A coalition of media brands joined forces this week to launch a new pro-competition industry group focused on streaming television.
The Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA) bills itself as a “procompetitive independent industry form” that will “proactively engage and work collaboratively with consumers, platforms, regulators and media.”
Dozens of media brands representing 2,000 “touchpoints” form the inaugural membership of the ISA. Those brands include the E. W. Scripps Company, Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul, Vevo, Allen Media Group, Tastemade, Revry and the newly-rebranded Cineverse.
“The formation of the ISA is long overdue,” Philippe Guelton, the chief revenue officer at Chicken Soup for the Soul, said in a statement distributed in a press release on Monday.
Guelton said the group’s mission is to “promote the value of independent streamers, and to work hand-in-hand with platforms, advertisers, and regulatory bodies to ensure that we have a healthy ecosystem that benefits everyone, not just the few.”
Several ISA members participated in a panel at the StreamTV Show in Denver this week, and will join another panel at Cynopsis’ Big TV Show on Tuesday, the organization said.
“The ISA is an opportunity to level up our ecosystem by defining standards and best practices that will benefit consumers, advertisers, and programmers alike,” Evan Bregman, the general manager of streaming at Tastemade, said on Monday. “Tastemade is proud to be on the leading edge of building a sustainable streaming industry.”
The ISA will be broken into three divisions: A measurement group that will help establish a “collective value for platforms and brand marketers,” a distribution group focused on getting content in front of more viewers and across different platforms, and a demand group that will ensure advertising inventory is purchased and sold “in compliance with industry norms.”
“Most of the members of the ISA were early adopters of FAST and played a major role in its initial growth and adoption,” Cameron Saless, the chief business officer at TMB, said on Monday. “As this industry matures and consolidates, we believe that we can play an important role in helping our peers and partners solve some of the important challenges around content discovery, data privacy, and demand transparency, while also ensuring independent programming does not get left out of the equation.”
