FAST operates neither like traditional television nor like a streaming service such as Netflix. It is a hybrid of the two: a digital platform that replicates the experience of watching linear TV. It borrows elements such as a fixed programme schedule, channel surfing and advertising grouped into predefined commercial breaks but delivers them to viewers over the internet, free of charge, and using modern tools for ad targeting. At the same time, it is important to realise that this is no parallel subculture: the biggest players in the television market, including Fox, Paramount, Samsung, Roku and Amazon, are investing billions in FAST.
The acronym FAST stands for Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV. It refers to a category of streaming services that combine linear television programming with VOD content and are financed primarily through the sale of advertising space. Viewers consume the content for free, and the only symbolic “price” they pay is having to tolerate advertisements. The term was first coined by media analyst Alan Wolk in December 2018, although similar services had already existed for some time. The very first pioneer of this model was Pluto TV, launched in 2014.
Video: What are FAST Channels? – Adspective Vlog
Free — and still profitable
After launching in 2014, Pluto TV initially operated on a licensing model. It offered its own linear channels, supplied with sublicensed content from third parties. However, it remained independent only until 2019, when it was acquired by Viacom for 340 million dollars. Viacom later became part of today’s Paramount. Even during its independent years, Pluto TV left a mark on the television market. A number of television manufacturers began building similar solutions into their products. A typical example is Samsung TV Plus, launched by Samsung in 2015 and gradually transformed into one of the largest OEM FAST ecosystems in the world.
Whether it is a standalone service or an integrated application, the FAST model always works in roughly the same way from a technical point of view. The foundation is a virtual television channel for which the operator creates a programme schedule that is then streamed continuously over the internet. To insert advertising, it uses SSAI (Server-Side Ad Insertion), which integrates ads directly into the stream on the server side. As a result, most standard ad blockers cannot remove them. From the viewer’s perspective, the experience is therefore very close to watching a traditional television channel with an EPG programme guide.
At first glance, FAST may not seem very different from similar models such as AVOD or CTV. The differences, however, are substantial. AVOD — Ad-Supported Video on Demand — is a broader term that includes on-demand services financed by advertising as well as hybrid ad-supported tiers on paid platforms. CTV (Connected TV), by contrast, is a purely technical term referring to a television set connected to the internet. FAST, on the other hand, refers to a specific distribution model: a free, advertising-funded service built around linear channels and a television-style way of consuming content. In practice, individual services differ in the degree of registration required, the scope of their VOD offering, and the extent to which they resemble classic linear broadcasting.
At present, three typical types of players operate in the FAST market. First, there are the large media companies, which have often acquired smaller competitors. This is how Pluto TV came under Paramount, Tubi under Fox, Xumo under Comcast and Charter, and Sling Freestream under Dish. The second major group consists of device manufacturers — OEM FAST players such as Samsung, which offer these channels as pre-installed applications. The third group comprises platforms that retain a greater degree of independence. Among the most significant are The Roku Channel and Plex, with Roku also functioning both as a hardware manufacturer and a content operator. By the end of 2024, Samsung TV Plus had already exceeded 88 million monthly active users, and in 2026, it passed the 100 million MAU mark.
FAST as part of the television revolution
According to a study by Grand View Research, the FAST market was valued at 9.73 billion dollars in 2024, with analysts forecasting growth to 40.2 billion dollars by 2033, at an annual rate of 16.9%. And that is one of the more conservative estimates. In the United States, the popularity of FAST platforms is growing dramatically. By the beginning of 2025, Tubi, The Roku Channel and Pluto TV together already accounted for 4.7% of total US television viewing, more than many individual paid streaming services.
A true milestone in the history of American television came in May 2025. That was the moment when streaming platforms, for the first time, overtook the combined viewing of traditional broadcast and cable television. Streaming reached 44.8% of total time spent watching television, while broadcast and cable together accounted for 44.2%. As recently as 2021, linear television still held a much stronger position. This turning point is well captured in a statement by Aaron Meyerson of Qualia Legacy Advisors: “No one inside Hollywood believes linear is coming back to what it was.” Developments since then have only confirmed his words.
The situation in the television advertising market is equally critical. In 2025, prime-time revenue for linear television fell from 18.4 to 17.8 billion dollars, while streaming rose to 13.2 billion dollars. According to eMarketer, advertising on CTV is expected to reach parity with linear television by 2028. What keeps linear television afloat, above all, are those segments in which it still has a structural advantage: live sport, news, and major cultural events. The NFL is a good example, with its current media contracts with major partners running until the 2033 season. At the same time, it remains true that a significant share of Americans still subscribe to cable or satellite television, even if they now represent only a minority.
The Big Three
The shape of today’s FAST market is determined by the so-called Big Three. The largest player is Tubi, which falls under Fox Corporation, having been acquired in 2020 for 440 million dollars. Tubi reports more than 100 million monthly active users and a catalogue comprising tens of thousands of films and episodic titles; at the start of 2025, it itself spoke of 97 million MAUs and more than 10 billion hours streamed during 2024. In autumn 2025, it also reached operational profitability for the first time, alongside 27% revenue growth. Tubi particularly appeals to younger audiences: more than half its audience consists of Gen Z and millennials, and almost half is made up of multicultural audiences. As Tubi’s Chief Marketing Officer, Nicole Parlapiano, aptly put it: “Our fans come in, and they behave like subscription streaming viewers. The only difference is they don’t pay for it.”
Video: Tubi Interface Interruption | Super Bowl
Second place in the current market remains with the pioneer of the FAST model, Pluto TV. Today, it operates under the Paramount umbrella and is available in a number of international markets. In the way it functions and looks, it still comes closest to classic cable television. On Pluto TV, viewers can choose from a broad spectrum of channels from Paramount’s portfolio, including popular brands such as Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. Viewers also behave in a highly traditional way there, with channel surfing still serving as the main mode of navigation.
Video: Pluto TV: Crying is free. Feel the free. (Long form)
The third key player remains The Roku Channel, owned by Roku Inc., which makes it the largest FAST service not tied to any major media conglomerate. At the beginning of 2025, Roku announced that it had reached 90 million streaming households, and by the end of 2025, The Roku Channel had captured 2.9% of total television time in the United States. Roku also benefits significantly from the fact that it is both a hardware manufacturer and the operator of the operating system layer on part of the smart TV market, giving it access to exceptionally valuable viewing data. That, in turn, provides a rich source of information that can be used to further refine its FAST platform and advertising products.
Video: WHERE’S THE REMOTE??? | Roku Commercial
It should be noted that this is not an exhaustive description of the FAST market structure. In addition to the Big Three, other relevant players with substantial reach also operate in the market. One example is the already mentioned Samsung TV Plus, now one of the strongest OEM FAST players in the world, which surpassed 100 million monthly active users in 2026. Another important player is Amazon, which, after discontinuing the standalone Freevee brand, moved its free AVOD and FAST content into Prime Video, where more than 1,000 free FAST channels are available across several major European markets and in the US. Another competitor is LG Channels, as well as the hybrid service Plex, which combines a personal media library with FAST channels and performs particularly well in markets with strong demand for free content and simple aggregation.
Video: [SDC23] Experience Interactive Advertisement on Samsung TV Plus
More than an archive of old content
It is tempting to give in to the widespread myth that FAST services are, in effect, merely vast archives of old content. The reality is more colourful. According to Gracenote, only 13.4% of FAST content dates from before 1990, and the fastest-growing genre is, in fact, reality television. Between 2024 and 2025, the number of such channels grew by 626%, from 19 to 138. Films nevertheless remain the largest category, while sport is also growing very quickly. In the United States, local news continues to hold an especially strong position.
Video: Tubi | Cowboy Head (Extended) | Super Bowl LIX
That said, it is true that FAST operates largely on the principle of non-exclusive content. Channels such as the NFL Channel or MLB Channel can appear simultaneously across multiple platforms. Paid streaming services, by contrast, often build their identity on exclusivity, original production and their own rights libraries. This apparent drawback of FAST is offset by other advantages: speed of distribution, low costs, high accessibility and advertising flexibility. For viewers, the main benefit is that it is free. For advertisers, the attraction lies in the highly effective combination of a television format with digital precision.
FAST and advertising
These advantages for advertisers are, above all, structural. FAST offers precision targeting combined with a lean-back television format. In practice, this means that the viewer sits in front of the screen, passively consumes content, and accepts advertising as part of an implicit bargain. Thanks to this, the advertiser can target specific households rather than an anonymous mass audience. A crucial role is also played by programmatic buying: according to the IAB, roughly 75% of CTV transactions in 2024 were executed programmatically.
FAST also relies on formats that cannot be skipped, and research repeatedly shows that these achieve a higher commercial effect than skippable ads. Another major strength is measurability. Advertisers have access to metrics such as completion rate, frequency capping, and view-through attribution, and can even link them to purchasing data. Another important development is the democratisation of entry: whereas a 30-second spot during the NFL costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, FAST advertising is accessible even to brands with far smaller budgets. That is where its commercial strength lies: it combines the attention and emotional impact of television with the precision, flexibility and data-based evaluation of digital advertising.
Video: Interactive Video Ads Outperform Standard Formats Across the Funnel: Amazon’s Maggie Zhang
The average streaming CPM in 2025 fell to 27.25 dollars, representing a year-on-year decline of 7.6%, while prime-time broadcast CPM reached 43.50 dollars and cable television 19.35 dollars. Analysts nevertheless assume that after this period of pricing pressure, the market will stabilise and growth will gradually return. At the same time, viewers’ attitudes towards advertising continue to evolve. According to Comscore, the ad-supported tier already accounts for 45% of Netflix viewing hours in US households, and other surveys show that a large proportion of viewers are willing to tolerate more advertising in exchange for a lower subscription price. Advertising is therefore no longer seen purely as an intrusive interruption, but increasingly as part of the implicit agreement between the platform and the user.
Another crucial advantage of FAST and the wider CTV ecosystem is the use of ACR data. OEM FAST platforms such as Samsung, LG and Roku have access to Automatic Content Recognition technology, which can identify exactly what the viewer is watching. For advertisers, this data is an exceptionally valuable resource because it enables them to connect television viewing with other data layers and significantly improve both targeting and campaign evaluation. A key limitation, however, remains cross-platform measurement. According to Nielsen, only 32% of global marketers measure media performance in a truly holistic way across both digital and traditional channels.
Linear television is not ending — it is merely losing its monopoly
The fact that linear television is in decline is undeniable. But that does not mean it faces immediate extinction. Its greatest threat remains cord-cutting. Even though its share is genuinely shrinking, recent years have shown that this trend is slowing in some places, and that audiences still tend to adopt a hybrid approach: they use streaming primarily for entertainment and catalogue content, while keeping linear TV for sport, news and major live events. The biggest broadcasters are responding by dividing roles. They use free FAST platforms to extend reach, work with archive content, and monetise advertising, while concentrating premium content within paid services. Tubi, Pluto TV, Peacock and Prime Video therefore do not play the same role in the broader television economy but rather complement one another.
This leads to a fairly optimistic conclusion: FAST is not consuming linear television. On the contrary, it is also reaching additional viewers who otherwise might not watch television content at all. Wayne Friedman of MediaPost captured it well: “Good news is that FAST local channels are a step up for local TV stations from the initial digital media business: news-related websites and the like, which started up at least two decades ago.” Risks do exist. Thousands of FAST channels are already broadcasting globally, narrowing the scope for discovering attractive new content. Moreover, the pressure for exclusivity undermines a key advantage of the FAST model, namely its low costs. And compared with linear television, FAST remains more restrained in its advertising load: it usually carries roughly 4 to 8 minutes of ads per hour, whereas linear television carries significantly more. The key question remains the balance between monetisation and viewer satisfaction.
Europe: great potential, slower take-off
It will be fascinating to see whether the FAST revolution reaches Europe to the same extent as it has the United States. For now, the European market still lags significantly behind. According to estimates, it was expected to reach roughly 490 million dollars in 2024, whereas the US market stood at around 1.3 billion dollars. The market is also highly fragmented: Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, Rakuten TV, LG Channels, Rlaxx and a number of other local players are all competing for dominant positions in individual markets. According to the 3Vision FAST Tracker, more than 1,200 unique FAST channels from 243 operators are active across the five largest European markets.
In Central Europe, FAST is gaining ground even more slowly. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, hybrid and paid platforms such as Max, Netflix, prima+, Oneplay and operator video libraries remain dominant. Global FAST services are available only to a limited extent, and most commonly through OEM ecosystems, especially Samsung TV Plus. In the Czech Republic, Samsung TV Plus has officially been available free of charge on Samsung televisions since the 2016 model year, although it does require a Samsung account, and its channel offering varies from country to country. prima+ itself is built around the FREE, LIGHT and PREMIUM model, and therefore cannot straightforwardly be classified as pure FAST in the American sense. Oneplay, after the merger of Voyo and O2 TV, is clearly more of a paid hybrid platform combining linear channels, catch-up services, sport and original content.
The most prominent international FAST product on the Czech market today can therefore be considered Samsung TV Plus rather than BBC Player. Since November 2024, BBC Player has been available in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as a multi-genre VOD service through Magenta TV and Magio TV, rather than as a classic FAST platform. For local broadcasters such as Česká televize, TV Nova, FTV Prima, or newly STVR, FAST therefore remains more a question of the near future than of present-day mainstream reality. Even now, however, it confronts them with a fundamental question: should they build their own free streaming channels as an extension of linear television, or leave that space to global players for whom the region may be smaller but still strategically attractive?
FAST is not merely another distribution channel, but a signal that television is once again learning to speak the language of digital media without losing its ability to build mass reach, emotional resonance and everyday viewing habits. It offers an environment in which the power of the classic television format is combined with the precision of data targeting, the flexibility of programmatic buying and a far lower barrier to entry. For brands willing to think about television less nostalgically and more strategically, FAST does not represent a marginal experiment but one of the most compelling opportunities of the years ahead.