Company contribution
Company contribution
For an industry built on the power of connection, broadcasting has spent the better part of the last decade quietly fracturing itself.
Not in audience— audiences have never been more engaged, more reachable, more measurable— but in infrastructure, workflows, and ultimately, in thinking. What once moved in a straight line from camera to viewer has splintered into a dense web of platforms, protocols, formats, and monetisation pathways.
This fragmentation didn’ t happen by accident. It was born out of innovation. OTT, FAST, CTV, cloud playout, YouTube and social media clipping, targeted advertising, and data-driven delivery each solved a problem and opened a door. Collectively, however, they have created something far less elegant: an ecosystem that is powerful, yet increasingly difficult to control.
Control— operational, strategic, and commercial— is now the defining challenge of modern broadcasting.
The Illusion of Progress
From the outside, the industry appears to be thriving. Distribution has expanded beyond imagination, placing content on every device, in every format, across every geography. Monetization models have multiplied, from TVoD to SVoD to AVoD to FAST, each promising new revenue streams and deeper audience engagement.
Behind the scenes, however, the reality is far less seamless. Broadcasters are still stitching together their operations from a patchwork of vendors and systems, each solving a specific need but rarely communicating with the others. Playout sits in one environment, OTT delivery in another, monitoring somewhere else, with metadata, EPG management, and monetisation layered on top.
Each system works in isolation, but
Unifying Broadcasting
Massimo Vimini, SVP of Digital
Innovation & Monetization at iKO Media Group, explains how to move from fragmentation to a cohesive revenue engine.
together they introduce friction and fragmentation. They slow decision-making, increase operational risk, and reduce visibility across the organization. What emerges is a paradox: more capability than ever before, but less cohesion where it matters most.
Distribution Is No Longer the Problem
For decades, distribution defined competitive advantage. Satellite reach, terrestrial expansion, and geographic coverage were the core battlegrounds of the industry. Today, that equation has fundamentally changed.
Distribution is no longer scarce; it is abundant. Content can move globally and instantly across satellite, IP, and streaming environments. The challenge is no longer whether you can reach audiences, but whether you can do so intelligently, efficiently, and profitably.
Modern distribution is no longer a linear pipeline. It is a dynamic ecosystem where content flows in multiple directions, across multiple formats, often simultaneously. A single asset may be localized, reformatted, clipped and distributed across linear TV, OTT platforms, FAST channels, social media and mobile environments at the same time. Each of these touchpoints carries operational weight and revenue potential. Without coordination, that complexity becomes friction rather than advantage.
Content is King, but Revenue is Relentless
Content may still be king, and distribution shapes direction, but in today’ s broadcasting landscape, revenue has become relentless. For years, the industry operated on a relatively simple premise: invest in compelling content, build an audience, and monetisation would follow. That logic has not disappeared, but it no longer holds the same certainty. In a market defined by abundance rather than scarcity, great content is no longer a guarantee of commercial success— it is simply the starting point.
What has fundamentally changed is the environment in which content exists. Audiences are fragmented across platforms, consumption is fluid, and attention is increasingly difficult to capture, let alone retain. At the same time, advertisers are adapting to the same audience shift, gradually reallocating spend toward streaming and digital environments while continuing to demand measurable performance and tangible outcomes. In this context, revenue cannot be treated as a downstream result. It must be engineered into the system from the outset.
This is where many broadcasters encounter friction. Content strategies remain strong, but monetisation strategies are often disconnected from the infrastructure that delivers them. The result is a gap between potential and performance, where valuable audiences are reached but not fully realised. Closing that gap requires a shift in thinking, where content and monetization are no longer sequential steps, but interdependent parts of the same ecosystem.
Monetisation Has Outgrown Its Silos
If fragmentation has reshaped distribution, it has fundamentally disrupted monetisation. The traditional divide between linear and digital revenue models no longer reflects how audiences behave. Viewers move fluidly between environments, and advertisers follow— albeit cautiously.
Disconnected delivery systems continue to create hesitation where there should be confidence. This is the monetisation gap. Streaming has introduced precision through real-time data and audience targeting, while broadcasting continues to offer scale and premium viewing environments. Too often, these strengths operate in parallel rather than in partnership.
The result is inefficiency. Budgets become fragmented, inventory is undervalued, and opportunities are missed. At the same time, the direction of travel is clear. Advertisingsupported models are accelerating rapidly, with AVoD growing significantly faster than SVoD and FAST expanding even further.
New engagement layers, including QRdriven interactivity, are also reshaping how value is created, turning passive viewing into measurable action. Without integration, however, these innovations remain isolated rather than compounding.
The Hidden Bottleneck: Discoverability
Before monetisation, there is a more fundamental challenge: being found. In a
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