FAST flood: What 1,870 channels (and counting) means for advertisers

As streaming TV evolves, free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) continues to solidify its place in the media mix as both an economical alternative for consumers and a strategic distribution engine for content owners.

Now, with the number of FAST channels at 1,870¹, the category is showing signs of both critical mass and maturity. As of August 2025, these channels offer nearly 34,000 unique TV, movie, and sports titles across 21 countries.

That volume presents somewhat of a double-edged sword. On one hand, advertisers today can now reach highly targeted audiences on digital platforms at scale, but the highly fragmented environment makes transparency a challenge. Without normalized and enhanced metadata across these channels and titles, advertisers will have a hard time determining which content to invest in when so much CTV inventory is bought and sold programmatically².

Rising engagement presents new advertising opportunities

With consumer budgets tightening and subscription fees climbing-especially for services that are investing heavily in live sports-FAST's no-cost model is gaining new relevance-and viewership. In May 2025, for example, Pluto TV, Tubi, and the Roku Channel accounted for 5.7% of all TV viewing in the U.S., up from 4.2% a year earlier³. This growing appeal among viewers offers programmers and distributors a high-impact way to unlock the value of content libraries and serve up more choice to audiences.

More channels. Newer content.

Notably, the recency of content across FAST channels is also rising, most particularly with the addition of fresher, recently created titles. While the FAST model was once synonymous with classic TV, today's programming skews much newer. Half of the FAST programming titles available today were created in the last five years, putting FAST services on par with premium SVOD providers.

As more channels come online, genre preferences are also shifting. Drama and documentary remain the dominant categories across FAST. But the linear nature of FAST channels presents a unique opportunity for real-time news that doesn't exist in the SVOD world. As a result, news is now the third-largest genre across FAST channels: the number of news channels has increased 40.6% since January 2025, and the amount of programming has increased 33%.

The ad opportunity

The granularity of program information is becoming increasingly critical across CTV channels. As the volume of FAST continues to expand, advertisers are eager to take advantage of CTV's blend of mass reach and precise targeting. Yet, without a clear understanding of which programs are airing where, brands risk missing the context that can make or break campaign effectiveness.

After all, the challenges of effectively reaching viewers across an ecosystem of nearly 1,900 channels make social media fragmentation look downright simple. Sure, CTV enables addressable delivery. But in order to scale efforts in a fragmented environment, programmatic platforms are looking for signals to inform buying and selling transactions.

This is why metadata, such as genre, year of production, mood and parental rating, are becoming increasingly important signals informing programmatic decisions. For example, without metadata, a Miami Open tennis match and an NCAA March Madness Sweet 16 basketball game airing simultaneously appear identical to programmatic platforms-both are just "live sports" with no data to distinguish them.

By working with metadata providers, sell-side platforms and CTV publishers, advertisers gain transparency into the programs and environments where their messages appear. This enables curated targeting that aligns campaigns with relevant content, while allowing publishers to retain control of their inventory and data.

When program details -such as titles, genres and networks-are layered onto traditional metadata, the result is a more transparent, efficient, and brand-safe CTV marketplace. For advertisers, this means the ability to unlock smarter inventory decisions and stronger connections with audiences in an increasingly crowded streaming landscape.

Bringing it all into focus

With viewer habits evolving and competition for streaming viewers increasing, FAST platforms are quickly proving themselves a powerful addition to the TV advertising playbook.

As the streaming landscape continues to shift, comprehensive, current programming data is critical to reaching viewers in ad-supported environments. Programmers and distributors need to evolve with it. By up-leveling their content offerings through FAST options and ensuring their content metadata is normalized and enhanced, their content can be fully optimized when it hits the platform to best support advertisers and bring them along for the ride.