The Ad War No One Saw Coming VIEW IN BROWSER BY ANDY SWAN, FOUNDER, LIKEFOLIO The streaming boom isn’t dead, but the easy ad money is. And it’s creating a growing divide of winners and losers in a rising industry that once lifted all boats. Consumer viewing trends shift. Advertising dollars follow eyeballs. Investors who catch the trend early profit. Netflix (NFLX) was once the king of the streaming arena. But take a look at the chart below, which tracks the share of U.S. streaming TV time since 2022 – and you’ll see that’s simply not the case anymore: 
Source: TSOH Investment Research Netflix’s blue line keeps trending lower. YouTube’s (GOOGL) red line keeps climbing. Today’s consumers prefer to binge watch on platforms that mix premium shows, live sports, and user-generated content. YouTube has it all. And if they can “flip the script” this decisively – so can the rivals we’ll be looking at today. (One of which is an entirely new, imminent threat.) When it comes to making money in this industry, finding those preferred platforms where consumers spend their time is the only thing that matters. That goes for the streaming platforms that depend on advertiser dollars… the advertisers who chase eyeballs… and the investors looking for their next big profit opportunity. To be clear: Streaming still commands more viewership than broadcast and cable combined, according to Nielsen’s streaming snapshot from September. The problem is that the pace of new ad spend is slowing. eMarketer projects that growth rate to fall below 10% this year for the first time since 2009. Advertisers have gotten picky. Budgets are tightening. Tariff-fueled economic uncertainty is forcing companies to make tough decisions. Dollars are now going toward platforms that can target audiences with pinpoint precision. Translation: The easy ad money phase is over. And the shift is creating an opportunity for savvy investors like you to get ahead of the crowd. Our real-time consumer insights can show you where those eyeballs – and ad dollars – could be heading next. We’ll show you the winners to watch now – and the competitor you haven’t even thought of yet… A New Era of Ad Winners YouTube (GOOGL): The Streaming King YouTube isn’t just beating out Netflix. It now claims the largest share (12.6%) of U.S. TV viewing held by any single platform across broadcast, cable, or streaming: 
YouTube Leads U.S. TV Streaming (Source: Statista) With scalable video inventory inside Google Ads, brands can automatically reach the right consumers at the right time across YouTube and Google’s entire video partner network. Advertisers see the value – and they’re consolidating their spending accordingly. Alphabet saw YouTube ad sales grow 15% year over year to $10.2 billion in the third quarter. Keep an eye on GOOGL. It’s among the highest-ranked stocks in our Social Heat Score system. 
🔥 GOOGL Social Heat Score: 90 out of 100* *As of Nov. 13, 2025 Amazon.com (AMZN): Linking Entertainment and Commerce Amazon launched its Prime Video ad tier in early 2024. Today, it reaches over 130 million monthly viewers in the U.S. alone. Freevee extends that footprint with free, ad-supported streaming available directly inside Prime Video. Amazon’s advertising services revenue surged 24% year over year in the third quarter. This commerce giant excels at retail-media integrations that connect viewing data directly to product sales… and it’s gaining momentum with consumers. 
🔥 AMZN Social Heat Score: 70.5 out of 100* *As of Nov. 13, 2025 Meta Platforms (META): Short-Form Videos Rival Traditional Streaming Meta launched Reels in 2020 to meet consumer demand for short-form, Tik-Tok style video content. Instagram’s 2.6 billion monthly active users now spend the majority of their time on the app scrolling Reels – between 39-50%. More consumer eyeballs on Meta’s social media apps led to 26% year-over-year growth in advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2025. Reels turns Instagram and Facebook into the global video platforms advertisers crave. It delivers reach and engagement that rivals streaming platforms – and it does that without the same content-production costs. 
🔥 META Social Heat Score: 85 out of 100* *As of Nov. 13, 2025 Reddit (RDDT): Video and Conversation, All in One Approximately 116 million consumers flock to Reddit daily to watch short-form videos, engage in conversations, and find active communities for even the most obscure interests. The social media platform has become a goldmine for advertisers – a hub where brands can position ads alongside ultra-specific keywords across feeds, conversations, and videos. Higher video engagement and brand-campaign demand helped fuel Reddit ad revenue 74% higher in the third quarter… 
Social Media Ad Revenue Growth, Q3 2025 (Source: WARC Media) That level of growth is rare among social media competitors. And with a strong Social Heat Score to match, RDDT could be THE key player to watch here. 
🔥 RDDT Social Heat Score: 89.8 out of 100* *As of Nov. 13, 2025 The takeaway: YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Meta, and Reddit are winning the war for ad dollars. Each one is attracting consumer eyeballs. Each one earns top marks in our Social Heat Score system. Each one has proved its ability to target ad audiences with stellar accuracy – and deliver results. But there’s an imminent threat to consider in this war for ad dollars… one that didn’t even exist a few years ago but could shake up the competition for good: Artificial Intelligence. Here’s how AI is changing the game – and it means for investors looking to capitalize on the Ad War’s next winners. The Imminent Threat: Artificial Intelligence AI-driven shopping is opening a new front in the competition for ad budgets. With the launch of Instant Checkout, ChatGPT’s 700 million active weekly users can now buy products without ever leaving the conversation. To be clear: AI doesn’t erase traditional advertising. Rather, it introduces a channel where discovery, recommendation, and purchase all happen inside one interaction. This new dynamic could reshape how marketers divide spending across search, social, and streaming. Even before GPT launched in-app shopping, consumers were turning to AI chatbots to discover new products at an increasing clip. Adobe (ADBE), for example, saw AI chatbot referrals to product pages surge 4,700% in July: 
Growth in AI-Driven Visit Share, Retail (Source: Adobe for Business) Now that Instant Checkout is live, each of the 18 billion inquiries sent through GPT per week represents an opportunity that previously belonged to Google search ads, Meta feed placements, or connected TV brand campaigns. Welcome to the agentic AI era – where ChatGPT can be your “agent” and proactively buy a gift for your mother-in-law on your behalf. It’s a megatrend we covered here in TradeSmith Daily a few weeks back that could balloon into a $1.7 trillion market by 2030. Many of the same platforms winning today’s ad dollars are preparing accordingly: - Google’s Gemini chatbot integrates sponsored try-ons and price tracking inside AI Overviews.
- Amazon is testing automated “Buy for Me” features inside its AI shopping assistant, Rufus, to keep purchases within its ecosystem.
- Meta plans to extend its ad targeting to conversations with Meta AI later this year.
Today’s fintech leaders are also racing to claim share of the payments layer forming underneath the AI shopping experience: - Google, PayPal (PYPL), and Mastercard (MA) are building an agent-payment protocol.
- OpenAI is partnering with online payments provider Stripe to power GPT Instant Checkout.
- Visa (V) and buy now, pay later platform Affirm (AFRM) are developing systems for AI-enabled checkout.
Once these connections mature, advertisers will be able to track engagement and conversion in a single, high-intent environment. The takeaway: For marketers, this creates a new precision channel competing directly with search, social, and connected TV for the same dollars. Budgets will flow toward whatever medium connects intent to purchase most efficiently. The Bottom Line Streaming remains dominant for consumer attention, but AI shopping is quickly emerging as the next major destination for performance-driven spend. Platforms like ChatGPT are no longer a novelty. They are a storefront. As consumers start asking AI assistants what to watch, wear, and order, the dollars that once powered streamers like Netflix will follow them. GOOGL, AMZN, META, and RDDT are the top players to watch today, each one backed by rising consumer interest and real earnings results. But the next big fight for ad budgets will happen inside AI platforms where consumer purchase intent turns into action in real time. To win this new Ad War, companies need to own the connection between what people watch and what they buy. We’ll be tracking this megatrend as it develops. Our Social Heat Score will reveal the next big opportunities as they emerge – and our members will be the first to know when it’s time to pounce. Until next time, 
Andy Swan
Founder, LikeFolio P.S. Two Wall Street insiders have uncovered a new trillion-dollar force reshaping wealth in America – and it’s NOT artificial intelligence. It’s the world’s richest entity… the U.S. government… using taxpayer funds to buy up shares in select stocks. For the connected few, the upside potential for getting ahead of the stocks next in line could be explosive. Even bigger than if you’d been ahead of Nvidia (NVDA) five, 10 years ago. The two insiders who uncovered this story are going live with the details on Nov. 18. Click here to join them – and see which stocks Washington could be targeting next. | 
