Vertical TV The feed-driven future of streaming TV services

Ben Woods

July 2026

This report examines how smartphone-first entertainment behaviours are reshaping premium video across streaming TV, social platforms, and broadcasting. As audiences increasingly discover TV shows and movies through clips, feeds, and algorithmic recommendations, streaming services must compete on experience as well as content. The rise of vertical feeds inside streaming apps marks a key moment, but it is not simply a discovery fix. The bigger strategic opportunity is to use vertical infrastructure to build vertical TV propositions, spanning content discovery, branded entertainment, creator-led formats, and more flexible smartphone viewing. This report is designed for streamers, broadcasters, social platforms, entertainment companies, and platform developers seeking to understand how premium entertainment can adapt to feed-driven behaviours without sacrificing the storytelling depth, creative intent, and brand value that underpin long-term engagement.

Data and insights in this report:

Popularity of services used to watch TV shows and movies on smartphones
Time spent and frequency of watching TV shows and movies on smartphones
Viewers profiles and which services they use to watch watching TV shows and movies on smartphones
Preference rate for horizontal and vertical direction of smartphone when watching TV shows and movies

Data used:

MIDiA Research Consumer Survey Q1 2026, US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Poland, Japan, Colombia, n = 9,000

What is vertical TV? Vertical TV is the use of smartphone-native feeds, formats, advertising, and production workflows to make premium entertainment discoverable, watchable, and monetisable on mobile.

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