News and Insights

MEDIA PULSE: August 2025

August 22, 2025

We are watching three shifts that matter for Q4 planning and 2026 readiness. Sports has climbed to the top of streaming. TikTok faces a new U.S. deadline. And the biggest AI gains in paid media come from what we build around platforms, not inside them.

#1 Live sports streaming’s big win in the CTV era

Live sports has always been the engine of TV (just ask my very first boss. IYKYK). The question was never whether sports drove audiences. It was whether it could keep that role as viewers cut the cord and CTV took over.

Back in 2015, Yahoo streaming an NFL game was treated as an interesting test. Could live sports survive without cable’s scale and foundation? What will happen when those cords are cut? Ten years later, it’s clear that sports didn’t just survive on CTV — it came out stronger.

You see it everywhere. Peacock’s exclusive NFL Wild Card game broke U.S. streaming records and drove a surge of paid sign-ups in a single weekend. Sunday Ticket pulled high-value households into YouTube TV, directly speaking to the very audiences hesitant to cut the cord and miss out on live sports coverage.

And advertisers are following fast. Over 70% of net new SVOD subscribers in the past nine quarters chose ad-supported plans, and local CTV spend is projected to rise 29% in 2025, surpassing that of digital time spent.

But here’s the twist: While CTV demand is climbing, CPMs are sliding. Both buyers and sellers report rates down upwards of 30% year over year. Supply has outpaced demand, Netflix’s pricing reset pulled benchmarks lower, and advertisers are negotiating harder with better data. We’re smack in the middle of a buyer’s market in CTV (even for sports).

💓 The Pulse

• Booming spend, cheaper reach: U.S. CTV ad spend will hit $33.4 billion in 2025, but CPMs are down as much as 30% YoY.
• Not all CTV is created equal: Curated premium packages hold value, with CPMs 27% higher than the open exchange.
• Sports is CTV’s stickiest driver: 74% of U.S. sports fans say access to live games is the main reason they pay for streaming.

OUR TAKE

CTV is no longer the challenger for live sports — it’s the stage. And the best news is that many can afford to test it right now. For Q4, secure priority games early, or if this is new to your channel plan, lean into smaller partnerships to broaden reach. You might be surprised how broad the audience really is. Regular-season female viewership alone is up around 10% year over year, a lift fueled in part by the Taylor Swift effect. But I digress.

– Ashley Blais

#2 TikTok’s September deadline

The U.S. divest‑or‑ban clock is ticking down to Sept. 17. Without a sale approved by both Washington and Beijing, TikTok will go dark in the U.S. again. The horror!

But don’t fret: We’ve been here before. TikTok briefly shut down nationwide on Jan. 18 before service was restored a day later, and that short blackout showed how quickly the market can react. Creator posting jumped on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts the following week, and several agencies reported a clear shift in activity and engagement on Reels.

Budget plans follow users. If a ban lands, eMarketer projects Instagram would capture about 22.4% of reallocated U.S. TikTok ad dollars, with Meta and YouTube together taking roughly half.

💓 The Pulse

• Protect traffic: Build audience portability and creative options for Reels and Shorts sooner than later.
• Protect commerce: Map TikTok Shop SKUs and pixels to Meta and YouTube shopping flows.
• Protect creators: Closely review partnership usage rights that allow reposting across platforms.

OUR TAKE

TikTok’s future in the U.S. is uncertain, but audience behavior is not. When the app went dark before, Reels and Shorts picked up the slack overnight. That tells us the short-form habit is bigger than any one platform. People will keep scrolling, whether it’s on TikTok, YouTube or something that hasn’t launched yet. So plan for volatility, but keep investing in the (short-form) format.

– Ashley Blais

#3 Beyond platform AI: Building the Agency OS

The biggest automation gains in paid media won’t come from Google’s Performance Max or Meta’s Advantage+. They will come from what agencies build around them.

Enter the Agency Operating System: a connected layer of automated workflows, scripts and tools designed specifically for the way your agency actually works. Not AI in the ad platform but AI in the operations: reporting, creative trafficking, QA, budget checks, onboarding and more.

It starts by mapping the current process (warts and all), cutting redundant steps and then selecting the mix of no-code automation and custom scripts to make them run without constant human intervention. The goal? Take a process like end-of-month reporting (which can swallow up 10 hours of a strategist’s week), and turn it into an automated workflow that runs in minutes. That’s time your best people can redirect to strategy, problem-solving and client growth.

Why it matters: The agencies that build this now will own an asset competitors can’t just buy. And when agentic AI (autonomous systems that can monitor campaigns, trigger creative refreshes and draft client updates) hits the mainstream, those with a mature OS will be ready to plug it in.

💓 The Pulse

• Custom beats generic: Platform AI is table stakes. Your proprietary process automation is your defensible IP.
• Map before you build: Automating inefficiency just makes bad processes run faster. Deconstruct and redesign first.
• Future-proofing is key: Today’s Agency OS is the foundation for tomorrow’s agentic AI and autonomous campaign management.
• It’s a cultural shift: Move from reactive firefighting to proactive system design, celebrating solutions over heroics.

OUR TAKE

We’re actively mapping and redesigning our own workflows to build the foundation of a FINN Agency OS. It’s about freeing our people to do their best thinking while creating a scalable, differentiated capability that grows with us.

The agencies that win in 2026–27 will look less like service vendors and more like agile software companies, with proprietary systems as their core asset and strategists as their architects.

The journey for any agency begins with a single question: What’s your most time-consuming manual process? Start there.

– Daniel Cupidi

About the authors

Ashley Blais co-leads FINN Paid Media, our global team of experts who live and breathe today’s fast-paced and fast-changing media landscape. The team delivers a full suite of services, including omnichannel planning and buying, performance media strategy and management, and comprehensive measurement, resulting in award-winning campaigns that drive client success. Daniel Cupidi, as paid media supervisor, oversees campaign performance, strategic planning and execution within the team.