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Free Streamer Triumphs Over Bigger Platforms: ‘Easy, Fun and Free’

Photo from Glenn Carstens Peters via Unsplash

Free Streamer Triumphs Over Bigger Platforms: ‘Easy, Fun and Free’

By Movieguide® Contributor

The world of streaming is getting more and more competitive — so how is the free streaming service Tubi managing to find major success? 

“We’re the most-watched free movie and TV streaming service in the US,” Tubi’s CEO, Anjali Sud, said in an interview with TechRadar. “We’re the number one AVOD [advertising video on demand] in Canada. We’ve just tied with Disney Plus in the US on viewership [based on Nielsen data], so that means we’re surpassing Peacock and Max — big streamers that have been in the market a long time.”

Tubi was launched in 2010 by Farhad Massoudi. Ten years later, “the streamer was acquired by Fox Corporation for $440 million, with Massoudi remaining as CEO of what has remained an independent service within Fox,” Deadline reported

Now, Tubi is one of the most successful streaming services available, due in large part to the size and breadth of its streaming library. 

The service offers “more than 250,000 movies and TV episodes,” according to TechRadar, and even has “a selection of live channels” that viewers can watch. 

“What we hear from audiences is that we remove barriers, we make it easy, fun and free,” Sud explained. “We’re on all the devices. We don’t have a bunch of onboarding and friction to start watching content. We have a low ad load and [a catalog that gives you] the ability to go deep into areas that you might not initially think of as something you want to watch, or that other streamers aren’t showing.”

She continued, “We want to have a vast, diverse, massive breadth of content, but we also want to help individuals with their unique tastes and preferences…our overall view is that we put the viewer at the center. Whatever they are looking for, it’s our job to bring it to them, whether that means we make it ourselves, we license it, or we find a creative partnership that’s on us to figure out, and we’ll do anything we have to do to make that happen. Nothing’s sacred there.”

“Tubi is trying to pair the premium content of Netflix, with the content discovery and long tail of YouTube,” Sud continued. “We’re trying to kind of bring both of those things together so that you get this long tail of content: you can find anything and everything, but we’re also showing you what you want to watch.”

Movieguide® previously reported on Tubi’s growth and increasing popularity:

While Tubi doesn’t enjoy the studio backing most streaming services rely on, strategic licensing has allowed the free service to become an unexpected player in the industry.

Last month, Tubi was the fifth most popular streaming service, accounting for 1.6% of all TV usage in America. This put it on par with Disney+ (1.7%) while beating out more recognizable names such as Max (1.3%), Peacock (1.3%) and Paramount+ (1.0%). 

While these numbers are a far cry from the industry titans of YouTube (9.7%) and Netflix (8.1%), they still represent an incredible rise from a platform that has taken a different approach to the streaming world.

As a FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channel, ads have been at the center of Tubi’s strategy from the start, allowing it to compete with the bigger platforms that have only started to offer ad-supported options within the past year. This massive rise in demand has made it a marketer’s world, leaving the platforms with less experience floundering to land favorable deals.

Tubi, however, had weathered this storm through its longstanding partnerships. Though the platform is still struggling to turn a profit, its ad revenue was up 22% last quarter, a promising sign of what’s to come.