Equally critical, the open-access consumer data feeding both AVOD and SVOD models may not be such a given going forward.

Why does Amazon need to bolt an ad server onto its tech stack? One reason might be video. While Amazon's Prime Video OTT service is an also-ran to Netflix, it's growing faster. An ad-supported variant might accelerate that growth.

One of the most interesting developments I've seen in the video advertising marketplace over the past couple of years has been the rapid acceleration of TV attribution modeling, and for the life of me, I couldn't really understand why. Sure, TV has long used models. In fact, the original marketing mix models were developed mainly to measure and adjust the efficacy of big TV advertisers and it was only a matter of time before digital embraced the science of modeling and made it its own. But digital did it out of necessity, because it lacked the kind of currency-grade audience …

Some 70% of households use a streaming service, with virtual multichannel video providers among the fastest-growing options. Just about every big media company has some direct-to-consumer offering in the market or set to launch in the next year.