Smart TVs, Slim Margins And Strategic Resets: What’s Keeping European Streamers Up At Night

A decade into the streaming revolution, the European television industry is still writing its playbook in real time. What once looked like a straight path from linear to digital has splintered into overlapping monetization models, evolving content strategies, and growing pressure on operations and margins. And while much of the global conversation is driven by the U.S., a new report from Kauser Kanji and VOD Professional offers an eye-opening look at where the European streaming industry stands—and how its priorities, challenges, and pace of change may diverge from what we’re seeing in the US.

Senior executives across the ecosystem give insight into how they see the landscape heading into the back half of 2025. The findings show us a sector trying to move from experimentation into execution, optimistic, but more disciplined about how to get there.

Some of the key findings include:

Advertising’s Return as the Economic Center of Gravity

While SVOD remains part of the equation, ad-supported models—AVOD, FAST, and hybrid—are now seen as the most viable paths to revenue growth in the near term. Bundling, aggregation, and premium pricing strategies also ranked highly.

That shift comes with its own risks. Nearly half of respondents flagged ad revenue volatility as the single biggest threat to growth, underscoring the balancing act that comes with chasing ad dollars in a market that is still finding its footing.

Monetization Innovation Meets Margin Discipline

Strategies like dynamic ad pricing and increased ad loads are on the table, but they come with questions about long-term sustainability. Viewers have limits, and the challenge for platforms will be figuring out how to increase yield without undermining the user experience, thus accelerating churn.

Content Strategy: Local, Live, and Measurable

Scripted series and live sports continue to lead the pack when it comes to perceived ROI, but managing content costs was deemed the most pressing operational challenge. That’s not surprising given how much pressure there is to prove that every bit of content spending is actually driving results in an increasingly crowded and competitive market.

There’s also growing emphasis on local content, a trend that’s as much about engagement as it is about economics. For global players, local programming offers a path to differentiation. For regional platforms, it’s fast becoming a requirement.

Smart TVs Are the Gateway Drug

Smart TVs are now central to streaming strategy. Every respondent identified them as a key device category, reinforcing the idea that the battle for consumer attention is increasingly being fought at the interface level—home screen positioning, app tiles, and recommendation algorithms matter more than ever.

Netflix continues to lead on consumer loyalty, but Amazon and YouTube—with their scale, distribution, and powerful infrastructures—are the platforms other services say they need to plan around. They were also cited as the most strategically important players, at least from a competitive standpoint.

Operational Efficiency: A Work in Progress

Most leaders admit their operations are moderately efficient at best. As the cost of inefficiency rises, hybrid approaches to infrastructure—part in-house, part vendor—have become the dominant model. The challenge now is moving beyond these patchwork systems toward something the industry can scale and widely adopt.

AI and Automation Are Moving Into the Workflow

AI is, of course, gradually embedding itself in the business. Its current applications are all practical—content recommendation, localization, metadata tagging—and while more disruptive use cases like content generation and dynamic pricing remain limited for now, they are definitely on the horizon.

That may be why one-third of respondents expect staff reductions over the next year as AI takes on more workflow tasks. For many, the shift isn’t hypothetical—it’s already underway.

Be sure to download the full summary at VODProfessional and find out what’s actually top of mind for Europe’s streaming leaders these days.