Let’s get this out of the way: linear TV is a dead man walking, and the only people who haven’t accepted it are still calling their remote the “clicker.” The numbers are in, and they’re about as subtle as a Roku City billboard: 82% of viewers are watching the same or less linear TV compared to last year. In other words, the family dog has a better shot of sitting through a local news broadcast than you do.

Meanwhile, 9 out of 10 U.S. internet users now have an internet-connected TV, which makes sense because the other 1 out of 10 is probably Philo’s core user base—still trying to figure out which input gets them to Murder, She Wrote reruns without a subscription.

We’re no longer in the cord-cutting phase. That was 2017’s problem. We’ve moved into what I like to call the "Control, Cost, and Chaos" era.

What’s replacing linear? Streaming. But not the elite, ad-free, golden-glow Netflix of yesteryear. No, the new sheriff in town is called FAST — Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television — and it’s basically cable TV with a TikTok attention span and a slightly better wardrobe.

You’ve got people watching 300+ free channels on their LG TVs, sometimes by accident, sometimes because they don’t realize they didn’t pay for it. And that’s fine! Because FAST doesn’t care about prestige. It’s not trying to win an Emmy. It’s trying to win the war of ambient content, where you turn it on, walk away, and get served five ads before your dog even notices the screen changed.

The great streaming migration is fueled by economics, attention, and pure rage. 89% of viewers say economic uncertainty is making them rethink recurring costs. Subscriptions are under scrutiny like never before. We’re canceling more than we’re committing. We’re cheating on Netflix with Tubi, flirting with Pluto, and accidentally marrying LG Channels because they were just there.

And then there’s Philo, bless their heart, who’s still pitching itself as “Live TV without sports.” In 2025. You know who wants live TV without sports? People who don’t know how to change their Wi-Fi password. Their biggest innovation is still proudly not having CNN. That’s not a product feature. That’s a Yelp review from a cranky uncle.

In a landscape where Amazon’s turning Prime into a full-blown TV network, Netflix is hawking ads in exchange for survival, and Roku is inventing revenue models out of screensaver art, Philo is the guy at the party still using Vine references.

This isn't just a rebellion from cable. It’s a mass exodus from sanity, led by consumers who are sick of subscription creep, allergic to clickbait thumbnails, and spiritually exhausted by the endless scroll of “recommended for you” mediocrity. They want simplicity, value, and maybe—just maybe—content they don’t have to hunt for.

And if you're in the business of advertising? You better hope your media plan starts on the home screen, plays well with FAST, and understands that viewers have zero patience, four remotes, and one finger hovering over the “exit to menu” button.

Welcome to the war for the big screen. Your pause ad better be tight. Your QR code better work. And your UX better not require a tutorial.

Because if you’re not building for attention, someone else is—probably Roku, with an animated background and 15 channels of cat rescue videos.

Let’s be real: this isn’t some sanitized white paper fluff you can find buried in a press release or mumbled on an industry podcast. CTV’s Great Mirage is a 26-page, unfiltered exposé on how ad dollars are being sucked into a black hole of zombie impressions, spoofed inventory, and platforms playing the “see no evil, bill more anyway” game.

📉 Over 30% of CTV impressions might be delivered to no one.
🧛‍♂️ “Made-for-Advertising” channels are flooding Roku like vampires at an open bar.
🪞 Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI)? It's not just a tech solution — it’s the perfect cover for spoofing armies.

If you’ve ever signed off on a CTV campaign and thought, “Huh, that reach seems… ambitious,” this is the report that shows you weren’t paranoid — you were right. And if you're an agency? This might be the uncomfortable mirror you’ve been avoiding.

Here’s what you don’t get unless you upgrade to ADOTAT+:

🤑 If you’re spending five figures or more on CTV, $1 for your first month of ADOTAT+ is the cheapest insurance policy you’ll ever buy.

This isn’t about fear. This is about knowing what the hell is really going on.

Bill Condon didn’t sugarcoat anything now that he left Xumo. According to him, FAST is not the next frontier — it’s the past repackaged for modern attention spans. “It’s TV… on a television… with ads… for free.” If that sounds like your childhood in 1987, it should. The only thing missing is the rabbit ears.

What XUMO understood — and what most streamers still don’t — is that distribution beats content every time. His team didn’t pitch shows. They hauled actual LG TVs into agencies to demonstrate that if your channel is baked into the power-on experience, you’ve already won. No app download. No user choice. Just there.

FAST’s success wasn’t built on prestige drama or glossy originals. It was built on smart repackaging of digital video into linear guides. “People looked at content like Tastemade and said, ‘That’s not Food Network.’” But viewers didn’t care. It was easy to find, free, and already playing. That’s what matters. In Bill’s world, the guide is back, and that’s not embarrassing — it’s effective.

Ilia Posen looked at the entire connected TV ecosystem — smart TVs, ad pods, remotes with more buttons than logic — and decided to start over. Telly isn’t just a TV. It’s a hardware ad platform masquerading as a consumer device.

The idea is radical and absurdly simple: give people a 55” smart TV for free. In exchange, monetize a second screen that lives below the main screen — a dedicated strip for ads, content, widgets, commerce, and real-time interactivity.

“We don’t care what you use on the top screen,” he said. “Apple TV, Firestick, cable — whatever. We still control the experience below.”

He’s not bluffing. The second screen is always on while the TV is active, and motion sensors detect whether someone’s even in the room. No humans? No ads. That alone makes it more consumer-friendly than 90% of what's out there.

What Telly represents is a clean break from the OS arms race. No reliance on Roku, Android TV, or home screen real estate. Posen’s not bidding for attention — he’s owning it. If other OEMs are still fighting over app placement, Telly just nuked the map and gave away the hardware for zero dollars.

While everyone else is talking inventory and reach, Olivia Corey is talking about the truth behind the numbers — and it’s not pretty.

As Chief Strategy Officer at Haus and a former Netflix data leader, she’s not interested in shiny dashboards. Her team has run over 190 geo-based incrementality tests, and the results are brutal: YouTube’s performance is underreported by 3.4x on average. Why? Because marketers are still measuring it like it’s a search ad. “People aren’t clicking YouTube ads,” she said. “They’re watching on TV screens.”

That’s the quiet scandal: an entire industry built on the wrong attribution model. While media buyers stare at click-through rates, YouTube is quietly outperforming — but getting zero credit in the reporting stack.

And if someone brags about low CPMs? According to Olivia, it’s not strategy — it’s a cry for help. She’s seen brands “optimize” themselves into oblivion, pouring budget into low-cost junk because the dashboards made it look smart.

Her solution? Actual science — causal inference, holdout regions, real lift measurement. It’s not sexy, but it’s honest. And if you’re still using last-click logic to measure CTV, Olivia’s not here to fix your spreadsheet. She’s here to burn it down.

Every one of these experts agrees: the old rules don’t apply.

The future of CTV won’t be won by the best show. It’ll be won by whoever owns the first click, the first scroll, or better yet… removes the need to scroll at all.

If 2025 has proven anything, it’s that the television industry is undergoing a profound shift, one that’s happening faster than most executives are willing to admit—and leaving entire platforms behind. According to LG’s Big Shift 2025 report, the data paints a story both expected and still somehow alarming: linear television is collapsing, FAST is accelerating, and some services like Philo are increasingly being left behind—technically, financially, and strategically.

Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television—FAST—is no longer the curious afterthought of the streaming wars. It’s now the central player. Between 2023 and 2025, FAST services grew three times faster than subscription-based (SVOD) platforms, according to LG Ad Solutions. That’s not marginal growth—that’s systemic momentum.

70% of viewers now prefer streaming over cable, citing control, lower cost, and more varied content. “You’re going back to the future,” said Bill Condon, former VP at XUMO, a FAST pioneer now jointly owned by Comcast and Charter. “It’s TV on a television, for free, with ads.” His phrasing may be tongue-in-cheek, but the market implications are no joke.

Condon emphasized how FAST’s real power lies in its forced proximity to the viewer—through integrations into the TV's home screen and electronic program guide (EPG). “My sales team used to carry around LG televisions to meetings,” he said. “Not because we needed to show off the tech, but because people didn’t understand what ‘built-in’ really meant.”

As FAST accelerates, SVOD growth is plateauing. Services like Netflix and Disney+ are experiencing what analysts once believed would take a decade: a correction in consumer demand driven by rising costs and market saturation. According to LG, while usage of SVOD apps is still growing (+34% between 2023 and 2025), it’s increasingly concentrated among fewer services, and users are cycling in and out based on limited-time content.

“63% of viewers say they’re likely to subscribe to a service just to watch one piece of content—and then cancel or pause,” the LG study reports. Meanwhile, 36% canceled at least one paid service in the past year, a trend commonly referred to as subscription fatigue.

Olivia Corey, Chief Strategy Officer at Haus and former data lead at Netflix, offered one of the clearest explanations for the shifting terrain. “The platforms aren’t underperforming—they’re being measured wrong,” she said. Her team at Haus has conducted over 190 incrementality tests and found that YouTube’s true impact is underreported by 3.4x compared to platform-reported CPA data. “People aren’t clicking on ads while watching YouTube on their TVs,” she added. “So when brands base media performance on clicks, they’re essentially missing 70% of the effectiveness.”

Another theme emerging from LG’s data is digital clutter and decision fatigue. The average LG TV owner has eight streaming apps installed, but uses only 4.1 regularly. This aligns with a broader industry trend: consumers are installing more apps than they meaningfully engage with.

Even more concerning for content providers: users now spend nearly 10 minutes per session trying to find something to watch, with 33% of that time wasted just navigating the home screen. That’s not just inefficiency—it’s a lost opportunity for monetization.

“If you're on the home screen for three minutes before clicking, you’re exposing that viewer to nothing,” said one senior media buyer at a holding company, speaking on background. “The industry keeps chasing time spent watching, but ignores the black hole before a decision is even made.”

If FAST is thriving and SVOD is pivoting, then Philo is, at best, stalled—and, at worst, bleeding relevance in a hyper-competitive market.

Originally positioned as a low-cost live TV alternative, Philo’s stripped-down channel lineup has become a liability. It omits major networks, sports, local news, and most of the top 10 cable channels. While its price point is attractive—hovering around $25/month—it’s often seen as an “incomplete” solution. And that perception is increasingly hard to shake.

One former Philo employee, speaking anonymously, was blunt: “We were trying to solve for price—but we didn’t solve for value. Most users churned because they couldn’t find the channels they assumed we had. They wanted ESPN. They got Cheddar.”

And the technical issues? Persistent. Reports from users on Reddit and Trustpilot frequently cite buffering, app crashes, and slow load times, especially on Roku and Apple TV devices. “On weekends, we’d sometimes see the platform throttle under peak load,” the employee added. “There wasn’t always a fix.”

But perhaps most damning from an advertiser perspective: Philo doesn’t control most of its own inventory. Because it acts as a virtual MVPD, the majority of the ad slots are owned by the content providers, not Philo itself. Estimates suggest Philo only manages about 10–15% of its own ad inventory, which leads to:

“It’s not unique to Philo,” said one ad operations exec, “but it’s especially bad there. Advertisers regularly report that half their ads never show.”

That’s not an adtech glitch. That’s a business model flaw.

The broader takeaway from LG’s 2025 data is that consumer demand is moving toward free, frictionless, and flexible content consumption. FAST platforms like LG Channels, Samsung TV Plus, and The Roku Channel are not just “alternatives” anymore—they are core destinations for millions of households.

But this ecosystem still has challenges: user discovery remains broken, personalization is inconsistent, and ad experience is often subpar, with repetitive spots and poor targeting still too common. That’s where platform-level integration—like LG’s native OS, with embedded channels and ACR-driven personalization—may offer a real strategic advantage over app-based FAST players.

For Philo and services like it, the window to differentiate is closing. Offering less for a lower price only works when no one else is offering more for free. In 2025, they are.

Bottom Line:

Let’s be blunt.

If you’re still reading this on the free tier, you’ve just skimmed the surface. You got the headline. You got the polished excerpts. You did not get the classified files, the receipts, the real predictions, or the whispered war stories that actually matter.

You’re like someone watching a shoppable CTV ad, but refusing to click — then wondering why you missed the deal.

Here’s what you’re missing when you don’t subscribe to ADOTAT+:

🎯 The Real Numbers (Not the Press Release Fantasy)
Want to know what Telly really costs to run, or why certain SSPs are inflating bidstreams? That info lives behind the paywall — where NDAs go to die and internal decks get translated into English.

📉 Who’s Lying (and Who’s Just Bad at Math)
Public company earnings calls are performance art. ADOTAT+ is the annotation track. We tell you which “positive momentum” actually means "we laid off the whole sales team and hope no one noticed."

🧨 The Strategy That Hasn’t Hit LinkedIn Yet
Before the thought leaders copy/paste it into a thread with a latte photo, we’ve already broken it down. Like why certain CTV platforms are quietly testing ad-free interfaces, or how PayPal is building the next generation of deterministic commerce targeting.

🕵️‍♂️ Anonymous Confessions and Insider Tips
Our inbox is where agency execs, DSP engineers, and salty startup founders come to spill. If you want the version of events you won’t hear at Cannes — it’s in ADOTAT+.

🦾 The Playbook for Winning (or at Least Surviving)
Whether it’s how to pitch a hybrid AVOD/SVOD strategy that doesn’t sound like a pricing spreadsheet, or what metrics CMOs are really using to kill a campaign — we give you the tactics, not the TED Talk..