How the Big Streaming Services Stack Up Heading Into 2025

This article was originally published Dec. 12

ADWEEK previously reported that the streaming war was entering its messy era—and 2024 did not disappoint.

This year saw Prime Video’s ad inventory shake up the TV upfront, streamers push further into sports—or try to in the case of Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox’s joint venture, Venu—and free, ad-supported streamers such as Tubi continue to fight for share and deliver big advertising dollars.

As part of ADWEEK’s regular year-in-review coverage, we take a deep dive into the major streaming services, seeing how they compare and the storylines that matter heading into 2025.

Here are the biggest takeaways from the state of streaming:

Netflix’s busy year

On its third-quarter earnings call in October, Netflix announced that it had added 5.1 million paid subscribers, reaching over 282 million viewers for more than 14% year-over-year growth.

In addition to its continued password crackdown, Netflix’s ad tier, which is in 12 countries worldwide, is also helping the streamer gain share, with its advertising president, Amy Reinhard, telling ADWEEK the ad-supported plan now reaches around 70 million monthly active users.

Moving forward, Netflix is looking to expand its measurement capabilities, build new ad formats and programmatic offerings, and double its ads revenue in 2025, when the streamer promises to reach critical scale on its ads plan.

Disney+’s ad tier numbers revealed

Disney has more than 236 million total direct-to-consumer subscribers across its portfolio, with nearly 123 million coming from Disney+ (excluding India) and 52 million from Hulu.