Are the TV OS Wars Just Not That Important?
A winner-takes-all outcome seems to be far from reality
First, a few housekeeping items:
My podcast, Next in Media, has featured an awesome roster of guests of late. This week I talked to LG Ads CMO Tony Marlow (more on that later). Thanks to MIQ on being an amazing partner over the past few months. On that note, if you are interested in sponsoring the show, we’ve got an opportunity coming up this summer. Please reach out to andy@beet.tv.
Second, I’ve been working with Brian Morrissey of The Rebooting to put together three days of awesome programming starting Monday at the Kerv Café in Cannes. Check out the agenda here, and we hope to see you there.
A few years ago, I wrote a post called –TV's Quiet Battle For All The OS Marbles.
I’m starting to wonder if I was dead wrong.
Let’s look at who is vying to own the TV user interface:
You have the streaming stick players, like Roku and Amazon Fire
You have TV manufacturers with their own app platforms and ad tech, like LG, Samsung and Vizio
You have old school cable
You have Google, which has baked its software into various TVs, such as TCL
Do anyone of these players ‘rule’ TV - or even come close?
Roku is a legitimate streaming TV ad player. But it’s stock price is down 81% since 2021, despite being the dominant TV OS. What is Roku emphasizing these days? Original programming.
Amazon Fire seems important to Amazon’s growth story. But what make the company really matter in the TV industry? Thursday Night Football.
LG, Samsung and Vizio are all ascendant ad players - but none of them has made a play to snatch up a huge chunk of ad inventory. As LG Ads CMO put in my most recently podcast episode, “With modern connected tv, the advertising opportunities are not just the same as traditional TV,” he said. The company has smartly leaned on creating new ad inventory on its home screen, rather than battling with TV networks for a share of their app inventory.
There is a lot of potential there for sure.“It’s not just the scale of the devices that are enabled globally, it’s this ability to implement a direct-to-glass strategy,” he said. The LG home page, “think it’s the hub of your entertainment journey.”
True, but once you go on that journey, you’re watching shows and videos that someone other than LG or Samsung or Roku is selling. And I don’t see that changing any time soon.
After all, who rules ad-supported CTV right now? YouTube, which sells ads directly to millions of advertisers, along with the top TV networks. Google’s long-awaited success in TV advertising has little to do with its software being plugged into various TV sets, but the fact that its content is watched on nearly every TV set.
Beyond YouTube, where are the CTV ad dollars going? Directly to big media companies selling ad packages - NBCU selling Peacock, Paramount selling Paramount+ ads, Fox selling Tubi, Disney-Hulu, etc. etc. Sure, these companies have to pay the freight to a Roku or an Amazon Fire in some cases - but they hardly seem to be under any real threat of losing distribution or a significant amount of ad space or leverage.
Who is poised to be the next big CTV ad player? That would be Netflix, as it gets its ads business off the ground. Is Ted Sarandos really worried about the OS wars?
I’m not saying the Rokus and Samsungs of the world won’t play a role in this market. Many have excellent data at their disposal and enviable ad tech. But I think maybe we (I) may have gotten too caught up in comparing CTV to mobile, where two operating systems absolutely dominate- so much so that an Epic Games can end up in court with Apple, while Facebook desperately wants to build its own new computing platform just to get away from being an Apple or Android tenant.
TV may just be a different beast. There’s a reason that the big cable distribution companies like Comcast, Cox, etc. never became dominant ad players. For one thing, it’s not their core business. More importantly, there was too much fragmentation.
Right now, there is a growing amount of fragmentation in TV operating systems. Unless something dramatic happens, like a Roku sale, or a roll up of TV manufacturers ad sales operations, that reality doesn’t seem likely to change.
And the much ballyhooed OS Wars could remain at a standstill.