At Cannes Lions, GumGum hosted a panel on scaling CTV and balancing creative innovation with standardization, featuring speakers from IAB Tech Lab, LG Ad Solutions, and Klick. During the discussion, GumGum CTO Ken Weiner argued that advertisers need to stop overlooking the long tail of CTV—especially free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels.
“Most people just know the household names like a Hulu or a Netflix, but if you turn on a television—let’s say you’re turning on your LG—you go to LG Channels, I mean, how many hundreds of channels are on there now? And a lot of people aren’t familiar with what’s past channel 12, right? But you can get up to channel 300 because there’s such an opportunity now for content creators and streaming publishers to put all kinds of niche content out there. And it’s often free and ad-supported, which is why we call them FAST channels, right?”
Why This Matters:
FAST channels have seen explosive growth over the past two years. According to EMARKETER, the number of active FAST channels has increased by 42% globally since mid-2023, surpassing 1,610 channels. The U.S. leads the way, accounting for nearly three-quarters of them (1,189). As the FAST ecosystem expands, so does the opportunity—echoing Ken’s point—for advertisers to reach viewers in more targeted, contextually relevant ways based on the content they’re actively engaging with.
This shift is reshaping the CTV landscape. Viewers now have access to a growing number of channels organized around specific interests—fishing, cooking, fitness, and more. It’s starting to resemble the logic of websites or apps, where what someone chooses to watch reveals clear intent and interests. That content-level signal creates a powerful opportunity for advertisers to target based on mindset, rather than relying on personal or household-level data. And that’s exactly the approach Ken is advocating for.
Experts React:
Ken’s comments build on this shift in how advertisers can think about CTV. In his view, the real opportunity in streaming isn’t just about extending reach—it’s about aligning with viewer mindset. On large platforms like Netflix, he noted, audiences may be engaged but not necessarily in a mindset conducive to purchase—and targeting is often limited to household-level data or user IDs.
“In addition,” he said, “to it being an opportunity for incremental reach for advertisers, it’s also an opportunity to reach people in a mindset because if you look at a household name movie provider like Netflix, these are people that are kind of leaned back, ready to just watch something to be entertained. They might not be in a specific type of mindset, but if you look at some of the FAST channels that are out there, they’re often on very niche topics. And because they are, you can kind of make assumptions about what the people that are watching might be into or what kind of mindset they’re in.”
The key, he explained, is mindset-based targeting. Viewers of specific FAST channels—like Wired to Fish, a niche fishing channel and GumGum publisher—are often clearly aligned with the content they’re consuming. “For example, if somebody’s watching a FAST channel called Wired2Fish, who happens to be one of our publishers, you’re pretty sure that they’re into fishing—otherwise they wouldn’t be watching this. So that opens up the door for advertisers who want to target people that have an interest in fishing.”
Our Take:
Random other point: The explosion in FAST channels presents a compelling opportunity for advertisers, and it also raises important questions around transparency, measurement, and accountability. As inventory spreads across an ever-growing number of niche channels, it becomes more difficult to track where ads are running and whether they’re delivering real value. Ultimately, scale is only as useful as a brand’s ability to understand and optimize for it.
AdTechRadar is owned by Chris Harihar, who leads PR at Mod Op. GumGum is a Mod Op client.
