NEW YORK—Faced with a streaming landscape that tends to be dominated by a handful of major players, a number of independent streaming players and some broadcasters have joined together to form a new trade group, the Independent Streaming Alliance.
The ISA industry forum plans to work with consumers, platforms, regulators, and the media to promote a healthy ecosystem for independent voices and programming.
ISA founding members include: Allen Media Group, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Cineverse, Future Today, kweliTV, Revry, Scripps, Tastemade, TMB (Trusted Media Brands), and Vevo.
The group reported that its founding companies offer over 2,200 independent streaming touchpoints, which generate more than half a billion hours of watch time every month. ISA has enlisted iSpot.tv as a partner to help quantify the advertising value of the 500 million plus hours of streaming this group delivers.
The ISA also stressed that in addition to representing independent players, the alliance will highlight and represent minority-owned businesses such as Allen Media Group, Future Today, and kweliTV, and will use its platform to advocate for more diverse programming and a more equitable playing field industrywide.
“The formation of the ISA is long overdue,” said Philippe Guelton, chief revenue officer at Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. “We are joining forces to promote the value of independent streamers, and to work hand-in-hand with platforms, advertisers, and regulatory bodies to ensure that we have a healthy ecosystem that benefits everyone, not just the few.”
“The FAST space has been an exciting and important outlet for diverse and underrepresented communities over the past few years,” added Damian Pelliccione, co-founder and CEO at Revry. “The ISA is the industry support required for a global LGBTQ-first streaming media network like ours to continue to provide free ad supported TV for many years to come.”
The ISA currently has three working groups the group says represents key areas of opportunity and challenge for independent streamers. These groups plan to focus on the following areas:
- The Measurement working group that will help establish the overall reach of alliance members and work to establish collective value for platforms and brand marketers, including working with 3P measurement providers, aggregating viewership, and jointly messaging the virtues of the alliance that promotes our value to platforms and brand marketers. The ISA has selected iSpot.tv as an audience and ad measurement partner to help quantify the total unique reach of the alliance and to lay foundations for utilizing iSpot’s streaming and cross-platform measurement capabilities as a possible currency.
- The Distribution working group is focused on developing and sharing best practices for growing audiences, while also working directly with platforms to ensure that there are fair business practices in place and an even playing field for everyone.
- The Demand working group is focused on working with SSP’s, DSP’s, brands, and agencies to ensure its members' advertising may be purchased and sold seamlessly in compliance with industry norms, whether through direct IO or leading programmatic buying platforms.
“Most of the members of the ISA were early adopters of FAST and played a major role in its initial growth and adoption,” said Cameron Saless, chief business officer at TMB. “As this industry matures and consolidates, we believe that we can play an important role in helping our peers and partners solve some of the important challenges around content discovery, data privacy, and demand transparency, while also ensuring independent programming does not get left out of the equation.”
“The ISA is an opportunity to level up our ecosystem by defining standards and best practices that will benefit consumers, advertisers, and programmers alike,” said Evan Bregman, GM of streaming at Tastemade. “Tastemade is proud to be on the leading edge of building a sustainable streaming industry.”
The ISA said it will continue to recruit members across the spectrum of independent ad-supported video streaming services distributed on televisions and other connected devices.
Leaders from the ISA will be on stage at the StreamTV show June 12th in Denver on a TVREV panel and the Cyno33333333333333333psis Big TV show June 13th in NYC with iSpot for a panel on measurement. For more information visit www.independentstreamingalliance.com.
