Sony adds free ad-supported TV channels to the PlayStation 5

Sony has turned on a service called Live TV on PS5. It is free to watch and paid for by adverts. It puts more than one hundred TV channels and a library of on-demand shows inside the Media tab of the PlayStation 5. It started in the United States on August 31. Sony Pictures Television runs it, not the games side of the company. Canada is next. Sony’s Bravia televisions should get the same service later this year.

Many of the channels come from FAST suppliers. FAST means free channels you watch in order, like old-fashioned television, with adverts in between. Much of the stock is delivered through Xumo, a company jointly owned by Comcast and Charter. Partners named at launch include ABC News, A+E, AMC, Amazon MGM Studios, ESPN, Fox, Lionsgate, NASCAR, NBCUniversal, the NFL Channel and UFC. There are also two anime channels from Crunchyroll, which Sony owns. Publica and PubMatic handle the advert serving and the automated ad sales.

The reason is size. Sony had sold more than ninety-five million PS5 consoles around the world by June 30, according to figures cited by Variety. The company has said it now prefers to make more money from the players it already has than to chase new hardware sales.

CTV buyers get a PS5 audience they cannot reach elsewhere

Buyers of CTV adverts, meaning adverts on televisions connected to the internet, are offered an audience that is hard to reach elsewhere. Peter Wood, executive vice president of consumer platforms and services at Sony Pictures Entertainment, told The Desk that PS5 owners “are probably not showing up in other connected TV environments often.” Gamers are often younger and more often male. Many of them have stopped watching normal television and the big free streaming apps on smart TVs.

The move also shows that the console is becoming a place to sell adverts in its own right. Consoles have carried other companies’ streaming apps for years. Sony’s version arrives with its own advert technology and with a studio that already sells advert space to national advertisers. People sign in with a PlayStation account, so Sony can bring its own data about who is watching. Most free streaming channels do not have that.

Sony will add more channels, but gamers dislike console ads

Gamers have often disliked adverts inside their consoles. It is not clear whether they will treat a TV tab differently. Sony says it will add more channels, themed blocks of programmes and live events over time. If people keep watching, the advert space may end up in the same connected-TV deals as Pluto, Tubi and Roku Channel by the time buyers plan next year’s budgets.