Media is playing a growing role in our lives, fast becoming 100% addressable, 100% shoppable, and 100% accountable.
At dentsu, we call this the algorithmic era of media.
This article is extracted from The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends, dentsu’s 15th annual trends report. With the explosion of streaming and generative AI-powered services, platforms are constantly seeking high-quality content that will retain users. This is leading to a rapid extension of partnerships and licensing deals between media players and technology players – with no sign of slowing down in 2025.
Filling the gaps
To win over audiences in the long term, generative AI platforms must prove their services are both essential and trustworthy. This requires that they provide accurate and useful answers based on high quality data powering their large language models (LLMs).
As a result, OpenAI has made a string of deals with news and content giants including The Financial Times, Reddit, Vox Media and News Corp, and Perplexity has secured partnerships with Der Spiegel and Time among others. These deals reportedly cover many aspects, from training models to developing new tools.
Audiences may evolve where they consume news if LLMs increasingly draw directly from authoritative news sources in their responses to prompts. Brands may have to review their strategies to find and engage with these audiences, and to evolve how they measure performance across these environments.
The great rebundling
The success of direct-to-consumer streaming platforms in the last few years is not without limits. Viewers now pause their subscriptions based on the scheduling of their favorite shows to avoid paying for multiple concurrent plans. CMOs question performance, with almost half (48%) feeling unsure whether platforms deliver as effectively as broadcast television.lv Platforms themselves are under massive financial pressure to limit audience churn.
As a response, one tried-and-tested tactic is making a comeback: the bundle.
In the United States, competing streaming services are joining forces to lure viewers. Disney+, Hulu, and Max now propose a single offer up to 38% cheaper than individual subscriptions, and ESPN, Warner Bros, and Fox plan to launch a one-stop app for most sports. Showmax, which operates in 44 African markets, has partnered with NBCUniversal to use the Peacock technology platform and add new international titles to its own content catalogue. In India, Reliance and Disney have announced a joint venture, pooling resources and catalogues to build a television and streaming giant catering to more than 750 million viewers.
Netflix will not bundle with other streamers. Yet, the company is exploring service bundles as illustrated by a pilot program with Carrefour supermarkets in France, in which subscribers can access Netflix content, discounts on Carrefour own brand products, and no delivery fees – an approach that seems to take a page from the Prime Video playbook.
For audiences, the benefits of cord cutting may soon yield to the prospect of better prices and greater access to unified gateways to high-quality content. For marketers, this market dynamic could lead to less audience fragmentation, and more unified planning, trading, and measurement.
What’s next?
Partnerships and licensing agreements will fuel both the development of services built on generative AI and the intensifying streaming war. Marketers will need to keep abreast of these deals to understand how they could change how audiences consume content in the future.
This is the ninth of ten trends discussed in dentsu’s The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends report.
Get your copy of The Year of Impact | 2025 Media Trends report here to see all ten trends.