The remote control used to be simple – flip through channels, land somewhere, stay a while. Now the act of watching television has become its own kind of labor – but that complexity, one executive argues, is exactly where the advertising opportunity lies.
Ying Wang, general manager of Xumo Advertising, believes the fragmentation that frustrates both viewers and media buyers can be turned into a strategic asset – if a platform is willing to prioritize the consumer experience first and let the ad revenue follow.
The home screen, Wang says, is streaming’s prime real estate. “I think it’s a little bit underutilized,” said Wang in this video interview with Beet.TV. “The advertisers really know that it is premium real estate, but the opportunities to integrate your brand have been more limited.”
From endemic to everyone
Xumo, the streaming platform jointly owned by Comcast and Charter Communications, powers the operating system on Xumo-branded TVs and integrates streaming, linear, and FAST content into a single interface – a position Wang described as an aggregation play that removes the burden of navigation from both viewers and advertisers.
The home screen, historically, was territory for content owners promoting their own shows. But Wang said that dynamic is shifting. “In the beginning, home screen really was a place for endemic advertisers – content owners (used it) to promote their content to viewers,” she said. “Now we are starting to see more non-endemic advertisers, more general market advertisers, bring their brands on the home screen too.”
For example, Wang pointed to Xumo’s Olympics activation, in which an advertiser’s message was woven across the home screen, a dedicated collections hub, and in-stream placements. “It’s not just kind of one stop and you forget about the ad,” she said. “It’s a really connected experience.”
FAST’s cable TV roots
Wang pushed back gently on the idea that free ad-supported streaming television is a new phenomenon. “Even though it’s got a little glow up, a new name, it’s still the traditional way that people love to consume content,” she said.
Wang suggested it deserves the same strategic consideration as linear – particularly as audiences migrate.
According to eMarketer projections, the number of FAST viewers in the U.S. is on track to surpass 125 million by 2026, accounting for more than 62% of ad-supported video-on-demand viewers.
Play itself reported approximately 40% year-over-year growth in monthly active users in 2025, with nearly a third of viewers being new to the platform each month.
Wang said FAST has also served a cultural function beyond pure distribution. “FAST has made more content more accessible to people, and really introduced shows that people may have forgotten about or didn’t really understand, and brought new life to those series,” she said.
AI as the discovery engine
Content abundance creates a paradox: more choice, less clarity. Wang described a viewer experience in which the sheer volume of options makes finding something to watch genuinely difficult. She claimed Xumo’s use of metadata and AI is the solution to that friction.
Xumo is deploying metadata signals combined with artificial intelligence to enable discovery along dimensions beyond traditional network or channel organization.
“Instead of thinking about it by network or channel, they can just think about it by the actor or the performer or the director,” Wang explained. “If you want 30-minute rom-coms under two hours, we can bring that to you too.”
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