AMC Global Media and Magnite are pushing deeper into one of the most important shifts in television advertising: making premium linear and streaming inventory easier to buy through the same system.
In an April 15 announcement, Magnite said AMC’s unified linear and streaming offering is now available programmatically through a single access point powered by ClearLine. The company also said AMC is using Magnite’s Live Scheduler to optimize live linear addressable inventory, giving buyers access across AMC’s linear networks, FAST channels, and AMC+ through one workflow.
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That is a meaningful change in how AMC wants its inventory to be sold. Buyers have traditionally had to manage separate processes for linear TV and streaming, even when they were trying to reach the same audience across the same media company.
Magnite’s release framed the expanded partnership as a way to consolidate those workflows while preserving the controls needed for each environment. AMC Global Media commercial chief Evan Adlman said the approach supports “more streamlined, measurable media executions and simpler access to our content.”
AMC is leaning further into the streaming transition
In its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, AMC Networks said streaming had become the largest single source of revenue in its domestic segment, which CEO Kristin Dolan called a milestone and an inflection point in the company’s transformation on an earnings call.
The company reported fourth-quarter streaming revenue growth of 14% and full-year streaming revenue growth of 12%, while domestic affiliate revenue continued to decline.
AMC is not just adding another ad-tech tool to the stack. It is trying to make a business that is increasingly built around streaming revenue easier for buyers to access while still extracting value from its linear footprint.
The company’s fourth-quarter numbers show exactly why that matters: subscription revenue held up because streaming growth offset affiliate weakness, while advertising revenue fell 10% in the quarter and 15% for the full year.
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Magnite is leaning into the part of its business investors care about most
In fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, Magnite said CTV contribution ex-TAC grew 20% year over year in the quarter, or 32% excluding political spending. The company also reported fourth-quarter revenue of $205.4 million, up 6%, and said adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 43%.
The company has been positioning itself around connected TV, live streaming, and supply-side tools that simplify premium video buying. AMC’s decision to expand the relationship through ClearLine and Live Scheduler gives Magnite another proof point that media owners want more unified systems for high-value video inventory, especially heading into the 2026-27 upfront.
The language in Magnite’s release makes that point clearly. Catherine Dale, Magnite’s vice president of revenue for SpringServe, said AMC is among the first programming companies to offer linear inventory programmatically and described the move as aligning with the buy side’s push to “consolidate and simplify access across inventory sources.”
This is an expansion of an older strategy, not a brand-new experiment
Back in October 2021, AMC Networks said it had enabled what it called the industry’s first linear addressable programmatic ad buys with Magnite and The Trade Desk. At the time, the company described the effort as a way to bring automated buying and household-level targeting into live television, an area that had long been harder to modernize than digital video.
The new 2026 partnership looks like a broader and more practical version of that earlier push. Instead of focusing only on linear addressable campaigns, AMC is now packaging linear and streaming inventory together for programmatic buyers. That shift fits the way the TV ad market has evolved since 2021. Buyers increasingly want cross-platform access, publishers want fewer disconnected sales processes, and media companies need better monetization tools as their revenue mix changes.
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AMC’s own 2025 results show why that shift has become more urgent. Streaming is growing, affiliate revenue is shrinking, and advertising remains uneven. Magnite’s own results show why the company wants to be in the middle of that change. CTV is growing faster than the rest of its business, and unified video buying is one of the clearest ways to capture more of that spend.
For AMC, the partnership is about making its inventory easier to buy. For Magnite, it is another step toward becoming more central to premium TV advertising. For both companies, the deal reflects the same industry reality: the divide between linear and streaming matters a lot less to buyers than it used to, and the companies that can make that transition easier stand to gain the most.
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