Asia Pacific’s screen economy will grow from $179BN this year to $200BN by 2031 but future gains in monetization may come from retail media and commerce, rather than the traditional revenue streams of advertising and subscription, said Media Partners Asia CEO Vivek Couto in his opening address at APOS.
“This is not a story about decline, and it is not disruption. It is a story about reallocation,” said Couto. “Demand for premium video in this region has never been higher. What is changing quickly, and unevenly – is where the value sits, who captures it, and what it now takes to turn an audience into a business and build on new revenue streams.”
Couto outlined what he described as four forces reshaping the industry. While Asia Pacific is the largest and youngest screen base on the planet, moving towards 5.2 billion screens by 2031, monetization per user lags way behind North America and other regions. This may represent a growth opportunity, but monetization is also shifting away from traditional sources.
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At the same time, convergence is also resetting the industry – video, social and commerce are no longer separate businesses; they are collapsing into the same platforms. Another trend is the impact of AI which is reducing the cost of content production and increasing the speed at which content travels and the languages it travels in, Couto said.
SVOD is still growing but has entered a new phase driven by product quality, local content and live sport, all expensive elements that are more difficult to replicate. Pay-TV has not collapsed but is in “managed decline, concentrated, sticky, and increasingly held together by sport”.
Meanwhile advertising is under pressure with 2026 the slowest year acros APAC since the pandemic, growing just over 5%. Television advertising is in its eighth consecutive annual decline, while digital is growing and now takes three-quarters of every ad dollar in the region. However, overall growth is flat and concentrated in a small number of platforms with scale, targeting and pricing power – YouTube, TikTok and Meta.
“That is the uncomfortable truth for premium video: the open-market advertising opportunity for television is deteriorating even where TV still commands real reach, because reach without addressability no longer commands the budget,” Couto said.
Couto also noted that the fastest growing revenue line is not digital advertising or subscriptions, but retail media or advertising attached directly to a purchase. “The logic is simple: a platform that can connect attention to a transaction captures the budget, and a platform that can only deliver attention ends up renting its reach to the one that can. This is the hinge on which the next five years turn. Reach is necessary. It is no longer sufficient.”
Describing this growth as pan-Asian, not just limited to mainland China which has long combined video with e-commerce, Couto said the pattern is repeating across every market – Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Australia and Korea. “The centre of gravity in advertising is moving from the impression to the transaction – and the screen businesses that thrive will be the ones that sit closest to the point of purchase.”
Other monetization growth opportunities include microdrama – which is already worth $3BN across APAC outside China and set to triple – and the creator economy, which is worth $500BN in China and growing in other markets, especially Southeast Asia.
Another trend to watch is the rapid consumer uptake of connected TV (CTV), which Couto said improves both the product, “because big-screen viewing is more engaged, more premium and more valuable” and potentially advertising revenue, “because a connected television is more viewable, and more measurable, than almost anything else we have”.
Couto added that ad dollars have not yet followed the audience onto CTV screens, as the connected-TV ecosystem is still currently difficult to measure as it’s fragmented across streaming platforms, device-makers and ad-supported channels. But the majority of media planners are saying that they would shift linear budgets onto CTV if they had measurable targeting and reporting.
Later in the morning Kevin Vaz, CEO Entertainment of India’s JioStar platform, offered a practical example of the convergence of video and retail media through the streaming of its hit movie Durandhar, during which phone handsets were being sold directly to the consumer. Rather than just passively watching content, Vaz said consumers now also come online to “interact, shop and vote”.
“Our industry has always had just two revenue streams – ads and subs – but advertising is under pressure and subscription is growing but it’s important to come up with new revenue streams and clearly commerce is something that will grow moving forward,” Vaz aid.
APOS kicked off on June 16 with a series of closed-door meetings and an opening reception sponsored by Netflix, which is celebrating ten years since its launch across the APAC region in 2016. The conference, which is taking place at the Mulia Resort in Bali, Indonesia, runs until June 18.