Pay TV Lessons from IBC 2025: Competing, Monetizing, and Innovating

The conversations at IBC 2025 confirmed a truth the industry has been circling for years: Surviving sustainably in the Pay TV industry requires being able to compete in an entertainment economy defined by choice, personalization, and speed.

For operators and telcos, the challenge of retaining customers and staying relevant in a crowded, fast-moving has not changed. If anything becomes more acute. We see this shift impacting the everyday of our customers and partners. Also, we see this the core reason for the existence of our entertainment platform and newest conversational UI app. But back to this later. Now onto the lessons and highlights we took directly from our many booth visitors.  
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1. From Content Abundance to Experience Differentiation

Consumers today face abundance, not scarcity. Almost every household has access to more content than they can ever watch, across multiple subscriptions. What makes one platform stand out is not the library alone, it is the experience layer.

That experience is increasingly defined by:

• Discovery as delight: not just finding something to watch, but enjoying the process of discovery through curated, personalized journeys.

• Personalization: beyond “because you watched” algorithms, consumers want platforms that feel designed for them, their household, their profile, and their daily context.

• Fluidity across devices: content must follow seamlessly from TV to mobile to car to smart display, with continuity of personalization and control.

At IBC, one of the most reiterated messages we heard was that UX has become the true focus point for differentiation. Operators who create experiences that feel fresh, fluid, and personal will thrive. Those who do not risk being reduced to little more than broadband utilities.  
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2. Monetization Beyond Subscriptions

The subscription model is under pressure everywhere. In Pay TV, operators see churn rising as consumers swap, cancel, and rejoin services with increasing frequency. That is why monetization is shifting beyond subscriptions:

• Advertising and FAST: dynamic, targeted ad models are becoming central, especially as connected TV advertising budgets grow.

• Commerce and partnerships: Pay TV platforms are uniquely positioned to become gateways not just to content, but to broader ecosystems such as music, gaming, and shopping.

• Contextual monetization: the rise of entertainment everywhere shows how new contexts create entirely new revenue opportunities for operators who can deliver content-forward, personalized platforms. Including within new spaces and industries like automotive.
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3. The Urgency of Speed and Agility

Operators no longer have the luxury of multi-year platform projects. At IBC we felt a sense of urgency consistent across the various discussions we held: innovation must be fast, tangible, and low risk for us and for the subscribers.

That translates into three concrete requirements:

• Rapid proof-of-concepts: the ability to test new ideas, such as advanced personalization, quickly with real users.

• Iterative launches: releasing new features in weeks, not years, with the ability to refine in-market.

• Future-proof architecture: ensuring today’s innovations can scale across devices, markets, and partners without costly rework.
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4. Partnerships remain Growth Accelerators

No operator can go it alone. This is not new. The complexity of the entire ecosystem, spanning video platforms, metadata, advertising, devices, and networks, demands partnerships. The real differentiator is how well an operator’s platform can integrate and orchestrate across partners. And how to make it affordable so this innovation can be brought to users as fast as possible, as we pinpoint in lesson 3.

At IBC, this was visible in three directions:

• Tech ecosystems: alignment with Google, Amazon, and Smart TV OS providers is vital, but operators wanting to stay away from the expected monopoly game are also looking for independence and differentiation.

• Service integrators: partnerships with big traditional but also new domain expertise start-ups highlight the need for scalable, multi-market execution.

• Content ecosystems: Pay TV’s strength is in aggregation, and the operators who make third-party apps, FAST channels, and OTT services feel native will win.
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5. The Shifting Center of Gravity

Finally, the themes and key presentations at IBC 2025 made it clear that Pay TV’s center of gravity has shifted:

• From STBs to Smart TVs: more households are making the smart TV their primary screen, forcing operators to think beyond hardware.

• From homes to everywhere: in particular in cabin screens emerging as a new frontier, blending entertainment with contextual personalization.

• From incremental to transformational: the industry mood is moving away from small optimizations toward bold moves that redefine operator relevance.
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In summary…. The move from Survival to Leadership is happening

The Pay TV industry has been shifting for a long time, and that’s great news. Specially for the audiences. The old playbook of content aggregation plus long project cycles are not longer enough. Operators need to continue to: ‍

1. Differentiate through personalization. ‍

2. Monetize through experiences, not just subscriptions. ‍

3. Innovate at the pace of consumer expectations.
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And we at 3SS are happy to be able to feel we are the right fit in this roadmap. With the award winning 3Ready platform, operators are already delivering consistent, personalized UX across devices, gain real-time flexibility to launch campaigns, new services, and experiment with business models at a pace never seen before. In parallel the recently launched and fully agnostic conversational Hero app builds on this by showing what next-generation monetization journeys can look like in practice, from contextual ads to seamless commerce integration allowing to test new personalization strategies and discovery concepts with real users before going to market.

IBC 2025 showed us that the industry is ready. The question is no longer why operators should innovate, but how fast they can get started. With 3SS, the answer is clear: today.