Fox’s Tubi continues growth trend, 90% of FAST viewing on-demand

Fox’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service Tubi continued to see growth in the first three months of 2024, with the company on Thursday reporting user and usage gains alongside year-over-year ad revenue increases.

During Fox’s fiscal year 2024 third quarter conference call, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the free streaming platform marked 22% revenue growth in the period, driven by a 36% increase in total viewing time (TV) and 20% growth in monthly active users. The FAST now counts just under 80 million monthly active users, up from the 78 million at last count.

It marks another quarter of growth, though at a slower rate than the 31% yoy ad revenue growth in the same period a year ago.

Like most FAST services, such as Paramount’s Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Xumo and smart TV OEM platforms Samsung TV Plus, Vizio WatchFree+ and others, Tubi offers a mix of live linear-style streaming channels as well as on-demand content. Tubi initially focused on the on-demand aspect but has grown its linear FAST channel count to around 270, along with a collection of 250,000 movies and TV series. Notably, Murdoch on Wednesday’s earnings call said that across content available on the platform, 90% of viewing happens in the on-demand environment.

“This is very important because when the viewing comes on-demand and it’s proactively on-demand, as opposed to passively sort of sitting back and watching a FAST channel, that’s much more valuable to advertisers,” he said. The company plans “to make a big deal” about this factor during its Upfront presentation next week, he added.

Other FASTs are leaning into on-demand as well. Samsung TV Plus, for example, initially focused more on linear FAST channels but during this year’s NewFronts presentation said it plans to double the amount of VOD content available, after having already done so last year.

Fox also views Tubi as valuable to advertisers thanks to reach and engagement, according to Murdoch, with over 60% of Tubi users classified as cord cutters or cord nevers who aren’t reachable through traditional pay TV.

Speaking about overall advertising trends at Fox, Murdoch said they’re “clearly moving in the right direction” both in the scatter market and early Upfront discussions.

In terms of ad inventory pricing for its FAST service, where analysts on the call noted Disney yesterday mentioned some weakness in CTV CPMs, Murdoch cited confidence that Fox can maintain current CPM levels at Tubi. He noted it’s already been “very efficient” with Tubi CPMs, suggesting others haven’t taken the same route.

“I think some of our competitors priced themselves when they entered the AVOD market over the past 12-18 months very high and we’re seeing in the marketplace them having to drop CPMs as new entrants add supply to the market” which is impacting the market overall. StreamTV Insider