The Biggest Story No One Talked About at MIPCOM

👋🏼 A sincere welcome to all the new readers from MIPCOM. It was great to meet you all and welcome to the party. For those of you in London, announcing the invite-only annual predictions lunch is now set for 20 November at Hotel Cafe Royal. If you’re not already on the interest list, feel free to reach out.

Windowing is platform-native now

The trades wrote up YouTube’s MIPCOM splash like a creator crèche: cute, influencer selfies, moving on. Wrong lens. YouTube wasn’t doing vibes in Cannes but selling the primary release surface.

As my trusted readers already know, YouTube has been the No. 1 U.S. TV media distributor for six consecutive months through July 2025 (13.4% share). In the UK one in five kids starts their TV session on YouTube. For under-40s, late-night, highlights, podcasts, and creator series launch on YouTube-on-TV. Everything else trails the meme dust.

Days before Cannes, Meta said Instagram is exploring a TV app. That’s not a footnote either. This is the beginning of the second front in the living-room war. Moving Reels from thumb to sofa isn’t a port, but a physics change: lean-back sessions, co-viewing, third-party measurement, algorithms tuned for longer arcs.

And legacy coverage? Still grading with the old rubric: 42-minute packets to SVOD/linear, geo-locked crumbs, YouTube filed under “marketing.” That framing misses why YouTube was in Cannes at all: to sell first-window distribution.

So let’s get to it and break it down. (And because it’s important to debate, I’ve got you covered after the paywall.)

What actually happened (and when)

9 Oct 2025 (PRE-MIPCOM!): At Bloomberg Screentime in LA, Adam Mosseri said Instagram is “exploring” a dedicated TV app, calling it a mistake not to have moved sooner and signalling no premium sports/Hollywood licensing in scope. MIPCOM ran 13–16 Oct, so this landed just before the Cannes market. Coverage was led by Bloomberg and tech/business outlets, with limited pick-up in the core Hollywood trades.

Why this matters

YouTube already owns the living room. In Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge, YouTube led U.S. TV viewing share for months in 2025 (e.g., 13.4% in July), widening its lead over Disney and others. Any IG TV app is competing with the incumbent on its strongest surface. And it’s a big f(*&king deal we’ve added algorithms to the TV.

Windowing has shifted

YouTube is the de-facto “first window”. Ofcom’s 2025 report shows YouTube is the first destination on TV sets for UK kids and the most-watched service among 16–34s. It’s now second only to the BBC overall in the UK. For late-night, sports highlights, podcasts and creator series, the first release window is YouTube on TV, not broadcast or SVOD. Shorts already made the jump to TV. YouTube solved the “vertical-on-TV” UX in 2022. That’s the bar IG must clear to avoid a blown-up phone feed.

Commerce & CTV budgets are aligned with YouTube today

YouTube is now shipping CTV-native shopping formats (product feeds/QR), which is where incremental brand spend is testing.

(Yes, yes, we’re including YouTube within streaming. Because it doesn’t matter if it had a lot back in the ‘50s, it’s entertainment.)

The product/market gaps Instagram must close to truly compete

• Format & policy: IG’s own Help Centre states reels over 3 minutes aren’t recommended to new audiences. That throttle fights TV’s lean-back sessions until IG changes recommendation rules (even after the cap rose to 3 minutes in 2025).

• Supply: IG lacks a large corpus of mid-form (5–30 min), 16:9, TV-intentional content. Without funding and/or CTV rev-share, creators won’t build it. (Meta has reconfigured creator payouts, but there’s no explicit CTV rev-share yet.)

• UX: To pass the sofa test: continuous queues, segment slates, remote-first controls, AI reframing for 16:9, audio normalisation, profiles for co-viewing (i.e., the design work YouTube already shipped for Shorts on TV). Short vertical already works on TV (YouTube solved the UX in 2022. The bar for IG is TV-native, not ‘blown-up phone.)

• Measurement: CTV buyers want third-party, co-viewing-aware reach. YouTube has a mature (if debated) approach. IG will need Nielsen-grade reporting to unlock brand budgets.

Why Sceptics Are Likely to Be Wrong (Again)

Those of you in attendance at MIPCOM will remember this visual:

• The crawl looks flat, so people anchor on the last 90 days and say, “No one wants vertical video on TV.”

• Early IG-on-TV will feel novelty-ish before the levers move: recommendations (>3-min throttle), funding (mid-form supply), TV-native UX (remote, reframing, queues).

• When those flip, session length sprints (classic S-curve).

• It’s the YouTube pattern: dismissed as “phone content,” then UI, measurement, and creator economics clicked and it became the first window.

• DO NOT price the sprint at crawl rates and instead build for it.

Let’s Debate It

Counter: “YouTube isn’t a first window for us.”

For late-night, highlights, podcasts, creator/talent talk and newsy recap formats, the first release with real cultural lift is already YouTube on TV. Premium sport and first-run scripted stay rights-native. Different game, same living room.

Counter: “We’ve got our own AVOD/FAST apps; that’s our first window.”