November 2025

12 There’s also risk. With every minute of attention becoming monetised, attention scarcity becomes a constraint. Audience fatigue sets in. Platforms must guard against overload or lose the very at- tention they chase. And so, for creators, there is pressure: produce not just content—but moments. For advertisers, the ask is more refined: craft not just visibility but valued-by-viewers visibility. What we’re witnessing is a maturation of the streaming era. The first waves were about “peak content”; the next phase—2025 and beyond—is about“peakattention”.Streamingservicesmaystill fight over subscriptions, but the deeper battle is for engagement, memory, and presence in daily lives. In the end, the company with the largest sub- scriber base may not be the victor. Instead, the platform that becomes the default setting for the audience’s attention wins. That platform may not dominate the subscription ledgers—but it will dominate the moments that matter. For brands, the lesson is clear: don’t just chase viewership. Chase connection. And in doing so, your message will arrive not just in front of eyes—but in mind. The numbers tell the story. A study by PwC showed that among “binge streamers”, 53% of their digital media time goes to paid video- streaming. Still, when factoring in social video, gaming, and free ad-supported offerings, the com - petition for eyeballs becomes a multi-front war. Meanwhile, ad-supported streaming services (so-called FAST: Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) posted year-over-year viewership growth of over 40% in certain markets in 2025. In short: streaming now means more than sub- scriptions—it means presence, moment-to-mo- ment connection, and a content ecosystem that spans passive viewing to interactive experiences. For brands and advertisers—such as the read- ership of this magazine—this evolution opens new opportunities and new rules. The old model of “place our ad on a top-10 stream- ing show” is being supplanted by “embed our brand in a culturally relevant moment inside the streaming platform itself.” Think of product placements inside interactive layers, branded channels in FAST bundles, or sponsorship of live-streamed events that merge music, gam- ing and social commentary. The agency play- book is shifting from interruption to integration. But who is winning this war for attention? The an- swer isn’t simple.Netflixstill dominates inoriginal content spending and global reach, but its growth inmajormarketshasflattened.Disney,meanwhile, is bundling services (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+) to deliver dual-service value and reduce churn. Amazon is quietly executing a different strategy: building a “creator-economy in- frastructure” where local content creators feed into its global streaming machine. YouTube and Google’s ecosystem, however, have turned attention into currency—monetis- ing not only long-form streaming but micro- video, gaming, user-interaction and live events. Thus the war’s winners may not be the biggest companies—they may be the most adaptive. Platforms that integrate with social behaviour, optimize across screens, and maintain consistent relevance will dominate. Those that rely solely on blockbuster exclusives may find themselves challenged in a world where attention shifts fast. Photo by | greenwish _