Quickplay’s AI achievements surpass industry hype, transforming emerging trends into undeniable reality including 100%+ watch time increases, 130%+ ad fill rate boost via AI recommendations, 500% audience reach expansion across social

TORONTO and LAS VEGAS – January 5, 2026 – As broadcasters and content owners explore transformation strategies to compete in the new creator economy, Quickplay is proving that AI is more than a buzzword – it is driving measurable business impact. These results are from Quickplay’s accelerated AI development efforts, including the launch and deployment of its award-winning Quickplay Shorts and AI Studio tools.

Meeting Viewers in the Creator Economy

With streaming surpassing linear television in global viewing hours, creator-economy ad spend expected to eclipse traditional media, and short-form clips overtaking long-form storytelling in ad revenue, the content consumption landscape is fundamentally altered and the rules have changed for broadcasters. These shifts reflect a permanent change in audience behavior, led by Gen Z and Millennials, who now represent the majority of digital attention and spending growth. Quickplay has strategically added AI intelligence throughout its portfolio to address these unique needs, across a platform that is purpose-built for the modern media ecosystem.

“In 2025, the game has changed for broadcasters: the ‘new majority’ of viewers- Gen Z and millennials- don’t tune in, they flow across platforms. What’s different now is that AI has removed the execution barrier, allowing broadcasters to operate with creator-level agility while finally unlocking their unique ‘legacy ‘advantages: scale, trust, and deep libraries of premium content and rights. Broadcasters that adapt now will define the next decade – and our mission continues to be building the technology that powers this transformation,” said Andre Christensen, Founder and CEO, Quickplay.

The Business Impact

Specific advantages seen this year with Quickplay’s solutions from a tier-one broadcaster include:

• 40% lower cost of ownership compared to fragmented solutions,
• More than 100% watch time increases for AI-recommended content
• More than 130% fill rate improvements for advertising based on AI-recommended content

Ad campaign results for another tier-one broadcaster include:

• 38% increase in monthly active users (MAUs) during launch month, as shorts drove discovery and app downloads,
• 30% increase in user retention post-event, with short-form content creating habit-forming engagement patterns.

“The hype of what AI, specifically Generative AI, can do is over.” said Paul Pastor, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, Quickplay. “We are entering the era of Operational AI, where recommendation engines, ad-tech, CMS and analytics, and so on are integrated into one, centralized platform that operates across linear, OTT and social, extensible as new capabilities come to market. Our open architecture was built to be the motherboard of the Operational AI era and its delivering: our clients have seen 40%+ lower TCO from cloud-native consolidation and automated workflows, and 70% fewer integrations to manage. This velocity offers broadcasters the technology prowess needed to compete, and win, in the creator economy.”

First-Mover Advantage, Lasting Leadership

By streamlining AI and content workflows within a unified platform across broadcast, OTT, and Social, broadcasters unlock the ability to operate with creator-level speed- while fully leveraging their scale, brand integrity, and deep libraries of premium content and rights.

Quickplay’s portfolio is purpose-built to be AI, cloud, and platform agnostic which eliminates concerns about vendor-lock in or other costly requirements associated with adding new components to existing workflows. Its open API architecture allows customers to manage content across traditional broadcast, streaming, and social platforms from a single system—delivering the agility and velocity needed to reach fragmented audiences. Results realized with Quickplay’s AI tools include:

• Custom AI models decreased production time for editing and reformatting content into vertical clips from up to 60 minutes to under 5 minutes,
• 30% higher retention with Quickplay’s AI-driven recommendations,
• 500% audience reach expansion through social syndication and shorts that funnel viewers back to owned-and-operated services,
• 300%+ increase in content activation by leveraging scene-level metadata to turn archives into continuous discovery and monetization engines.

Quickplay can integrate with other AI innovations and ecosystems faster than any other CMS provider on the market, most recently with Gemini 3.0. As new AI tools emerge—whether for multi-lingual subtitles or advanced video editing like Veo 3.1 for in-painting and out-painting—the company’s open API structure and orchestration capabilities enable rapid integration, allowing customers to innovate faster and see results sooner.

“Value generation is what our clients are after, and that value looks different for different companies,” said Juan Martin, Co-Founder and CTO, Quickplay.” That’s precisely why we built a fully agnostic platform from day one. No walled gardens, no vendor-lock in. Flexibility to scale or add to without roadblocks. AI is accelerating how quickly we’re generating value for our clients – and in 2026, the race is on.”

Looking Ahead

The new reality is viewers – and their attention – never stop moving. In 2025, Quickplay demonstrated its ability to deliver measurable business impact and architecture that supports transformation at scale. In 2026, Quickplay’s proven AI capabilities will continue supporting broadcasters by converting structural change into lasting advantage.

About Quickplay

Quickplay is the AI-native platform that unifies linear, OTT, and social video for Tier-1 media companies. We orchestrate the full content workflow across these channels, turning premium libraries into engines for discovery, engagement and monetization. Our vendor agnostic platform delivers AI-driven insights that feed decisions across all channels, enabling broadcasters to operate with creator-level speed while maintaining broadcast-grade scale and control.

Founded by veterans who’ve built dozens of Tier-1 media platforms globally, Quickplay powers immersive sports, live events, and personalized experiences for millions of viewers. We are headquartered in Toronto, with operations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chennai, and throughout Europe. For more information, visit https://quickplay.com/.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Stacey Paris-Bechtel, Breakaway Communications for Quickplay [email protected]

By Andre Christensen, Founder and CEO, Quickplay

Broadcasters haven’t lost their audience, they gained another one.

The new majority of younger viewers – Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha – have become the most valuable audience the industry has ever seen.

For decades, media companies utilized an operating model that works very well for what I’ll call the Habit Audience — viewers who arrive intentionally; watch longer sessions; and value reliability, schedules, and depth.

They value this routine because it’s what they’ve always known: Linear TV. Premium OTT. Live sports. News.

This audience is still large, still valuable, and still well served by broadcasters’ operating models.

But the new majority – or the Experience Audience –  doesn’t “tune in” like their predecessors. They flow. They discover, sample, follow, and return — across feeds, formats, and platforms.

Both audiences matter. But trying to serve both with a single operating model won’t work.

Broadcasters want to serve both audiences. They’re just using the wrong rulebook for the new one.

Two Audiences. Two Rulebooks.

Imagine bringing an American football rulebook to a European football game. Same name but completely different strategies. Each team wants a goal, but one’s game plan won’t serve the other.

The same applies to broadcast.

The Habit Audience was born into the traditional broadcaster operating model. They are dependable and consistent. Yet, the Experience Audience, growing in size and importance every day, plays by new rules. Most importantly, they let algorithms – not schedules – decide discovery and what comes next.

The Habit Audience plays by familiar rules (so far..):

• Comes directly to a channel or app
• Values trust, consistency, and brands over experimentation
• Stays for long sessions
• Uses linear for habit (decreasingly), OTT for convenience (increasingly), and social for sampling
• Success is measured through ratings, retention, subscriptions, and CPMs

The Engagement Audience plays by different ones:

• Discovery happens passively in social feeds, depth in YouTube and OTT, and intentionally on linear, especially for events
• Values engagement, involvement, personalities, and identity over institutional polish
• Short-form leads; long-form follows
• Frequency, relevance, and learning matter more than schedules and even recency
• Success is measured through engagement quality, fandom, ARPU, and repeat behavior

The rulebook for the Habit Audience comprises:

• Planned releases
• High production standards
• Strong brands
• Clear schedules
• Stable formats
• Predictable monetization
• Owned destinations (Linear and OTT), Social for reach

Serve this model to the Experience Audience and be prepared for them to do what they know best: flow to another platform. Reaching them requires:

• One story adapted into many formats across platforms
• Continuous publishing across feeds
• Fast feedback loops
• Platform-native packaging
• Learning what works and iterating quickly
• Social Media for discovery and building communities, owned destinations (OTT) for the deepening fandom and retention

Despite these differences, there is one constant that will appeal to both audiences: Your library.

Broadcasters can capitalize on the same libraries and content across the two audiences. But the Engagement Audience requires using those same inputs differently:

• The same story, re-formatted for feeds and different use cases
• The same IP, distributed upstream before commitment
• The same trust, expressed through relevance and frequency

In other words:

• Owned branded OTT remains the target destination of the flywheel
• Premium libraries remain the advantage.

What’s changed is where the journey starts — and how much work and monetization happens before someone ever opens a broadcaster’s app. YouTube will be the end-destination for some of your audience, your branded OTT platform the destination for your most loyal fans.

While it can be the same content, the gap lies in reaching these distinct audiences where they are  — without splitting teams, workflows, or economics.

The Bottom Line

Two audiences now exist — and the second one has become the new majority. To win, you don’t have to abandon the Habit Audience, you just have to welcome the Experience Audience in the way they expect to be welcomed.

This requires operating fluently across both rulebooks — with one connected engine and unifying operating model. This requires three shifts:

• Distribution → Orchestrate, Don’t SyndicateSocial → YouTube → OTT must function as one ecosystem, not separate teams.
• Measurement → Replace Reach with RelevanceRatings and impressions no longer explain growth. Engagement quality, fandom, and lifetime value do.
• Monetization → Every Format Drives ValueCreators monetize every surface. Broadcasters can do this at a far greater scale once the system connects.

AI is the underpin that brings these together in a holistic ecosystem.

The technology is ready. Economics already rewards this model. The audience has already moved.

The only question left is how quickly media companies adapt their operating model to keep up..

In my next post, I’ll break down the Creator Operating Model — the structure designed to serve both audiences, at scale.

Download the whitepaper to see the full playbook for distribution, measurement, and monetization in the Creator Era.

By Andre Christensen, Founder and CEO, Quickplay

As I outlined in my previous blog, Gen Z and Millennial audiences aren’t an “emerging audience” anymore- they are the new majority. They:

• drive nearly all digital subscription growth
• spend up to four times more on streaming, content, and eCommerce
• are accessible anywhere and anytime
• shape what becomes culturally relevant

So why does growth for broadcasters feel out of reach? Because the new majority doesn’t ‘tune in’—they flow. Their journey starts on social media short-form surfaces and moves through platforms broadcasters weren’t architected or organized to follow.

The good news? Broadcasters hold unmatched trust, IP, and sit on libraries of premium content. They can win this generation—if they adjust the operating model to match how the new majority actually consumes.

Audiences Don’t Tune In—They Flow. Follow Them.

Gen Z and Millennials discover content on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts builds engagement on Youtube and Facebook, fandom on YouTube and deepens loyalty on OTT. And it’s not siloed to commercial breaks- this journey is continuous, personalized, and algorithmically driven.

These platforms can be broadcasters’ most powerful engines for audience acquisition if leveraged strategically. Short-form platforms aren’t competitors—they’re your discovery engines.

For example, broadcasters’ have powerfully rich content libraries. Your archive is more valuable than the shows you make tomorrow. Evergreen clips from decades-old content outperform new releases because algorithms reward relevance, not recency. In fact, the majority of YouTube consumption is not recently produced content. AI now lets broadcasters turn dormant libraries into continuous discovery and engagement engines. Avoid the legacy thinking of long-form and explore ways to reimagine a catalog for shorts, social, and OTT.

Trust is broadcasters’ strongest currency — but trust only matters if audiences encounter it in the formats they consume daily. Long-form only is a legacy format, but together with short-firm it’s the future. Adapting format, workflow, and tone is how credibility becomes cultural relevance again.

The Revenue Reality: Spend Follows the New Majority

Traditional revenue models in media that stem from traditional linear ads and bundled subscriptions are shrinking. PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook projects traditional linear ad spend will decline by 3.5% CAGR through 2027, while Creator Economy marketing is growing at double-digit rates, surpassing $30 billion globally in 2024.

We’ve reached a tipping point: in 2025, social media creators will command more than 50% of all content-driven spend. But the real story is why? They are winning because they operate a completely different monetization engine. They monetize a single story across sponsorships, integrated placements, eCommerce, merch, memberships, YouTube revenue, affiliate sales, tipping, podcasts, licensing, sports books, and FAST/mid-form distribution. Broadcasters, meanwhile, still rely on just a few revenue lines, i.e., pre/mid-roll, carriage fees, and OTT subscriptions.

That mismatch is exactly why the revenue gap widened: audience behavior evolved, and monetization followed the audience.

A few truths now define the landscape:

• Creator monetization is not “ads vs. subscriptions.” It’s 12+ revenue lines per story
• Revenue grows where audiences discover, not where they finish
• Social and YouTube operate as global commerce engines
• Shorts and mid-form monetize earlier in the audience journey
• Archives often hold more monetizable surface than new productions
• Subscription-only strategies miss the majority of today’s spend

This isn’t decline —it’s a massive opportunity shift.

This is the reality. The only question left is will broadcasters adapt in time to compete?

What the New Majority Expects From Broadcasters

The new majority isn’t difficult to reach — they just have a different set of expectations. Their rules are simple:

• Show up where discovery happens.
  Short-form is their entry point for everything — news, sports, entertainment. If you’re not present, they assume the story belongs to someone else.
• Build a deeper connection where engagement lives.
  YouTube and mid-form social video is where breadth becomes depth. Engagement will grow if your content strategy focuses on driving interactions on your branded OTT platforms in parallel with YouTube and other social platforms.
• Deliver premium experiences where loyalty grows.
  Owned branded OTT platforms remain the destination — where trust, ARPU, and long-form value are highest. But audiences only arrive if you meet them upstream first.

This is the audience’s playbook — not a theory. It’s how they already behave.

How broadcasters operationalize this flow — across content, formats, workflows, and monetization — is the focus of my next post, where I break down the Creator Model in detail.

Why Shorts? Because That’s What the New Majority Wants

Short-form content is the single most powerful lever in this model. It’s the preferred format for younger audiences for discovery, the fastest path to relevance and monetization, and pulls audiences into deeper experiences in your own branded OTT services.

Consider these signals from the new majority:

• 72% of their video viewing is under five minutes—short-form dominates
• Shorts drive discovery and audience flow from TikTok to YouTube, and to OTT—the gravitational force of the entire flywheel
• More than half of Gen Z say content creators shape how they follow sports, fundamentally changing what is driving fandom and engagement (source)
• Across sports, clips under two minutes now rival live games in importance for younger fans — a signal of how dramatically content hierarchy has shifted (source)

Broadcasters can use short-form to reach, attract, re-engage, and funnel audiences toward deeper engagement and retention on YouTube, Facebook, and their own OTT platforms—where the most loyal, highest ARPU audiences reside.

The scoreboard has changed: engagement quality, relevance, retention, and fandom now matter more than raw reach.

The Path Forward

The future is bright for broadcasters who embrace the reality of how the new majority consumes. With the right tools, workflows, and distribution model, trust and premium content become powerful differentiators again

The new majority already moved. Broadcasters now choose whether to follow — or be forgotten.

For an in-depth analysis on how to lead in the digital-first era, download my latest whitepaper. And stay tuned here for my next blog post where I break down the Creator Model- the operating system built for the new majority.

This is the first in a blog series about AI Studio’s competitive strengths.

With nearly two-thirds of the global online population consuming short-form video daily, broadcasters and streamers face an urgent challenge: how do you transform vast content libraries into engaging, monetizable assets without drowning in manual workflows? The answer lies not just in leveraging AI tools, but in having the right architecture to power them.

AI Studio not only changes how tier-one operators activate stale libraries, it unveils the power of short-form video as a path to long-form viewership. While competitors offer fragmented point solutions, AI Studio delivers an end-to-end platform that transforms metadata blind spots into strategic advantages, scales effortlessly with your technology stack, and lets content teams move at the speed of social.

These point solutions claim to offer similar advantages, but our end-to-end orchestration approach stands alone. This blog explains why.

Metadata Excellence is the Foundation

Metadata is the connective tissue between your content and your audience. Without consistent metadata, even the most compelling content remains hidden, undiscoverable, and undermonetized.

Most AI tools generate basic keywords or mood tags outputs that are often machine-readable, but useless in context. AI Studio takes a different approach.

Using multi-modal AI that combines vision, natural language processing, and speech-to-text analysis, it extracts people, places, dialogue, themes, and subjects that are immediately actionable. Unlike our competitors, we don’t just tag content; we enrich it with scene-level semantic understanding, identifying dramatic confrontations, comedic beats, and emotional reveals that resonate with audiences.

But extraction is only half the battle. AI Studio’s orchestration layer acts as a bidirectional intelligence system, not just pushing metadata out, but continuously learning from your existing workflows. Through open APIs, our unified pipeline handles automated ingestion, semantic tagging, multi-format poster generation, and storyline descriptors as a single, intelligent flow.

Unlike point solutions that operate in silos or wrapper layers that sit on top of your stack, AI Studio weaves through your infrastructure, making each component smarter without disruption.The result is transcripts, thumbnails, previews, subject classifications, and plot summaries delivered in standardized formats (JSON, XML). What’s more: they sync in real-time with your CMS, recommendation engines, and personalization systems.

Where competitors deliver fragmented outputs that require additional processing, AI Studio ensures your metadata is production-ready and usable from day one. This creates stronger discovery, deeper personalization, and new monetization opportunities across your entire content catalog.

Architecture Matters: Built for Scale, Speed, and the Unpredictable

Our industry shifts faster than most can keep up with. Ten years ago the biggest focus at CES was [literally] the biggest TV. Today, smaller, handheld screens are where it’s at.

The only way to win this race is choosing a partner with the right architectural foundation to support these pivots. One that won’t break your bank with expensive technology overhauls.

AI Studio is a part of Quickplay’s end-to-end cloud-agnostic platform. Its serverless, GPU-enabled design dynamically scales to handle both massive archive processing and daily high-output workflows. Whether you’re enriching decades of soap opera back catalogs or processing daily episodic content and entertainment specials, the platform adjusts automatically. No manual scaling. No fixed infrastructure constraints.

While competitors lock you into proprietary AI stacks, AI Studio’s API-first design with SDKs and webhooks integrates seamlessly into existing workflows. The platform supports multi-LLM orchestration, working with Gemini, Twelve Labs, Amazon Bedrock and other AI tools. This isn’t vendor lock-in. It’s vendor flexibility. You maintain control over your content flow while staying “future-ready” as AI capabilities evolve.

This architectural approach delivers what matters most. Lower total cost of ownership, faster time-to-market for new features, and the agility to experiment without expensive rebuilds.

An Editor’s Best Friend

AI Studio doesn’t replace your content team, it transforms them into content strategists. Instead of scrubbing through hours of footage, they can instantly locate exact moments using natural language queries. Whether it’s a dramatic confrontation near a cliff in a novela or an emotional reveal in a Civil War film, AI Studio surfaces those scenes immediately, complete with embeddings that understand context and emotion.

But the real power comes from how these capabilities scale across your audience segments. AI Studio automatically identifies shorts opportunities based on your business rules, whether that’s trending topics, specific cohorts, or content themes.

Want to target sports enthusiasts with game-winning moments? Need romantic comedy clips for date-night viewers? AI Studio matches content to personas automatically, then prepares those clips for the right social channels where those audiences already engage.

This isn’t just about finding content faster. It’s about orchestrating a complete content-to-audience strategy where every clip serves a purpose, reaches the right cohort, and drives viewers back to your platform.

Your team sets the rules, defines the personas, and AI Studio executes at scale, turning your library into thousands of targeted engagement opportunities.

You have the content, Quickplay helps you get the most out of it.

Email us at [email protected] to set up your AI Studio demo today.

The Fall/Winter 2025 lineup has been packed with great new shows. I’ve eagerly watched The Diplomat, Slow Horses, Welcome to Derry, Chad Powers, and of course, Alien: Earth! And it’s clear that streaming platforms are leaning hard into series launches and new seasons to increase viewer engagement and drive growth.

But here’s the problem: viewers are conditioned to search for “what’s new”, and platforms are less likely to look to their libraries as a competitive advantage – one that can serve up relevant content even if it’s not new.

It all comes back to discovery.

Without it, viewers default to premium services powered by advanced algorithms, and platforms using basic recommendations for niche or nostalgic content could lose before the competition starts.

The next phase of streaming won’t be won by who has the newest show – it’ll be won by who best understands what viewers want in the moment.

The Algorithm Beats the Budget

Netflix’s AI engine fuels about 80% of viewing and delivers an estimated $1 billion in annual value, showing how robust discovery can turn a content library into a powerful engine for engagement and loyalty.

Platforms built on deep catalogs (and not distracted by the new release marketing machine) can also leverage AI to help viewers discover the “right” content from what already exists in their library. And for the growing number of multi-service subscribers, data-informed discovery should work across the platforms they use, not just within one silo.

Catalog-driven platforms don’t need to compete on “what’s new” – they need to compete on “what’s right for you, right now.”

And that’s a battle AI can win.

Beyond Basic Recommendations

Ampere Analysis recently found that more people discover new content directly from streaming services, topping word-of-mouth suggestions.

Despite having this much influence on viewing behavior, many platforms still use collaborative filtering and basic watch history. But the streaming leaders are building emotionally intelligent systems that deliver:

• Context-aware recommendations (device, time of day)
• Mood detection (repeat watching, comfort titles, binging)
• Behavioral cohorts (rom-com lovers, kids-first households, the sampler)
• Real-time cultural signals (TikTok spikes, new content drops, in-the-news stories)

Which points to a gap: very few platforms are effectively tapping into external web signals. If a viewer is searching for “best 90s thrillers” or engaging with long-form derived shorts content, that behavior should inform what they see when they open your app. We can do this today.

But sophisticated recommendations require sophisticated metadata. Platforms need to move beyond basic genre tags to enrich their catalogs with mood, themes, pacing, emotional tone, and narrative elements – deeper attributes that actually drive viewer satisfaction.

These capabilities can deepen engagement, reduce churn and support value delivery.

What It Takes to Win

The value proposition can shift from “we have thousands of titles” to “we always know what you want.” This requires:

• Treating AI infrastructure as a core differentiator – not a feature, but the foundation of competitive positioning
• Mining engagement data for insights and direction – watch patterns, interaction behaviors, and consumption signals that reveal true preferences
• Cross-platform data integration – connecting viewing behavior with broader digital footprints (with privacy controls)
• Rich metadata enrichment – tagging content beyond genre with mood, themes, pacing, tone, and narrative elements that enable nuanced matching
• Continuous testing and learning – refine what actually drives engagement and retention

Platforms that nail this won’t just reduce churn, they’ll fundamentally change the perception of what library content delivers. They’ll prove that “what’s right” beats “what’s new” every time.

The Window Is Closing

The competitive advantage is moving to content intelligence. As viewers become more subscription-fatigued and selective, the platforms that solve discovery first will win big. Wait, and you’ll be the service with great shows nobody watches.

Learn more about how AI Studio can help.

We are thrilled to share that our Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, Paul Pastor, has been chosen as one of our industry’s top trailblazers in CableFax’s Voices of Impact awards.

Paul was recognized not only for his recent accomplishments, but for his lasting impact on culture and diversity in media and entertainment. As an openly gay executive for over two decades, Paul has championed inclusive leadership rooted in authenticity. He along with our other impressive Quickplay founders built a company that prides itself on creating space for others to thrive as their complete selves.

Early in his career at The Walt Disney Company, Paul was inspired by visible LGBTQ+ leadership and an environment where being out was safe and accepted. That experience shaped his belief in the power of authenticity at work—moving from whispering “I have a boyfriend” to openly referencing a partner or spouse. He has carried that ethos forward ever since, leading by example.

In the last year, Paul has brought this mission to life through initiatives that extend far beyond Quickplay. Recognizing a lack of diverse representation at major tech and media events, he led the creation of LGBTQ+ & Ally events at global industry conferences including CES, NAB, and IBC. Often co-hosted with key partners including Google Cloud, Caretta Research, Evergent and others, the gatherings have become vibrant networking hubs – safe spaces that inspire connection, mentorship, and new pathways for underrepresented voices.

As questions swirl around the future of DEI, Paul remains unwavering in his belief, and the data supports it, that diverse teams drive stronger ideas, broader audience reach, and better business. His leadership proves that creating inclusive environments isn’t a side effort; it’s foundational to sustainable success.

To Paul, diversity isn’t a policy – it’s a lived value. We are grateful for Paul’s leadership every day – and are honored to celebrate him!

By Andre Christensen, Founder and CEO, Quickplay

For years, the headlines were relentless: Broadcast is dying. Audiences are gone. Platforms won.

Then 2025 happened and every emerging trend we’d been tracking suddenly became the new reality:

• Streaming surpassed linear in global viewing hours.
• Creator-economy ad spend will eclipse traditional media this year.
• Social media platforms became the top news source.
• Short-form clips overtook long-form storytelling in total monetization.

But here’s what the naysayers missed: this isn’t broadcast’s decline—it’s the largest market realignment potential in decades.

Broadcasters open to rewriting their gameplan will be a part of the biggest upswing moment in our industry’s history.

The New Majority Has Arrived and they are 3x more valuable

Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha comprise about 70% of the global audience. Unlike the Boomers and Gen Xers before them – they’re not connected to their “clicker” or proud subscribers of TV Guide. They’ve swiftly rewritten each and every rule traditional broadcasters thought they knew about media consumption. Despite that, they’re spending 1.5-3x more than older generations on digital subscriptions, content, and e-commerce.That represents an unprecedented potential for broadcasters willing to engage and monetize following the new rules of the game.

The audience didn’t shrink…it multiplied in value.

These viewers didn’t abandon premium content. They simply find it differently. They’re omnipresent – consuming across linear, OTT, social, and mobile – and they’re more reachable and monetizable than ever before. The challenge isn’t reach. It’s relevance.

The Money Followed the Attention

Today’s reality is:

• 43% of Gen Z prefer platforms like YouTube or other social platforms to consume video while only 12% prefer traditional outlets, according to Activate Consulting’s newest report.
• Social platforms are now the primary news source for over 54% of Americans.

Broadcasters should also capitalize on the explosion of short-form content and leverage it as a front door to growth strategies. Short-form drives discovery, funnels viewers into longer-form, and fuels commerce along the way – making every second of content monetizable, across all platforms and formats.

In the creator era, active relationships are the real currency. Success is no longer solely measured by reach or gross ratings points. It’s about engagement depth, repeat behavior, and lifetime value.

Broadcasters Hold a Winning Hand

While everyone else fights for clicks and chases viral moments, broadcasters still own the rarest and most defensible currency in today’s digital economy: trust, rights, and authentic content.

Broadcasters have become an institutional authority over the decades as the “go-to” destination for live sports, local news, deep content libraries and so on. They also have the scale to cut through the clutter. Couple that with AI and distribution agility, and they’ll be the most powerful growth engine in media.

AI: The Great Equalizer

AI enables broadcasters to operate like creators: fast, data-driven, and omnipresent.

With AI, broadcasters can:

• automate the content-to-audience flow across every screen and platform,
• deliver “one story, multiple formats,” powering true cross-platform storytelling that meets audiences wherever they are, however they want to consume,
• bring decades of archives back to life for new audiences, fueling a new growth engine,
• personalize discovery and monetization at scale with newfound agility.

AI-powered tools and workflows empower broadcasters to match the relevance and velocity viewers expect with the trust and reputation only they have.

The Bottom Line

The New Majority + Premium Content + AI = The Largest Monetization Unlock in a Generation.

2025 isn’t the end of broadcast. It’s an inflection point. The broadcasters who act decisively, who embrace platform-native distribution, who leverage AI to operate across all ecosystems (i.e, linear/ OTT/Social), will lead the next decade.

The audience is here. The technology is proven. This is our moment. Let’s build it.

Download this whitepaper for more on how broadcasters can stay ahead of their new competition and capture value in new paths to distribution, measurement and monetization.

AMSTERDAM (September 10, 2025 – IBC 2025, Hall 5 | 5.G80) – Quickplay, a leading provider of OTT solutions, announced today that it has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program, a co-sell program for AWS Partners that provides software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. The program helps AWS Partners drive new business by directly connecting participating ISVs with the AWS Sales organization.

Quickplay’s full solutions portfolio is available in the AWS Marketplace, allowing AWS customers to benefit from the business and operational benefits of its cloud-native platform. These benefits span Quickplay’s powerful CMS, its end-to-end orchestration capabilities, along with award-winning AI tools that create short-form content at scale, power content recommendations, generate dynamic ad placements, and more.

“Since partnering with AWS, our collective team has made swift and impactful progress around the world – from Southeast Asia to the Southeast United States,” said Paul Pastor, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, Quickplay. “Advancing into the AWS ISV Accelerate Program illustrates our track record driving successful OTT transformations globally as well as helping our customers thrive in the creator economy with AI-powered shorts creation.”

The AWS ISV Accelerate Program provides Quickplay with co-sell support and benefits to meet customer needs through collaboration with AWS field sellers globally. Co-selling provides better customer outcomes and assures mutual commitment from AWS and its partners.

AWS ISV Accelerate Program members are held to the industry’s highest standards and must undergo a comprehensive evaluation to gain acceptance into the program. Quickplay participated in a thorough architectural and security review to ensure the quality and design of our solutions. Proof of customer excellence was also reviewed to validate the successes Quickplay customers have achieved across industry verticals.

Quickplay’s solutions are available worldwide. To learn more, visit https://quickplay.com/ or visit the Quickplay AWS marketplace listing.

For more information about Quickplay’s portfolio or to schedule a demo at IBC 2025, please email [email protected].

About Quickplay
Quickplay is leading cloud transformations of OTT and in-home experiences for pay-TV, telcos, and MVPDs. The company’s cloud-native platform leverages a transformative open architecture for unparalleled performance in delivering premium video, handling complex use cases, and scaling to millions of viewers. Founded by a team that has built and operated dozens of Tier 1 OTT services worldwide, Quickplay is powering immersive sports, live experiences and personalized entertainment on any screen. The company is headquartered in Toronto and has additional locations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chennai, India, and Europe. For more information, visit https://quickplay.com/.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Stacey Paris-Bechtel, Breakaway Communications for Quickplay [email protected]

AI-powered platform enables aggregators to gain more value from their content libraries by identifying key moments, automating short-form creation and fueling discovery, personalization and monetization

AMSTERDAM (September 4, 2025 – IBC 2025, Hall 5 | 5.G80) – Quickplay, a leading provider of OTT solutions, today announced Quickplay AI Studio, a production-ready platform that helps broadcasters and streamers transform their vast content libraries into short-form assets at scale. The solution leverages generative AI to pinpoint and extract key moments from voluminous archives, automating short-form workflows to enable the delivery of a steady feed of clips that engage audiences across owned and social platforms, including TikTok, YouTube and Meta.

Many broadcasters still struggle with metadata blind spots, time-intensive manual clipping, disjointed workflows, and the complexity of optimizing assets for multiple distribution platforms. Quickplay AI Studio eliminates these bottlenecks by orchestrating content workflows end to end, enabling operators to deliver dynamic, immersive experiences while maximizing library value. For marketing teams, AI Studio turns trending topics into action, streamlining promo and content workflows that attract new subscribers, lift retention, and guide viewers to owned-and-operated platforms.

The demand for fresh short-form content continues to surge, with social algorithms prioritizing frequency and consistency. Ampere Analysis cites that nearly two-thirds of the global online population consumes “swiping” short-form video content on  TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and other platforms each day, compared to only 47 percent who watch broadcast TV channels and 46 percent who watch streaming services.

“The creator economy and short-form social platforms have transformed audience engagement, and broadcasters are looking for practical ways to meet the expectations of an always-on, social-first consumer,” said Paul Pastor, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Quickplay. “Earlier this year we introduced Quickplay Shorts to address these market shifts. AI Studio is the next logical step – giving our customers the ability to seamlessly integrate automated scene-level metadata enrichment and shorts production into their existing systems. With AI Studio, discovery, personalization, and contextual advertising are elevated across platforms. It’s like a system upgrade without the pain of a rip-and-replace.”

The platform’s core features include:

• AI Metadata Enrichment: Utilizes multi-modal AI to analyze video content and generate new forms of metadata, serving as the foundation for short-form workflows and advanced personalization and discovery. The platform is compatible with leading AI tools, including Gemini and Amazon Bedrock, and integrates with industry leaders like Twelve Labs.
• Moment Identification: AI Studio automatically identifies and extracts key moments from  massive content libraries based on trending topics, prompt engineering and other web signals tuned to feed social algorithms and drive the highest engagement.
• Smart verticalization: Provides operators with search and edit tools to quickly find, clip, and verticalize content with full control of the output..
• Publishing Flexibility: Enables content owners to publish directly to owned & operated platforms  as well as  TikTok, YouTube, and Meta, with content and metadata designed appropriately for each.
• API-based Orchestration: AI Studio breathes new life into customers’ CMS, MAMs, and other legacy systems. Through open APIs, it injects rich metadata and scene-level vector embeddings directly into customers’ existing platforms, enabling advanced search, personalization, and new monetization capabilities.

“Quickplay AI Studio is not just AI hype; it’s a working, in-market system that delivers immediate ROI and helps our customers solve real business challenges by adding a layer of intelligence to their content, enabling better engagement and monetization,” added Juan Martin, Co-Founder and CTO, Quickplay.

On the Content Everywhere stage at IBC 2025, Quickplay will demonstrate AI Studio, showing how broadcasters, streamers, and other tier-one operators can strengthen viewer retention, optimize content distribution, and deliver dynamic, immersive experiences using the speed, workflow, and AI capabilities of the new AI Studio.

AI Studio builds on Quickplay’s market-leading AI momentum, following quickly after the successful launch of its award-winning Quickplay Shorts. Its AI leadership continues to be recognized across the industry with accolades including Asia Pacific Broadcasting + 2025 Awards, NAB Product of the Year, along with being named to the CSI Awards shortlist and a IBC Innovation Awards finalist.

For more information about Quickplay AI Studio or to schedule a demo at IBC 2025, please email [email protected].

About Quickplay
Quickplay is leading cloud transformations of OTT and in-home experiences for pay-TV, telcos, and MVPDs. The company’s cloud-native platform leverages a transformative open architecture for unparalleled performance in delivering premium video, handling complex use cases, and scaling to millions of viewers. Founded by a team that has built and operated dozens of Tier 1 OTT services worldwide, Quickplay is powering immersive sports, live experiences and personalized entertainment on any screen. The company is headquartered in Toronto and has additional locations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chennai, India, and Europe. Quickplay is a two-time winner of the Google Cloud Industry Solution Partner of the Year Award for Media & Entertainment. For more information, visit https://quickplay.com/.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Stacey Paris-Bechtel, Breakaway Communications for Quickplay [email protected]

The TV business isn’t just evolving—it’s being reinvented in real time. Global streamers are resetting consumer expectations. Couple that with AI changing how content is discovered and monetized, and you have a viewership that is more fragmented, fickle, and valuable than ever.

What does that mean for broadcasters, telcos, and sports rights holders? It’s no longer about keeping up. It’s about staying ahead—with scalable, personalized, and data-driven monetization strategies that don’t just adapt to change, but thrive in it.

Let’s dive in to where the biggest wins can be found – and how Quickplay helps you capture them.

1. Broadcasters: Differentiate or Die

In a market flooded with freemium models and addictive algorithm-fueled platforms, broadcasters must break free from thinking that traditional advertising is the leading route to monetization. Facing mounting pressure to stand out in a landscape dominated by giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube, broadcasters need to diversify revenue streams beyond their current playbooks in order to at least survive, if not thrive.

The good news is – with the right strategy – opportunities ahead are plentiful. We all know that consumers expect hyper-personalization within their entertainment experiences. With the accessibility of AI and ML applications today, broadcasters can leverage:

• AI-driven personalization: Deliver tailored AVOD/SVOD models with dynamic audience segmentation
• New pricing strategies: Think pay-per-view, freemium upgrades, or genre-based tiers
• Snackable, shareable content: Short-form vertical videos should be part of every content plan

Our AI-backed modular platform provides you with the tools to:

• Enable advertisers to hyper-target viewers in real time during live events
• Tie content performance directly to revenue metrics
• Instantly generate and distribute viral-ready short-form content
• Provide analytics tools that link content-specific performance to ROI for advertisers

2. Telcos: Flip the Status Quo

Telcos are prioritizing owning the distribution layer because they’re uniquely positioned to act as content aggregators, which presents them with an opportunity to use their billing relationships and consumer insights to power monetization. However, the rise of smart TV platforms is a major challenge to their dominance in the living room.

To stay competitive, telcos need to embrace transformation—evolving toward greater flexibility, personalization, and smarter monetization. Rather than locking users into rigid channel bundles, it’s time to offer choice—through a dynamic marketplace of à la carte channels, themed packs, and even regional, local, and user-generated content supported through a revenue-sharing model.

At Quickplay, we have led 55 (and counting) transformations, and that experience gives us the unique perspective needed to implement this approach. Our purpose-built, end-to-end, cloud native platform includes a flexible marketplace model for bundling and reselling OTT services, as well as pre-built monetization APIs to foster partnerships and seamless integration with content providers.

3. Sports Rights Holders: Turn Fandom into Fortune

I have two words for sports rights holders: monetize fandoms. As competition for fan attention grows, it’s time to rethink your game plan, pun intended. Consider moving beyond traditional subscription models and embracing short-form content to create immersive, monetize-able fan experiences.

Features like live voting, alternate commentary streams, and augmented reality overlays can dramatically enhance the viewing experience. And by layering support for microtransactions such as in-event betting, you’re actively working to keep the viewer within your ecosystem while giving them the sense of community that keeps them engaged long-term. Event-based subscriptions are also very powerful. You can build dynamic pricing models based on audience loyalty as well as regional preferences to maximize revenues during peak sports seasons.

A recent study found that roughly 70% of Super Bowl viewers engage on a second platform while watching the game. Utilizing AI-driven tools to rapidly create, verticalize and publish short-form content within your own app can ‘stop the clock’ on that play. And stop viewers from wandering off of your platform.

Our modular architecture gives you the flexibility to design fan experiences that drive deeper engagement and faster monetization. With plug-and-play tools, you can:

• Build and monetize interactive overlays for in-event experiences
• Offer turnkey solutions for real-time sponsorship activation and hyper-targeted advertising
• Integrate short-form content for shoppable content, game highlights and recaps
• And a whole lot more

Looking Ahead: Rewrite the Rules

The old playbook doesn’t cut it anymore. Whether you’re a broadcaster, telco, or sports rights holder, it’s time to rewrite the rules of engagement—and monetization. The mandate is clear: adapt to these shifts or risk losing relevance in an increasingly competitive space.

Quickplay delivers the platform, the professionals, and the performance to make that happen. We combine advanced technology with deep industry knowledge to redefine how your business drives monetization.

Contact us at [email protected] to start the conversation.