The age of "growth at any cost" in streaming is over.
We are entering a profitability era where every content investment, product decision, and technology choice has to earn its way onto the roadmap.
In 2024 and 2025, we watched the market reset in real time. Disney pushed its streaming business to profitability by increasing prices, cracking down on account sharing, and leaning into bundles like Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ in a unified experience. According to S&P Global, more streamers will pursue bundling and joint ventures to improve scale and reduce churn.
At the same time, ad supported viewing and FAST are not a side story anymore. Comscore and Nielsen show AVOD and FAST audiences expanding quickly, with FAST channels up double digits in 2025 alone and up more than 70% since 2023.
The message is clear. By 2026, OTT leaders will not be judged on who has the most apps or the flashiest originals. They will be judged on:
- How efficiently they acquire, retain, and re-engage viewers
- How intelligently they monetize across subscription, ads, and commerce
- How adaptable their infrastructure is when the next platform or format appears
Here are the OTT trends and key insights that deserve a line on your 2026 strategy doc.
- Profitability and Bundling Become the Default Strategy
- Ad Supported and FAST Become the Growth Engine
- Churn, Price Fatigue, and the Rise of the Serial Switcher
- AI Moves From Experiment To Core Infrastructure
- Personalization, Identity, and the Return of Logged-In Viewing
- Platform Fragmentation Returns
- Operational Excellence Becomes A Brand Advantage
What Media Leaders Should Do Now to Be Ready
1. Profitability and Bundling Become the Default Strategy
Streaming is now a core P&L. Analysts expect more aggregation, telco bundles, and cross-platform partnerships as companies seek reach and cost efficiency.
Disney’s continued integration of Hulu into Disney+ by 2026 reinforces the shift toward unified streaming experiences that drive higher engagement and ad yield. S&P Global projects continued consolidation at the service level, with operators prioritizing scale and bundled value over launching new standalone apps.
What this means for 2026:
- Single-brand standalone apps struggle without global or hyper-niche scale
- Bundles and distribution partnerships become primary growth levers
- Contribution margin and LTV matter more than subscriber totals
How to prepare:
- Build your roadmap around margin, not MAUs
- Invest in bundle-ready entitlement logic within a modern video CMS
- Treat distribution partnerships as a proactive strategy
2. Ad Supported and FAST Become the Growth Engine
The shift toward ad supported streaming is now undeniable.
FAST channels continue to expand, and consumers lean toward lower-priced, ad supported tiers. Comscore reports FAST channel counts up roughly 14% YoY, and ad supported revenue is projected to scale into the tens of billions.
What this means for 2026:
- FAST remains a powerful reach and discovery vehicle
- Hybrid monetization becomes standard
- Advertisers demand more granular segmentation
How to prepare:
- Build a unified inventory strategy across AVOD, FAST, and SVOD ad tiers
- Invest in metadata, scheduling logic, and ad decisioning
- Make sure your video CMS and playout infrastructure can publish to linear channels, VOD libraries, and social endpoints from the same source of truth
3. Churn, Price Fatigue, and the Rise of the Serial Switcher
Subscribers now rotate services rather than stack them.
According to eMarketer, nearly half of U.S. adults have changed their streaming subscriptions within six months, with monthly churn more than double 2019 levels.
What to expect in 2026:
- Serial switching becomes a stable, long-term consumer behavior
- Subscription cycles get shorter with higher month-to-month volatility
- Reactivation pressure rises as returning users outpace net-new signups
How to prepare:
- Balance acquisition with engagement and reactivation
- Build lifecycle journeys for returning subscribers
- Anchor product value around content that keeps viewers coming back such as sports, live formats, archives, and niche programming
4. AI Moves From Experiment To Core Infrastructure
AI now sits inside the media supply chain, not just the UX layer.
In 2025:
- Reuters reported Prime Video testing AI-based dubbing
- The Verge covered HBO Max using AI for highlight detection
- Samsung TV Plus launched AI-powered personalization (TV Tech)
Meanwhile, enterprise brands grapple with synthetic media and AI governance.
What to expect in 2026:
- AI influences localization, versioning, adaptation, compliance, and packaging
- Asset generation and QA become AI-assisted
- Personalization moves beyond recommendations
How to prepare:
- Identify 3–5 workflows to automate
- Maintain human-in-the-loop guardrails
- Ensure your video infrastructure is API-first, so AI services can plug into ingest, CMS, and playout without brittle one off integrations
5. Personalization, Identity, and the Return of Logged-In Viewing
As third-party identifiers collapse, knowing who is watching becomes essential.
Smart TV platforms from Samsung and LG continue building AI-powered home screen experiences that reward relevance. Deloitte highlights growing emphasis on privacy-compliant measurement and first-party identity.
What to expect in 2026:
- Logged-in viewing becomes the norm across major OTT services
- Personalization expands into UI layout, merchandising, and ad relevance
- First-party identity drives engagement, retention, and measurement
How to prepare:
- Improve login incentives across apps
- Treat your video CMS as a decision engine, not only a library, with metadata and segmentation that directly feed UX and monetization
- Build a unified customer view across free, paid, and partner surfaces
6. Platform Fragmentation Returns
While services consolidate, the device and operating system landscape continues to fragment. Roku, Fire TV, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, Android TV, Vizio, and regional OEMs are expanding their proprietary platforms.
What to expect in 2026:
- The device landscape expands as OEMs push proprietary OS and AI-driven interfaces
- More endpoints create new opportunities but add operational overhead
- Unified app frameworks and metadata systems become essential for scale
How to prepare:
- Standardize on a multi-platform app framework
- Maintain one source of truth for content and metadata
- Use analytics to prioritize engineering investment by platform
7. Operational Excellence Becomes A Brand Advantage
Winning operators will be those who can adjust quickly and execute consistently.
Reports on AI-powered infrastructure highlight the value of structured metadata, unified workflows, and measurable engagement.
What to expect in 2026:
- Speed becomes a measurable differentiator across launches and experiments
- Lean teams must manage more endpoints with fewer manual workflows
- Automation and structured metadata become core to consistent execution
How to prepare:
- Audit systems for duplication and manual work
- Move toward an API-first, cloud-native video CMS that centralizes library, entitlements, and publishing
- Set a target for how fast you want to be able to launch a new app, a new FAST channel, or a new monetization experiment, and build your roadmap backward from that goal
Taken together, these trends mark a decisive shift. 2026 will reward operators who build flexible infrastructure, unify identity, embrace hybrid monetization, and use AI to reduce operational friction.
What Media Leaders Should Do Now to Be Ready
As 2025 closes, your 2026 OTT strategy should move beyond a list of platforms or features. It should reflect clear choices about where your business will win and how your teams will operate in the year ahead.
Use this end-of-year checklist to pressure-test your readiness:
- Clarify your growth thesis: Confirm whether subscription, ad supported, or hybrid revenue will drive the next phase of your business and ensure product, engineering, and content investments align with that direction.
- Productize profitability: Refine pricing, packaging, and bundles that protect ARPU while staying competitive for price-sensitive audiences. Treat churn reduction as a product and lifecycle challenge, not just a marketing concern.
- Operationalize AI for 2026 workflows: Identify three to five workflows where AI can materially improve efficiency or quality next year. Put human review guardrails in place and build these into Q1 operating plans.
- Strengthen first-party relationships: Improve login rates and consented data collection before Q1. Use that data to support personalization, better recommendations, and more valuable ad experiences in early 2026.
- Modernize your infrastructure: Ensure you are entering 2026 with an API-first video CMS and app framework capable of supporting multi-platform distribution, multiple business models, and integration with partners without bespoke development.
- Align teams on a single source of truth: Close out the year by unifying content, metadata, rights, and performance reporting so product, marketing, engineering, and ad sales begin 2026 from the same baseline.
Where Zype Fits
This next phase of OTT requires infrastructure built for speed, scale, and constant iteration. If you are rethinking your OTT stack for this next phase, Zype was built for the world described above.
Zype gives media leaders:
- An API-first video CMS that centralizes content, metadata, and rights
- Tools to power apps, channels, FAST, and OTT endpoints from one infrastructure
- Automation and integration capabilities that make it easier for lean teams to operate at scale
A modern OTT business doesn’t need heavier systems. It needs infrastructure that moves with the market.
Book a demo to explore how Zype helps leading media teams operate with speed and flexibility.