Michael Nathanson

As of the mid-2020s, Google continues to derive the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, and has been actively integrating Gemini into its ad products, search experience, and YouTube, reinforcing its strong position in AI-enhanced advertising and supporting Nathanson’s optimism. OpenAI, by contrast, has focused primarily on subscription and enterprise models (e.g., API access, ChatGPT subscriptions, enterprise licenses), with no large-scale, mature display or search advertising business comparable to Google or Meta; this aligns with his view that building a successful ad business around OpenAI’s products would be “extremely difficult.” Whether OpenAI “may never succeed” in advertising is still an open question, but the observable trajectory to date—limited direct ad monetization vs. heavy enterprise/subscription focus—has so far supported his skepticism.

The prediction for revenue in 2027 and 2028 cannot be judged yet. The 2025 revenue ($62.3B) was provided as a baseline.

YouTube TV has continued to grow and, by the mid-2020s, is widely reported by industry analysts as one of the largest – and often the largest – virtual pay-TV bundle in the U.S., with subscriber estimates approaching or exceeding 10 million. This aligns closely with Nathanson’s call that it would be the pay-TV market leader with around 10M subs within roughly two years. Traditional cable/satellite operators continued to lose subscribers, making a vMVPD like YouTube TV the de facto “pay-TV market leader,” which matches the structural prediction in his quote.

The prediction clearly failed when projections from eMarketer, IAB, and StackAdapt all estimated ~$38 billion in U.S. CTV ad spend for 2026, significantly higher than Nathanson's $19 billion forecast.

Michael Nathanson's 2025 forecast of $55.2 billion in linear core TV ad revenues was confirmed by multiple reports; however, the 2026 projection remains unresolved due to a lack of full-year data, with early Q3 2025 data suggesting potential stabilization.

YouTube's total revenue reached $62.3B in 2025, surpassing Disney's media business at $60.9B, as predicted.

By 2024–2025, AI-driven creative and optimization tools (image/video generation, copy optimization, dynamic creative, predictive targeting) became widely adopted across major advertising platforms and agencies, with demonstrable improvements in click-through rates, conversion metrics, and measurement granularity—matching his description that AI would “turbo-charge” impactful messaging and make creative more quantifiable. Leading ad-supported streamers and digital platforms increasingly highlight AI-enhanced targeting, measurement, and creative as key drivers of ad effectiveness and pricing power, consistent with his view that the “unit value” of advertising is poised to soar due to AI.

After launching its ad-supported tier in late 2022, Netflix’s ad business grew steadily but from a small base, attracting budgets from brand advertisers and shifting spend away from other video platforms; industry estimates by 2025 place Netflix ad revenues in the low-single-digit billions of dollars, broadly consistent with his “three billion or so in a couple years’ time” directional forecast. That growth reflects exactly what he described: new advertising dollars flowing to Netflix and/or being reallocated from other parts of the video ad ecosystem.

Multiple industry reports later characterized 2023 as a very soft ad year, with flat to slightly negative nominal growth in several major markets despite the absence of an official recession, validating the direction of Nathanson’s forecast. Linear TV ad revenues did decline mid-single digits or worse, while ad-supported streaming and digital video saw healthy double-digit gains, closely matching his structural call: shrinking legacy linear, partially offset but not fully replaced by growth in AVOD/SVOD ad tiers. His specific framing—“first time in a non-recessionary year that you see negative growth”—is directionally supported by how unusual 2023 looked relative to past non-recession years.

Disney, Netflix, WarnerMedia/AT&T and other streamers did substantially increase content spending by many billions of dollars, launching and expanding Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, etc.; industry analyses widely document a roughly $20B+ incremental streaming content arms race over this period, consistent with his “create another Disney” framing. Consumers saw an unprecedented “plentiful time for quality content” with dozens of high-budget streaming originals. However, by 2022–2024, the industry shifted from “growth at all costs” to profitability discipline and content spending pullbacks, especially at legacy media streamers that accumulated heavy DTC losses—so the first half of his five-year window was strongly validated, while the latter half brought a correction.

Global and U.S. ad spend data from major tracking firms show high-teens digital growth and low-single-digit total growth in 2018, broadly consistent with Nathanson’s forecast. Traditional media (especially print and linear TV) did decline in aggregate in 2018, while digital (search, social, online video) grew strongly, matching the direction and rough magnitude of his prediction.