The broadcast industry's transition from purely linear distribution to a blend of traditional and streaming platforms continues, with adtech and monetization remaining central. Steve Reynolds, CEO of Imagine Communications, views this not as a sudden shift, but an evolving revenue model. “People are finally starting to understand that the debate of linear versus digital was the wrong debate,” Reynolds said. “We are going to be in an environment of linear plus digital, probably for a decade, maybe longer.”
Historically, many broadcasters, especially in the U.S., built siloed infrastructures: one for linear ad sales and another for digital or streaming. Maintaining these separate technology stacks increases costs and operational overhead. “The approach a lot of people took early on was: here’s a tech stack for linear origination, and here’s one for streaming. And by the way, that still is the predominant view,” he explained. “But we are starting to see some early adopters in the U.S. thinking about unifying those stacks and thinking about how to unify ad sales models.”
Reynolds points to the UK and Nordics as examples of faster adoption of unified advertising practices. “In the UK, the ad market has largely moved to a unified selling model,” he said. “Sky and ITV sell on an audience basis — across linear, on-demand, streaming and addressable — allowing them to sell converged inventory. They’ve found that commercially successful.”
A critical need is for broadcast-quality standards in digital advertising, due to the “glut of inventory” within connected TV (CTV) services, driving down prices. “There’s so much CTV inventory right now,” Reynolds said. “All of those AVOD and FAST services launched fairly quickly, creating more than 2,000 FAST channels between 2022 and 2023. That’s a lot of inventory. It’s largely undifferentiated because it’s sold the same way, through the same set of SSPs and DSPs, and that drives down price.”
Imagine Communications’ SureFire solution inserts broadcast-quality rules into digital ad placement. “The last commercial you see before a football match starts, for instance, might be a Nike spot,” Reynolds said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re watching linear, streaming, or on-demand, everyone gets the same ad in that spot. That’s something that none of the traditional ad insertion platforms have really done before.”
These converged ad insertion tools improve sales team effectiveness. Traditionally, linear and digital ad sales teams operate independently. Reynolds argues this separation is no longer logical with overlapping audience segments. “Most publishers still have two different organizations,” he said. “They think they sell spots backed up by rating points, and they think they sell impressions backed up by beacon data. Advertisers don’t care about that distinction. They care about reaching the audience they want to reach. When you start thinking of inventory as the audience, that changes everything.”
A unified approach enables better advertiser-viewer matching, regardless of viewing platform, opening the door to advanced attribution. “We want closed-loop measurement, and we want it across the entire audience,” he said, referencing potential collaborations with companies like Nielsen, Comscore or iSpot. “Linear ad revenue is coming down, but digital revenue hasn’t scaled up to fully replace it,” he said. “So, as a media company, you’re trying to improve the top line by boosting digital CPMs while you simultaneously reduce the cost of operations.”
Imagine Communications’ Aviator merges playout across linear and digital platforms. “Why are some customers using one silo for linear, another for streaming and in some cases a third for FAST?” Reynolds asked. “All you’re really doing is taking in a playlist, marking insertion points, and inserting a commercial.” Aviator aims to create a single interface for play-out and streaming origination, increasing automation and decreasing costs.
A key obstacle is risk aversion. Many legacy broadcast systems are reliable, and upgrades carry disruption risks. “You’ve got a lot of technical debt in this industry,” Reynolds said. “In uncertain economic times, it’s even harder to pull the trigger on new investments.” The decision-making process is becoming more involved, with CTOs and CFOs demanding risk analysis and payback periods.
Cloud workflows initially faced challenges. “Especially if you’re running a 24/7 broadcast, the math on moving full-time operations to the public cloud doesn’t always work out,” Reynolds said. “For occasional usage — like a tennis tournament with 32 courts — cloud-based infrastructure saves CapEx. But for a full-time schedule, local data centers or existing facilities might be more cost-effective.”
AI holds potential, but requires careful consideration. “People need to ask why, not just how. Last year, everyone was talking about the buzz of AI. This year, conversations are starting to focus on how it drives revenue or cuts costs.” With AI’s high running costs, “you need a significant revenue boost or efficiency gain, 20 or 30 percent, before it’s worthwhile.”
Bridging the linear and digital divide is key. “We have to look at audience as the inventory, not the time slot,” Reynolds said. “That’s how you make every impression count. The technology is there to unify it, but organizational barriers and legacy infrastructure can slow progress.” The success hinges on answering key questions: “Can you pull in enough new revenue to justify the investment? Are you prepared to rethink how you value and manage your ad inventory? If you can answer yes, you’re probably ready to unify your approach to linear and digital.”