategically while ensuring that O&O outlets remain the destination for premium episodes.
Leveraging clips, trailers, and short-form edits as promotional gateways.
Experimenting with “bait and switch” release strategies, such as publishing early episodes on partner platforms and later ones exclusively on O&O services.
Favoring distribution partners capable of maintaining TV-comparable CPMs for long-form programming.
Integrating internal and external ad-sales structures to maximize targeting efficiency and brand-building potential.

Bisson also noted that staggered release schedules make particular sense for broadcasters with limited first-run output, allowing them to sustain engagement across windows. Meanwhile, box-set drops on O&O platforms remain a powerful tool to recapture viewers who discover content on new distribution channels. As for live channels, the platforms best suited to host them are those that mimic the broadcast environment—Netflix and Amazon among them.

Ultimately, Bisson’s message was both cautionary and optimistic. The fusion of TV and online video represents a profound shift but also a rare opportunity. By embracing hybrid distribution models, recalibrating advertising economics, and maintaining a disciplined focus on value preservation, broadcasters and producers can not only reach younger, fragmented audiences but also future-proof their businesses in an increasingly platform-agnostic world.