# S3 E1 T56 - Alex Holtz - IDC

S3 E1 T56 - Alex Holtz - IDC 

[00:00:00]  

[00:00:01] Tom: You're listening to the Middleman Podcast this week with Scott Messer and Tom Limongello. 

[00:00:07] Tom: All right.  

[00:00:09] Introduction 

[00:00:09] Tom: Welcome to the Middlemen. It is a new year, season three. It's kind of 

[00:00:14] Scott Messer: Wow. Happy new season three. 

[00:00:16] Tom: yeah, after season three, um, it was great hanging out with you very briefly in Las Vegas for CES. We recorded, uh, right before the end of the year. With Alex Holtz of IDC. I think the reason for this one, for me, it's, I, this has been a journey for me. 

[00:00:34] Tom: I've been trying to figure out how CTV and retail media fit together and, um, still not there, but we had a really good discussion with somebody who really has a great perspective on the media owner side. 

[00:00:48] Scott Messer: Interesting things from a, from a landscape perspective and a little bit of like how the large waves shift the sand underneath. Uh, the relationships between media operators and buyers, [00:01:00] uh, it's really interesting conversation and some great research. 

[00:01:02] Tom: Yeah. For me, what's most interesting here is this sort of bifurcation between, you know, obviously when we had Ari on, he talked about how, yeah, if you're Walmart or you're, um. Amazon, you own the inventory, fine. It makes sense for CTV, but what if not, and I think, um, Alex has some interesting, uh, discussion about that second tier, um, and how that can work. 

[00:01:27] Tom: So why don't we, uh, take a listen. 

[00:01:30] Scott Messer: Sounds great. 

[00:01:31] Tom: I. 

[00:01:33] Scott Messer: This is, an episode that will take us in a new direction. We're talking to an analyst today. We're talking to Alex Holtz. Um, Alex is at IDC. Um, welcome and thanks for joining us. 

[00:01:44] Alex Holtz: appreciate it. Thanks for the time. 

[00:01:46] Tom: I wanted to talk to you when you first got connected with me. Um, I had this sort of burning question that's been a through line through a lot of the episodes, and that was 

[00:01:54] Tom: 2021 was around the time I first heard about CTV as an option. To be added [00:02:00] to retail media, and it was kind of, we needed to do, almost apologize for it. We had to bundle it with mobile, programmatic, it was too expensive. The definition of it was a little off and it was hard to keep it to something that was actually on a TV screen. 

[00:02:15] Tom: I wanted to know, from reading some of your research. You've talked about it as a very core thing to retail media. So  

[00:02:21] CTV and Retail Media Convergence 

[00:02:24] Tom: what has changed about, CTV generally that makes it something that is, is a fit for retail media? 

[00:02:29] Alex Holtz: Well, we gotta go back a little bit to a broadcast world, right? In broadcast television. It was one way, you know, the, the, the broadcaster media companies would, would publish and there was a linear schedule, no , programming guide, and that was it. So. There wasn't any real back channel and what Connected TV does, it gives you that back channel, uh, so that you can have that level of intelligence of who's watching and it's, uh, authenticated watchers, [00:03:00] right? 

[00:03:00] Alex Holtz: What retail media networks brings to connected TV is the, the really the benefit of, of both, you know, top and bottom of funnel with authenticated, first party data that's extremely valuable to the consumer. 

[00:03:17] Alex Holtz: That's gonna be tied with extremely valuable content now. From the publishers and broadcasters. So connected TV is the first time that, um, that allows retail media networks and the convergence of CTV. There's gonna be an overlap and a lot of the dollars that are coming from, um. Uh, from search because of answer engines and social media, because you know, a lot of, uh, ai, unfortunately, it's being used to kind of, uh, sway, uh, pub public, uh, information and you don't know what's true, what's not. 

[00:03:53] Alex Holtz: So a lot of those ad dollars are gonna go. Connected tv, the brands and agencies understand that. 

[00:03:59] Alex Holtz: It's extremely [00:04:00] exciting. It's all gonna be AI driven, uh, because a lot of the ads, specifically they're working with, generative ai, uh, to make it more hyper, uh, targeted to that particular consumer. 

[00:04:13] Tom: So that was another area that was challenging. Um, just overall in retail media, even for cheap programmatic display. was how do you get the retailers brand equity and the brands probably their existing creative to. Match up with each other and we had to create these style guides. It was very static and very sort of formalized and brands never liked it. 

[00:04:35] Creative Automation and AI 

[00:04:35] Tom: So what's changed there? 

[00:04:36] Alex Holtz: Well, I, I think with these agents, uh, generative, I, I, there's a lot more intelligence behind it. It's automated, so, uh, there, it's not as physically demanding and as challenging to get as many, uh, of these, uh, spots filled and ads creative. Done. It's a more automated process, but it, there's a lot more intelligence behind the [00:05:00] decision making. 

[00:05:00] Scott Messer: I have a question. In the workflow of that, how do you see that connecting between the, the agency planning and buying into sort of the publisher, SSP and, the workflow side of it, and how much of that is, is ag agent and how much, like which, where does it start and how do those things find unification? 

[00:05:22] Alex Holtz: I, I think you're still gonna have upfronts, where, the bigger, uh, brands and agencies are still gonna work to, to, uh, plan their schedules, uh, with the major broadcasters, networks, and streaming platforms, that's not gonna go away. I think where the value is, is what we used to call the scatter market, right? 

[00:05:43] Alex Holtz: Uh, which is, you know, filling in, uh, for open avails. And also at the local and regional levels, where your advertisers are really, uh, uh, smaller merchants, uh, that they're looking to, to do, uh, local advertising. A lot of [00:06:00] that process is gonna be, um, automated to the point where it, it'll be simplified. 

[00:06:07] Alex Holtz: A lot of, uh, a lot of the creative is gonna, , be done automatically and, and the cost that'll drive the cost down for these, smaller merchants that can, fill these ads, especially on, uh, what we call, uh, free ad supported streaming platforms, fast platforms that are being, uh, deployed. Throughout the broadcast industry, especially at the local markets. 

[00:06:30] Alex Holtz: Um, and that's been a huge disconnect. You know, as these local broadcasters have been transitioning with fast platforms, they've got tons of open avails, but none of the fill. And so what retail media networks. Combined with connected DV will do is you're gonna have a lot of the, uh, the, uh, self-fulfillment, you know, so to keep the low cost and gen ai that'll help with the creative. 

[00:06:56] Alex Holtz: Uh, so that's gonna be extremely efficient, low cost for. [00:07:00] For, for them. And, uh, I think it'll, uh, help fill a, a lot of these open avails that today, uh, is, um, not working for the local broadcasters.  

[00:07:10] Local Markets and FAST Platforms 

[00:07:10] Alex Holtz: And so 2026, I think is a pivotal, uh, year for that. 

[00:07:15] Scott Messer: Sure. And there's a lot of companies like locality that are trying to sort of fill in those, uh, local scatter markets and they're doing some really interesting work. Do you think that the, advancements there are led by the buy side technology or the sell side technology? 

[00:07:32] Alex Holtz: I, I, that's a great question. 

[00:07:35] Alex Holtz: I believe at this stage where we're at, I think what's gonna be the leading driver is gonna be on the buy side between the CTV OSes uh, like a Roku, a Fire tv, a Tizen , by Samsung. Uh, uh, Vizio with, uh, with, yeah, uh, with Walmart may have their own o os. And so, you know, [00:08:00] if you look at those four or five major oss, uh, I think, uh, the recent news that you probably heard in the end of June, early July between, uh, Amazon ads, uh, their DSP. 

[00:08:15] Alex Holtz: Uh, making it, having an agreement with Roku. Well, you know, that's huge, right? Because now you're looking at an authenticated reach of 90% of the entire us. That's pretty significant if you, you know, so, so what you have is a linking of this, what I call the business flywheel, and it's being tied together. 

[00:08:42] Alex Holtz: That's been what's missing is, you know, whether you're a broadcaster trying to monetize your content as you're transitioning to streaming a lot of the, uh, elements, uh, you know, the local salespeople, um, who were charged with going [00:09:00] out and manually, uh, selling all those avails, you know, that no longer worked effectively. 

[00:09:06] Alex Holtz: So you had some, needed somebody from the buy side to come in to tie it all together. Uh, if that makes more sense. 

[00:09:13] Scott Messer: I do appreciate it. 

[00:09:15] Tom: So, um, I think we're gonna keep milking the area Paparo episode as long as we can. 'cause he left a lot of landmines in the episode we did with him and one of them was, I think CTV works with retail media when it's uh, you know, Amazon and Walmart with Vizio 'cause you own the inventory. Um, but that sort of brings you back to the question I had earlier, which was. 

[00:09:39] Tom: This was a high cost concept like CTV Inventory still costs a lot of money. Retailer data costs a lot of money. So unless you own the inventory as the retailer, why does this make sense? And then, you know, what I saw over the last year was just tons and tons of partnerships, Albertsons and uh, like all, you know, NBCU and all these guys doing partnerships. 

[00:09:59] Tom: [00:10:00] And it sounded interesting. I just did, it still didn't make sense to me.  

[00:10:03] Retail Media Tiers and Partnerships 

[00:10:03] Tom: So can you sort of untangle some of that and like, I think when we talked earlier, there's like two tiers of this in your, in your research. So tell us how you see the landscape. 

[00:10:12] Alex Holtz: Uh, television, uh, unfortunately has taken more time, uh, to, you know, uh, be drawn towards digital. Uh, probably we, we owe a lot to somebody like a Netflix who decided, hey. We're just gonna get out there and they will come, which they were right. And they all flanked a lot of the media companies as a result. 

[00:10:35] Alex Holtz: But you know, now a lot of the media co uh, companies ha have caught up and they've figured out that. You know, subscription can only go so far. Consumers get subscription fatigue. So no matter what the economic cycle is and whatever country, uh, uh, you're at, what's really gonna open up the streaming market is ad supported content, meaning it's [00:11:00] free to the consumer as long as you are willing to sit through ads. 

[00:11:04] Alex Holtz: That's the number one, uh, uh, key driver. So that's why fast platforms became so prevalent, right? Because it's free ad supported screening Layer on that, the fact that brands and agencies are looking to figure out, okay. We've done as much as we can on, on e-commerce sites with social media and search. But even those two are being disrupted, uh, from what I mentioned earlier, you know, with uh, 

[00:11:34] Tom: lms. Yeah. 

[00:11:35] Alex Holtz: Exactly. 

[00:11:36] Alex Holtz: So, so now what you've got is this ability to say, wait a second, if I have this back channel, this ability to. Go from top of funnel to bottom of funnel conversions. Why not take all that important, very valuable first party data, it's authenticated and work on these, [00:12:00] performance driven, ad creative and say. 

[00:12:04] Alex Holtz: I want to start investing here where I know I can have a measurement. You know, , I'm not looking at a very broad measurement. I'm actually looking for transactions. 

[00:12:17] Alex Holtz: So what's happened recently is a lot of the CTV manufacturers have now, looked at different ways to monetize that through the ad, campaigns. But now they're getting to the point where. If you look at the real estate on a connected TV and you log on before you choose an app, you see the home screen. 

[00:12:38] Alex Holtz: And on the home screen, what you're seeing is, these, landscape, type display ads that are driven by tent pole events. It could be the Super Bowl, it could be, uh, black Friday. Roku, on their home screen. Basically, Walmart took over the entire thing for like a week, all talking about Black Friday. 

[00:12:58] Alex Holtz: I mean, think of the value [00:13:00] that that drove 

[00:13:01] Tom: So that is, a very good, uh, reason why display ads may make it into TVs, but that is not why CTV is is gonna work. And so do you think the fast platforms are a better fit for say a retailer who doesn't own their own channel like Amazon does with Prime. is that sort of where you see some opportunity? 

[00:13:22] Alex Holtz: I think, I think the fast channels is where, uh, those will see the opportunity versus the, the big players like a Walmart with the Vizio or a Fire TV with Amazon. I think the independence and, and you're gonna see, you know, Roku's an independent platform. You have a, the largest demand side independent platform is the trade desk between tt d who's got a relationship with, with, uh, Roku. 

[00:13:47] Alex Holtz: You know, others can get into that mix. And what you'll, what you're gonna see at the, uh, you know, just because you have a fa fast platform doesn't mean that, uh, your content is tier [00:14:00] two content. You could have a live, uh. Uh, you know, American football game happening and, you know, you may have a DoorDash that's, uh, basically presenting you with, Hey, order a pizza during the game, right? 

[00:14:14] Alex Holtz: So all of a sudden you've got this ability to go from, here's an awareness and I'm gonna make a transaction and leverage, uh, uh, a mobile device. Uh, or you can take now, uh, and click. On an ad and, uh, create an, an immediate, uh, buy with, uh, Instacart, for instance. Um, you know, it's, it's really that easy. 

[00:14:40] Alex Holtz: It's, 

[00:14:41] Scott Messer: that easy. I, I think there's a lot of, um, 

[00:14:44] Alex Holtz: there's a lot of training to happen and awareness among the consumers that's 

[00:14:48] Scott Messer: to actually click on a video ad on their TV and then to complete the purchase. And like even, you know, sending it to your phone and connecting to the app is. 

[00:14:58] Alex Holtz: I don't think it's even gotta go to your [00:15:00] phone anymore. That's what I'm saying. The, the operating system will have the, the ability to say, Hey, I can, uh, create this. I know the, the user profile. You have it with a Instacart or, uh, whoever, uh, the other, uh, uh, merchant may be, and it, they'll know your profile. 

[00:15:19] Alex Holtz: You can place the order immediately, or you can either do it right on screen because there's no difference between a mobile device, your laptop, or connected, uh, TV anymore. 

[00:15:30] Scott Messer: Uh, I would say the, the app that you're running in, right? So for Roku to build a version of DoorDash inside their pla. Form would be one thing. Um, and also just the, we still have a, a user experience problem where like you may wanna order that cheeseburger on DoorDash, but then like filling out the rest of the order for the next three people sitting next to you might be onerous and, and a challenge. 

[00:15:55] Scott Messer: Um, and. 

[00:15:56] Tom: Yeah, and I think, but those types of, those are like the de the [00:16:00] direct response within a But I think what you were talking about in terms of Black Friday and Roku, Walmart, um, or Amazon, what they do on Prime on Thursday night football, um, is that they know you have that app and that you use That is a much simpler way for, especially for a multi-brand retailer, to bring that experience in. And I think to Scott's point, you don't have to close the sale in that session. Like all you have to do is get my wife to put it in the cart and there will be a discussion about it. 

[00:16:30] Alex Holtz: Yep. No, I, and and I agree with that. You can put it into the part, there will be a discussion about it, but I think CTV, don't underestimate the ability for these operating systems to create profiles of individuals, what your likes, dislikes, things like that, 

[00:16:46] Scott Messer: Well, we're, we're very aware of, uh, the surveillance world of advertising here. We can, 

[00:16:52] Alex Holtz: So, 

[00:16:53] Scott Messer: we're, we're, no, we are no bears over there. 

[00:16:56] Alex Holtz: yeah. 

[00:16:57] Tom: strangers to that. 

[00:16:57] Alex Holtz: So for, so for, uh, an Instacart [00:17:00] to share that profile with their partner, uh, operating system, uh, I don't think that's gonna be a problem as long as you agree to it, right? That's the, that's the key, uh, challenge, right? And most websites today, uh, uh, you know, you, uh, use the ability to say, Hey, are you willing to allow us to share this information? 

[00:17:22] Alex Holtz: Yes, yes or no? So if you want to make it easy. You click on yes, on a connected tv, they have your profile, they know what you like. Uh, it can be as as easy as a click or you can say, Hey, like you said earlier, put it in my cart. I'll, I'll scan it through, , during my leisure, among all the individuals watching and will make a decision. 

[00:17:45] Alex Holtz: That's it. So you have variety. 

[00:17:48] AWS Reinvent and Cloud Infrastructure 

[00:17:48] Tom: Um, I think that it would be interesting, uh, to hear since you are an analyst in this space, what's been happening over the last, you know, you mentioned a little bit about the news this summer. Um, what's been happening [00:18:00] this Q4 and what do you think is coming in 2026? You said that you were at, uh, at WS Reinvent. 

[00:18:06] Tom: So what are, what are the news that you're hearing about the CTV space, uh, that maybe is sort of bleeding edge? 

[00:18:13] Alex Holtz: That's, uh, uh, another good question. Um, at one of the things that was loud and clear, uh, 

[00:18:20] Scott Messer: Um. 

[00:18:21] Alex Holtz: publishers, uh, have not just one challenge. They have multiple challenges, right? I mentioned, uh, the, uh, five pillars, uh, within that business cycle. If you think about it, think about all the use cases and applications among those five pillars that, 

[00:18:38] Tom: What are the five pillars? I know we,  

[00:18:40] Scott Messer: uh.  

[00:18:41] Alex Holtz: the Uh, it's the business operations. The media orchestration, production, distribution, monetization. And there are a lot of use cases, for instance, in production, a use case would be playout channels. So it's scheduled playout, right? That could be cloud-based or facility based. [00:19:00] Uh uh, typically these days or there are hybrid, uh, there's live production. 

[00:19:05] Alex Holtz: That's a use case, right? There's, you know, post-production that happens in, in that, uh, uh, component of, um, uh, those five pillars. So different use cases are challenging to get on cloud. The other thing that the, uh, publishers have to look at is the cost. Storage, being able to feed in, their signals into the cloud, uh, egress, uh, charges, things like that. 

[00:19:36] Alex Holtz: So. Different publishers are on different clouds. So you know, we ran a survey and mass, I'd say, uh, 60, 70% mass. Majority want to be on a multi-cloud environment of two to three cloud suppliers that they can control costs better. The challenge has always [00:20:00] been how do these cloud services talk to each other? 

[00:20:04] Alex Holtz: So AWS, introduced, interconnect and Interconnect is a standards-based, way to allow them to, have encrypted. Streaming signals, data, all of that encrypted, uh, and communication with between them. The first one they're, uh, working with is Google Cloud. The second one, uh, uh, that will be available in 2026 is, uh, Microsoft, uh, Azure. 

[00:20:31] Alex Holtz: So this is a huge step forward so that now, uh, you have more variety. So that was introduced at, uh, AWS  

[00:20:40] Alex Holtz: this  

[00:20:40] Tom: So see if I can play back what you're saying there. You're saying like similar playbook that Amazon has taken, like with clean rooms, where they made much, much cheaper to enable the infrastructure. You're saying that Amazon is now, and I don't think I even heard this news, is basically enabling. 

[00:20:55] Tom: A media company where they have, you know, really large streaming costs, [00:21:00] they're gonna be able to handle a connection between, uh, Amazon's gonna help them with their Google Cloud. 

[00:21:05] Alex Holtz: correct. 

[00:21:07] Scott Messer: Interesting. 

[00:21:08] Alex Holtz: So, and it'll work for that. It'll, it's gonna work for CDN. You know, so they can go to the path of least resistance and, and the be best, performance for the client on the, on the end. So there's a lot of good by standardizing that. Uh, so that's one of the things. So I think, you know, that's the first, uh, uh. 

[00:21:31] Alex Holtz: Big announcement that the other is the fact that, you know, uh, like I I said earlier with the announcements from Amazon ads working with a Roku, now you're looking at AWS that does the infrastructure side and the connectivity between all of those so that now you have, uh, retail media networks connected the connect, the, uh, ecosystem from connected tv, going back to the production and infrastructure side. 

[00:21:58] Alex Holtz: And so there's. All sorts [00:22:00] of levels of efficiencies that, uh, and it's no longer cost prohibitive for the tier two local broadcasters anymore. So this is gonna be open up the gates dramatically. So now, uh, instead of having tier one, just talking to the major brands, uh, and agencies, uh, you know, just like the self-serve, uh, I talked about and connecting all the dots at the local level, be accomplished. 

[00:22:26] Alex Holtz: And, uh, you'll be able to have measurement across from, uh, linear tv, traditional, all the way to, what's happening on your digital. So you have convergent, uh, multi-platform campaign management, linear plus streaming. In addition to the ability to measure that together, invoice it, um, reconcile, uh, report all as a single, , unit, uh, that's extremely,, popular. 

[00:22:55] Alex Holtz: Um, and that's tied to another, uh, thing that, uh, not [00:23:00] at AWS but on Amazon ads dealing with a, a product they call a, a complete tv. . 

[00:23:06] Budget Shifts and Ad Dollar Migration 

[00:23:06] Scott Messer: This is, uh, I appreciate this and I know we talked a little bit about earlier about budgets shifting, but I wanna get a little more specific. So if you see these things for local, improving fast channels, improving, do we think it's a little bit of like shifting money within the pie? Or is there more money gonna move into CTV that isn't already Or, and is that money like part of the already planned growth or is this like new money that we're gonna find to show up? And I guess, does it really come out of search and social or does it come out of linear? Because I don't think it's coming out of search and social. I'll just say that. 

[00:23:41] Alex Holtz: I understand, uh, your viewpoint, but I think, I think what's gonna happen is you are gonna see that, okay, the initial dollars linear still, uh, commands the mass majority of TV dollars, right? So if you look at the viewers [00:24:00] on Connected TV and the number of viewers on linear, you know, uh, you have a crossroads where they're actually crossing within the next year or so. 

[00:24:11] Alex Holtz: But if you look at the ad dollars, that's not crossing yet. So I, I still think a lot of those ad dollars will transition. The, the last piece, uh, that was keeping. Things on the broadcast side were things like live sports. Guess what? Streaming has live sports now. So all of a sudden, you know, brands and agencies are going to take that, uh, into, uh, uh, consideration and, and be a lot more serious about it. 

[00:24:46] Alex Holtz: The other element, um, uh, you know, the ask engines taken away from search. Those ad dollars, uh, doesn't, doesn't mean they're just gonna sit there, they're gonna go somewhere. The [00:25:00] social, meaning you, you, you, you've got a lot of growth in social platforms. I mean, all you have to do is, is look at Facebook's, uh, uh, um, you know, revenue and, you know, they're, they're doing quite well, but brands and agencies, you know, are still fearful that, Hey, is my ad gonna be shown? 

[00:25:21] Alex Holtz: Um, associated with something that's not real. So that's a, a challenge that they're gonna have. And in some cases, some of these brands and and agencies are gonna say, we don't want to take that chance. Um. So they, they want to go to somewhere that's, uh, um, easier to, um, support and, um, make sure that, uh, there are, uh, security, you know, guardrails. 

[00:25:49] Alex Holtz: Uh, so CTV, uh, provides that, uh, I think what, and, and the fact that you have the ability to go down funnel with that is huge for [00:26:00] them. Um, and they've got a, you know, uh, a. An audience in the living room, which is what every brand and agency's been looking for for a long time. So, um, I, I just think, uh, between the ability to know who's watching, the ability to drive content that's matched. 

[00:26:21] Alex Holtz: With that audience dataset effectively, and then the ability to go from top of funnel to bottom funnel. I think o over time you're gonna see, uh, a lot more of those dollar. It's growing at double digits. Why 

[00:26:36] Scott Messer: I pick on that, on that, on that content piece you said of like matching the content to them? Is that ad content matching or like the content? Content that they're actually watching? 

[00:26:46] Alex Holtz: It, it's both the, the, what, what's happening is you, you got more intelligence to, on the creative side. To, uh, align the ad, the creative with the consumer. So it's highly targeted, [00:27:00] but you're getting a lot more of the intelligence being driven back to the publisher so that they know, okay, uh, this is, this audience data set prefers this content at this time, and that can give them more intelligence about. 

[00:27:18] Alex Holtz: Where, uh, what content is making more money and what do they want to see more of? So it's, that part is a little behind the front part. You know, there's more intelligence happening on the ad side. But what I'm saying is you're gonna have a lot of that intelligence fed back into the production of content so that people are, um, there's more intelligent decisioning happening at the content side. 

[00:27:48] Scott Messer: Yeah, I, I believe that in some aspects like that certainly was the Netflix model, right? And they understood how to make House of Cards was like the big example of that, right? Just give people more of what they wanted. [00:28:00] Um. We saw some of this in digital media, um, digital content publishing and publishers making different kinds of content, and they're still doing that. 

[00:28:09] Scott Messer: That's a much faster feed. I think it breaks down in some places where you get to like the news. Um, you can't always show like the, you know, the adoptable puppies portion of it. So I, I, I agree with you that it, that will work in some places. It won't work for everyone in all things. Um, 

[00:28:28] Alex Holtz: I 

[00:28:29] Scott Messer: don't know if that really drives, if, if that really drives a shift in the content that's being created that better matches, um, needs more than it already is now. 

[00:28:40] Alex Holtz: I think you have a great point. When you talk about traditional linear scheduling of news, um, you know, you, you have to look at a, a, a younger generation model. They're getting a lot of their news from social platforms. It's because of the storytelling, the [00:29:00] approach, right? It's more interactive. They tell it from their perspective. 

[00:29:06] Alex Holtz: Um, uh, TV definitely has to get better at doing that. And what Connected TV allows for is if I have, if. I'm a, a younger person and, uh, my connected TV has my profile and I am tied to, Hey, this is the type of information that I like. I think there's a way that, um, that the, uh. TV news can recreate itself. Um, and so I never say never. 

[00:29:39] Alex Holtz: What's attracting, uh, the, uh, younger viewers. And it's the way stories are being told. Uh, if you look at, uh, influencers, that are, you know, influencing and, and monetizing YouTube left and right. 

[00:29:53] Alex Holtz: If. Local news, for example, starts to implement a lot of that. I think, uh, you're [00:30:00] gonna get, um, more adoption. Uh, it doesn't necessarily mean it's gotta be viewed on connected tv, but if you create it and you have the apps on connected TV, and you have it on mobile and on web. Um, you know, it's multi-platform. 

[00:30:15] Alex Holtz: It depends on where, uh, that consumer is. I really do believe that, uh, the creative, uh, of the content people, um, they'll, they're gonna learn a lot. And I think that that whole business model is gonna change. 

[00:30:32] Scott Messer: We know the business models are gonna change. 

[00:30:35] Alex Holtz: , I'm a true believer., I've been in, , the broadcast industry from, uh, unfortunately for, because that, uh, gives you my edges over 30 years, and I've watched transitions from. The digital HD from digital HD to, you know, uh, 4K HDR. It's always had challenges. 

[00:30:57] Alex Holtz: This whole transition to cloud has been [00:31:00] a huge challenge over the last, uh, three to four years. But, uh, they're surviving. And I think, uh, the next phase, uh, especially with ai. Um, is learning from this, and it comes to one of my predictions about the unified UI within Connected tv. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm pushing it out three to four years, but I think connected TV you are going to be able to have. 

[00:31:27] Alex Holtz: The ability to have interactive services, let's take sports for instance. If, uh, I'm a sports fanatic, I may, uh, have a dynasty football league. I'll watch RedZone as an example to keep track of it. But there's going to be the ability to have my own ISOs of my players stream. So I can see in real time I'll have watch parties with my league in order to, you know, talk trash with the, uh, my competitors. 

[00:31:58] Alex Holtz: Uh. 

[00:31:58] Tom: Yeah, I, I did my first [00:32:00] guillotine league this year, and I can hear the experience you have is much more sophisticated than mine. I'm, uh, I'm definitely gonna believe you on this prediction, but, um, yeah. 

[00:32:10] Alex Holtz: pushed it several years out. But what I'm saying is it doesn't mean that, uh, uh, t what we think of TV is gonna, uh, change dramatically. And as the, the, the viewing audience gets younger and younger, there's gonna be an expectation. And, and that expectation is, I think you're gonna see a lot of social being integrated with connected  

[00:32:33] Scott Messer: yeah. it sounds like from what you were explaining to Scott earlier, it's that, uh, shows and linear schedules are not really the way forward. It's more of a feed. Um, I don't know how that fits with your Facebook predictions. Uh, maybe, maybe Facebook gets to be, uh, more on the TVs than they are today. But, um, what other predictions are, you know, as we close this out. 

[00:32:53] Scott Messer: Uh, we're getting close to 26. We'd love to hear a couple more of your predictions, um, and, uh, and hear what's coming.[00:33:00]  

[00:33:00] Future Predictions and AI in Production 

[00:33:00] Alex Holtz: I, you know, the other prediction is I think on, on the business side, I think you're gonna see, um, uh, AI agents play a bigger role in rights management, uh, uh, contract review, uh, things, you know, so that they can get the approval and rights so that when they have all this demand for content. Above and beyond what they create originally. 

[00:33:25] Alex Holtz: Uh, you know, and they wanna syndicate from or, or source from other, uh, uh, places. They can automate a lot of that. So that's one element. The other element is on, uh, live production. I think you're gonna see live production, um, leverage AI substantially where. 

[00:33:42] Alex Holtz: Uh, uh, a director who used to call a show, uh, instead of having to think and look at multiple sources, um, are going to be able to, um, have a presentation of, uh. Here's how you think here are the most [00:34:00] likely, uh, opportunities. They're still gonna be in charge to drive the production, but it, it'll be like an assistant that allows them, you know, that pulls everything together, the graphics, all of those elements, and, and they get to choose. 

[00:34:14] Alex Holtz: So it'll be a lot faster, a lot quicker. And, and the 

[00:34:19] Tom: A lot fewer. A lot fewer hr. Issues. 

[00:34:23] Alex Holtz: Yes. So, yeah. But you know, it's, uh, I, I, I think I, I, I, I don't look at AI rep necessarily replacing people as much as facilitating  

[00:34:36] Tom: Yeah, no, absolutely. No, I'm just saying let the directors be the directors that they want to  

[00:34:39] Alex Holtz: yeah.  

[00:34:39] Tom: be, as with as heavy a hand as they'd like. Um, but yeah. 

[00:34:43] Alex Holtz: And finally on the creative side, you know, you're gonna have the same ability in post-production with, uh, editing that's already happening today, but it's gonna get more and more intelligent where you can create a script and it'll suggest these are the sequences of all of this raw material that, [00:35:00] uh, to be brought in. 

[00:35:01] Alex Holtz: Uh, so it's gonna so serve, uh, uh, help you with tremendous search. Uh, gen AI has already, uh, been able to look at video assets. And, uh, take out metadata that's extremely important, uh, for search. So all of that's gonna come together and I just think it's gonna be, uh, make a producer and an editor's time more efficient, more valuable, where they can, uh, focus more on the creative rather than the, um, generic tasks. 

[00:35:32] Tom: Great. Well, we'll put, uh, your research on the future, uh, escape that. Worldwide media and entertainment 2026 predictions in the show notes and really wanna thank you for joining the middleman. 

[00:35:43] Alex Holtz: I, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. 

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