The news: Competition in the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) landscape is heating up.

Paramount Skydance’s free, ad-supported TV (FAST) service Pluto TV revealed a new ad campaign last week to reintroduce the service to cost-conscious consumers. The campaign, with the slogan “Free is only getting more popular,” targets Gen Z and millennial audiences with nostalgic titles as the service looks to assert itself as a leader in the FAST market.

The trend: FAST is now a multibillion dollar sector and is growing as consumers contend with rising streaming costs. The average cost of the cheapest ad-free plans across seven leading streaming services increased 77.8% between 2020 and 2025, per The Verge. Those price increases are making FAST options more attractive: US consumers say they prioritize lower prices over ad-free experiences, while 21% cite low prices as the most important factor in choosing a TV or streaming service, per Hub Research data.

As more viewers turn to FAST, marketers have a growing pool of cost-conscious audiences to reach, but that audience is spread across an increasingly competitive group of platforms.

• The market is divided among a handful of prominent FAST platforms. Pluto TV lands at 68.8 million US viewers, per our forecast. While that’s higher than some paid services like Apple TV and YouTube TV, it’s well below larger rivals: The Roku Channel leads FAST viewership (97.3 million viewers) followed by Tubi (92.5 million).