6 Lessons Reshaping Media And Streaming In Europe

By Marion Ranchet

Organising an event the day before IBC opened was a gamble as executives were about to start a brutal four-day marathon made of 30’ meetings and parties along with 43,858 fellow visitors.

The goal of Streaming Made Easy Live was therefore to offer a totally different experience, one where you don’t have FOMO because you couldn’t choose between 3 different sessions taking place at once or had no time to meet all the attendees. We focused on short informative talks & presentations, a balanced audience in the industry constituency represented (attendees were from CTV, broadcasters, streamers, telecom operators and technology companies), a diverse audience both on and off stage (a big challenge for IBC as a technology conference), and finally multiple down time to focus on networking. It’s all about being complimentary with tentpole industry events like IBC.

Since this gamble paid off, we will see you on September 10th, 2026 in Amsterdam for a 2nd edition.

But first let me share with you some big picture takeaways from the event as well as the live recorded sessions.

#1 - The Power Of Collaboration

This was the n°1 theme underlying all sessions. In EMEA, Netflix collaborates with 80 partners. Netflix doesn’t win alone, each of these partners can take credit for Netflix being the leading streamer in the region and beyond. YouTube admits it’s bad at producing content and thrives to build the best platform for content creators.

#2 - The Ego Trap

Partnerships will underdeliver if you don’t leave your ego at the door and keep building siloes around your media businesses. Media Press Group puts the IP at the centre of everything (discoverability, monetisation) with Open ID (a non proprietary ID to cut through the fragmentation of our ecosystem).

#3 - Simplicity As A Core Value Proposition

Stop talking about fragmentation, fix it. Telenet Group has seen a double-digit decrease of the churn rate amongst its bundled customers since launching Bango’s Digital Vending Machine. Why? Simplicity before anything else.

#4 - The New Playbook

Channel 4 and Webedia Creators are building flywheels without fearing cannibalisation. French YouTuber Inoxtag is the living proof that you can release a documentary in movie theatres, on TV and on SVOD while it’s up on YouTube (wait until you see the performance number in our recorded session). Different platforms = different viewer behaviours and ultimately incremental audiences. It’s called a windowing strategy. Our industry has done it over and over again and yet YouTube and Social media are a step too far?!

#5 - The Big Screen

Speaking of audiences, Gen Zers and Millennials aren’t turning their back on the big screen. As they grow up, they grow fond of a TV living room experience but are ready for more (voice controlled conversational interface, integrated vide cameras etc.). The industry has tried but these features never really picked up until now. Proof of concepts with Gemini or ChatGPT in TVs and STBs are coming to market.

#6 - The AI driven media discovery

Three disruptions reshaped the media landscape (in Europe and beyond) in the last two decades:

Social media challenged broadcasters’ gatekeeping role.
Streaming ripped up distribution models.
Creators rewired attention.

AI is different. It doesn’t just pressure-test business models. It questions what media is.

For the closing keynote, Ezra Eeman (Chief Strategy Officer at NPO and founder of Wayfinder) took us on a tour of how AI is rewriting discovery. From the “jagged frontier” of breakthroughs and flaws, to the prospect of agents acting on our behalf, his point was clear: discovery is being rebuilt around AI ecosystems, not media destinations.