Asia’s TV business may be obsessed with the next shiny thing, but in Singapore last week the conversation was firmly about the money.
At the recent Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF), B&T’s sat in on a data-heavy keynote from Tony Gunnarsson, senior principal analyst for TV, video and advertising at Omdia to learn what was coming down the track for the region’s screens businesses.
Gunnarsson spends his days modelling where the next dollar of TV and video revenue will actually land—across pay TV, streamers, social video, FAST and now micro-dramas.
A trillion-dollar market – and streaming is the engine
Gunnarsson, a longstanding sector analyst, opened with the big picture: global media and entertainment revenues are sitting at around US$1.1 trillion and are on track to hit US$1.5 trillion (AU$1.66 and AU$2.26 trillion, respectively) by 2030. The bulk of that growth comes from TV and video, and within that, from streaming.
But the kicker for adland is that of the new money in streaming is in advertising, not subscriptions.
We love to talk about Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and their local Asian rivals, he said, but “a lot of the money in streaming is not coming from those pure-play subscription services. It’s coming from advertising—including social video”.
By 2030, Omdia expects more than 70 per cent of streaming revenue to be ad-funded. Think YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok plus ad tiers on the big SVODs—that’s where brand dollars are heading.
Despite the conference buzz around digital, Gunnarsson was blunt: pay TV is still the single biggest revenue generator in TV and video globally.
Online video revenues will edge past pay TV around 2026, but not by much—and the picture varies wildly by region. In Western Europe, North America and Latin America, subscription streaming has already overtaken pay TV in household penetration.
In much of Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa, pay TV remains cheaper and more entrenched, making it much harder for global streamers to compete purely on price.
“We’ve been used to insane year-on-year growth,” Gunarsson said.
“Very quickly we’re moving towards single-digit growth in every region.”
Households have effectively capped their tolerance: they’ll take one or two paid services and then rotate—signing up for a new season, cancelling, then jumping elsewhere.
At the same time, they’re using more free services: broadcaster VOD, YouTube, FAST channels and other ad-supported platforms.
In the US, for example, the average household has around 3.5 paid streaming services—but also uses more than eight free, ad-supported services every month. That usage pattern is repeating in different ways across major markets.
Hybrid tiers: why streamers now love ads
The shock moment for Wall Street came when Netflix reported subscriber declines and promptly launched an ad-supported tier. What started as a defensive move has quickly become the norm.
Gunnarsson numbers for the major US-based streamers show 10–40 per cent of their revenue now coming from advertising rather than subscriptions—a share that’s still climbing. For consumers, the maths is obvious: why pay top-tier prices when you can get the same service for a fraction of the cost with ads?
Gunnarsson’s slide comparing price tiers made the point: brands effectively subsidise the user, and in return get access to highly engaged, highly targetable viewing environments.
For media buyers, hybrid tiers turn once-closed SVOD environments into premium, TV-like inventory—but with streaming data and flexibility. The household is becoming permanently fragmented. Most homes now mix free-to-air, pay TV, SVOD and free streaming in different combinations. There is no single “TV home” to plan against.
FAST (free, ad-supported streaming TV) is growing fast, especially in the US and Europe, with global revenues projected at around US$11 billion (AU$16.56 billion) by 2030.
Device-makers and platform owners—think Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, Roku—dominate this space. Outside the US, Gunnarsson expects healthy growth, but he’s clear FAST will remain a small slice of the overall pie, not the new TV.
Micro-dramas—ultra-short, mobile-first series popular in China—are the latest obsession. Gunnarsson forecasts that the format will hit US$22 billion (AU$33.1 billion) in revenue globally by 2030, twice the size of FAST.
For now, China is overwhelmingly the largest market, with the US a distant second. The UK, South Korea and Thailand are showing early signs of traction. The model is a mix of in-app purchases, subscriptions and, again, advertising.
Production is cheap and rapid, story hooks are built for bingeing and discovery happens via social feeds. It could be a marketer’s dream if formats can successfully travel out of China.
So what does the industry look like by 2030?
When you stack subscription and advertising revenues together, streaming will have just overtaken traditional TV globally. But this is not a wipe-out scenario. Free-to-air and pay TV remain substantial businesses, especially where they bundle streaming and retain sports and news.
“For all the hype that streaming will replace everything, things happen really slowly in TV,” Gunnarsson said.
Households are already living in the end state: a messy, permanent mix of linear, pay TV, SVOD, free streaming and social video.
Growth will be driven by advertising-funded models thanks to emerging pricing models and formats—social video, hybrid tiers, FAST and micro-dramas. Subscriptions are a more mature, slower-growth business.
But what about AI? Gunnarsson is pragmatic. AI is already being used behind the scenes and increasingly in front of the camera, but he doesn’t see it becoming the defining driver of revenues.
“Our business is still built on fantastic storytelling and entertainment,” he said. Everything else—formats, platforms, algorithms—is just the delivery system.
For media, marketing and advertising leaders at ATF, the message was clear: the next decade of TV and video will be won not just by the best shows, but by whoever best monetises attention with advertising across an
