Amagi has published its latest report into regional FAST viewership alongside a special survey looking at AI in Media Operations.
The March 2026 edition of the company’s Amagi Airtime Report found global viewing hours across Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST) grew by 21 per cent year-over-year in the last quarter of 2025, with ad impressions up by 27 per cent across the period.
All major regions experienced year-on-year growth with EMEA showing a 22 per cent increase, US and Canada up 17 per cent, APAC 23 per cent and the LATAM market rising by 66 per cent. All markets also experienced ad impression growth. The analysis is based on around 4,200 FAST channel deliveries distributed via Amagi’s THUNDERSTORM server-side ad insertion (SSAI) platform.
Entertainment and news ranked as the top two genre categories globally. Channels launched after December 2024 contributed 18 per cent of global viewing hours and 16 per cent of ad impressions.
The report also highlighted the accelerating adoption of applied AI across media operations. Asked to evaluate 20 end-to-end content operations tasks, 50 respondents across broadcast and streaming identified information-driven workflows such as metadata enrichment, context tagging, subtitling and translation, and social content publishing as the areas of highest potential impact for the technology. According to the report, AI’s greatest value is unlocked when it becomes native to content workflows, dynamically flagging QC exceptions, triggering localisation, resolving rights compliance, and identifying monetisation opportunities in real time.
Srinivasan KA, co-founder and president, global business, Amagi, commented, “The industry is entering a phase where AI is no longer just about experimentation — it’s about embedding intelligence directly into operational workflows. Media companies that integrate applied AI across ingest, localisation, scheduling, and monetisation will unlock meaningful gains in speed, efficiency, and scalability.”
The full report can be found at https://www.amagi.com/resources/fast-report
