A New and Better Operating Model for Streaming

Nate Frink, EVP Global Ops, Technology & Product

Just about everyone will agree that streaming has matured, but the way it operates behind the scenes hasn’t kept pace.

Over the past decade, media companies have successfully scaled global distribution, expanded content libraries, and launched new business models across subscription, advertising, and FAST. But as the industry has grown, so too have the inefficiencies. Complexity, cost, and speed are driving constant pressure.

The challenge isn’t getting content to audiences anymore; it’s doing it in a way that actually makes economic sense at scale. Vubiquity and Eluvio have joined forces to solve that very problem, significantly reducing costs and time to market, while introducing a more modern, efficient workflow.

Addressing Systems Built on Fragmentation

Most streaming workflows are not designed as a single system. Instead, they are assembled across multiple technologies, vendors, and teams, each responsible for a different stage in the process.

Content is ingested, processed, packaged, enriched with metadata, localized, stored, and ultimately distributed, often through entirely separate environments. Each step introduces its own dependencies and inefficiencies. Over time, this creates a system that is not only complex to manage but increasingly difficult to scale.

This fragmentation has real consequences. Time to market slows as content moves through disconnected workflows. Operational overhead increases as teams manage multiple tools and processes. And infrastructure costs, particularly around content delivery, continue to rise in line with audience growth.

It’s why, even today, launching something as simple as a new channel or service can feel disproportionately heavy, because every step in the chain has to be reconnected, revalidated, and often repeated.

The Limits of Incremental Improvement

Many organizations have attempted to address these challenges by optimizing individual parts of the workflow. Encoding becomes more efficient. Metadata processes improve. Delivery contracts are renegotiated.

But these are incremental fixes applied to a fundamentally fragmented model.

The issue isn’t a single bottleneck; it’s the structure of the system itself. Improving one stage does little to solve the inefficiencies introduced by the others. As a result, complexity persists, and cost continues to scale.

This is why the industry has reached a point where “better” is no longer enough. What’s needed is a different way of thinking about the entire streaming workflow.

Vubiquity Brings Content and Delivery Together

The next evolution of streaming lies in connecting two areas that have traditionally operated independently: content operations and delivery infrastructure.

On one side is everything required to prepare content, onboarding, processing, packaging, metadata, localization, and compliance. On the other is the technology responsible for distributing that content at scale.

Historically, these have been treated as separate domains. But that separation is exactly where inefficiency creeps in.

When content is prepared in one system and delivered through another, there is always a gap, whether that’s in performance, cost, or control. Closing that gap requires bringing these functions together into a single, continuous workflow.

This is the model Vubiquity is advancing.

Vubiquity already manages the full content lifecycle, ensuring that every asset is properly prepared, enriched, and aligned with studio requirements before it reaches distribution. That includes everything from metadata and artwork to localization, mastering, and ongoing content management. This is the layer that ensures everything is “studio-approved” and ready to perform, not just technically, but commercially.

To this, we are now adding a delivery layer through a fundamentally different streaming architecture. Instead of relying on edge caches, duplicated files, or pre-built renditions, content is delivered directly from a single source in real time. This modern approach replaces traditional, infrastructure-heavy distribution models with a more efficient and scalable solution that eliminates unnecessary storage, file replication, and caching overhead.

Instead of file-based workflows, content is treated as a single, active source-of-truth object that combines media, metadata, and logic. Streams for VOD, live, or linear delivery are generated just‑in‑time from that object, with no stored mezzanines, duplicated files, and cache hierarchies, thus reducing storage, operational overhead, and delivery cost.

Just as importantly, this model introduces a new level of visibility and control. Because content is delivered from a single source-of-truth object with built-in rights and entitlement logic, every interaction can be tracked in real time. That means accurate reporting, rights reconciliation, and performance insights are no longer delayed or fragmented across systems; they are immediate and actionable. Media companies can see not just what content is performing, but who is accessing it, when, and under what rights conditions.

Bringing these 2 components together creates something the market hasn’t really had before: a true end-to-end solution where content, operations, and delivery are designed to work as one system.

Or, in simpler terms, “we handle everything up to the point of delivery at scale.”

Changing the Economics of Streaming

One of the most immediate impacts of this approach is cost.

Traditional CDN-based delivery models were designed for an earlier phase of streaming. As consumption increases, costs increase alongside it, often without a clear path to optimization. For many organizations, this has become one of the most significant constraints on growth.

What’s different here is that the delivery model itself has been rethought, meaning organizations can achieve a double-digit reduction in CDN costs. That’s not a marginal gain, it’s a structural shift in how streaming is delivered and paid for.

Because content is no longer duplicated across systems, storage, processing, and delivery overhead are significantly reduced. The platform supports all variants without creating additional files, while enabling frame-accurate processing and personalization directly within the stream.

And it’s not just about infrastructure. When workflows are unified, there’s less duplication, fewer handoffs, and less operational overhead. Content doesn’t need to be reprocessed for different outputs. Teams don’t need to manage as many systems. New services don’t require standing up entirely new workflows.

The result is a system that is not only more cost-effective but fundamentally more efficient.

Supporting a Multi-Model Future

Streaming today is not a single format; it is a combination of models that must coexist.

Video-on-demand, live events, linear channels, and FAST offerings are all part of the same ecosystem. But in many organizations, they are still treated as separate workflows, each with its own processes and infrastructure.

That approach doesn’t scale.

A unified model allows all of these formats to be supported within the same framework. Content can be prepared once and used across multiple distribution models. FAST channels can be spun up more quickly. Live and linear workflows can be integrated without adding complexity.

This isn’t “just VOD”, it’s a platform that can support everything from on-demand libraries to fully managed FAST channel operations.

It also enables more flexible monetization models, with dynamic rights control, user-level entitlements, device level authentication and more secure delivery frameworks that support SVOD, TVOD, and beyond, all built into the same architecture.

This level of control also opens the door to more advanced monetization strategies, including contextual advertising. With visibility at the device and user level, and a unified ledger managing content rights and access, media companies can deliver more targeted, relevant ad experiences while ensuring compliance with rights windows and entitlements. It transforms advertising from a separate layer into something that is directly informed by how content is accessed and consumed.

That flexibility is what enables media companies to respond quickly to new opportunities, rather than being constrained by their own infrastructure.

From Operational Challenge to Strategic Opportunity

As streaming continues to evolve, efficiency is no longer just an operational concern—it is a strategic one.

Organizations that can simplify their workflows, control their costs, and accelerate their time to market will be better positioned to compete. Those that remain tied to fragmented systems will find it increasingly difficult to keep pace.

What this model shows is that the industry doesn’t have to accept complexity as a given.

By bringing together content, operations, and delivery into a single, integrated system, it becomes possible to move from a model defined by inefficiency to one defined by control. We are combining “best-in-class technology with best-in-class content services” to create something the market hasn’t really seen before.