For OTT services, the largest content streamers now serve around 40-80 million subscribers in the US every month. Outside of Netflix, they rely on third-party CDNs to deliver all or nearly all of their video. Delivering this content requires a high threshold of HD or better video quality, high bitrates for viewing on large screens, immediate player startup, no buffering, and zero dropped packets during the stream. In other words, a consistently high Quality of Experience (QoE) for end users and that’s magnified even further when streaming live events. On average, for 90-95% of their subscriber base in the US, third-party CDNs provide enough data to measure QoE so that streamers are, for the most part, confident their content is being delivered with an optimal experience. But what about the other 5-10% of their audience?

The Blind Spot Downstream
For subscribers further downstream from where third-party CDNs are deployed, it’s challenging to ensure QoE and almost impossible to validate it. This ‘blind spot’ typically exists in more rural networks, or what many large content providers call “the 1% networks”. In this case, it does not refer to the financial elite but rather the QoE-poor or, more accurately, the QoE-unvalidated. Talking to content distributors, it’s not uncommon for them to tell me they lack visibility into what’s happening in these harder-to-reach 1% networks, mainly due to the inherent function of commercial CDNs. QoE could be good, bad, or somewhere in between, but there’s no telemetry to know. Furthermore, 1% is a figure of speech, not a quantifiable reality; the actual figure could be considerably higher—and many believe it probably is.

In particular, the continued viewership growth in live sports streaming can increase traffic by 25-50% or more for some networks, requiring sufficient capacity to ease bandwidth congestion. For commercial CDNs and ISPs, these traffic spikes can be more easily absorbed, as capacity can be spread over a larger area. However, for the smaller ISPs serving 1% of networks, capacity is often constricted unless extra capacity is purchased in advance, called an RSVP fee, and often at a premium, and that’s if capacity is even available.

Then there’s the content delivery blind spot. With live streaming, QoE metrics are often received directly from the player in real-time. Content streamers can easily detect content delivery and streaming performance issues for commercial CDN and ISP networks. For the harder-to-reach 1% networks that are much further downstream, however, tracking content delivery performance is difficult, if not impossible. This means subscribers can easily suffer from buffering, slow startup times, dropped packets, and low bitrates – when they want to stream content the most.

Live streaming from the NHL, NBA, and US Open sporting events has quickly become the most-streamed content across digital platforms, with the NFL dominating TV viewership in the US. When QoE is suboptimal during the big game, the blind spot in a content delivery pipeline suddenly becomes a glaring problem for 1% of network subscribers. This is a common problem for ISPs who receive these complaints from viewers expecting a better experience.

Do the Math
While I’ve called out the 1% of viewers being impacted, in reality, it’s more. One percent of subscribers may sound like a minimal amount, and not much to be concerned about, but content owners will want to think again. If you aim for the best but plan for the worst and then do the math, you’ll realize that 1% is significant. For a content streamer with 40 million subscribers, one percent is 400,000 subs. At $7/month for an average plan, that’s $2.8 million in monthly subscription revenue or $33 million annually.

Moreover, 1% is just an idiom referring to harder-to-reach networks generally. That 1% makes up 5-10% of an OTT platform’s subscriber base when it comes to the blind spot of content delivery and streaming performance. With 5% of network subscribers potentially experiencing poor QoE, a content streamer with 40 million subscribers is now looking at 2 million subscribers and $14 million in MRR—or $168 million annually.

Another angle to consider is customer churn and acquisition costs (which streamers don’t disclose, even to Wall Street). These costs vary widely across organizations; Even without knowing the exact numbers, keeping existing customers is almost always more economical than acquiring new ones and a much easier lift. As for winning back churned customers? That cost just sounds steep. Suffice it to say that if you can’t validate the QoE for your hard-to-reach subscribers, OTT platforms and broadcasters are risking customer churn and lost revenue. They are risking brand reputation, media partnerships, and exclusive streaming rights for the content people want.

QoE in 1% networks has been obscured and underrepresented for far too long, and there’s a lot more at stake than most people think. It’s just that no one seems to be shedding much light on it, let alone doing the math. This gaping hole has only gotten wider for as long as I’ve been in the streaming media industry. Between more people leaving big cities to work remotely or cut living costs and increasing demand for streaming video (especially with live sports), this is a growing problem. Having a blind spot in a content delivery pipeline and potentially delivering suboptimal QoE shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere, especially nowadays, and it deserves more attention.

The last-mile CDN
Part of the problem is that no broadcaster or OTT platform will disclose what percentage of their users had a good experience after live events. Nor will they discuss max bitrates, average startup times, average viewing times, rebuffering or their CDN strategy’s impact on their viewers. As a consultant, I’ve worked on some of these large live events for broadcasters, having access to their monitoring platforms during the events and have seen the problem firsthand. And while NDAs keep me from giving out numbers, a larger percentage of users are impacted than most would think. Talking off-the-record to many of the live event teams at any of the large OTT platforms confirms the scale of the impact.

This market problem was why I profiled Canada-based Netskrt a few months ago after it raised about $7.2 million in its Series A round. The company focuses on delivering video to remote and rural communities for specific video applications with hard-to-reach subscribers to help smaller ISPs manage live event traffic. Effectively, they provide a last-mile CDN for ensuring content delivery and streaming performance for 1% networks. Plus, it’s way more cost-effective than building your own cache, and it’s certainly smarter than ignoring your QoE blind spot. Netskrt says they plan to discuss rural network-related challenges in the coming months and release some QoE-related data to debunk some common misconceptions. That data will be interesting to see, as well as how well the company adds another 15 Tbps to its US footprint and expands it to include Brazil, the UK and Italy. Expect to see me blog more about this topic when Netskrt provides some data.

The future of content delivery for broadcasters has changed dramatically over the past few years and will continue to do so, especially for live events. Some have predicted that in the next five years, broadcasters will need to deliver TV-sized prime-time audiences, with streaming media technology being the primary means of distribution.

This means that current peak streaming audiences of about 3-4 million in a country with a population of 65 million will transform into peak audiences of 20-25 million for the same event, using the viewer figures published about the Euros 2024 Football championships as an example. This means that streaming services’ capacity, quality, and security requirements will become dramatically more important for broadcasters in the years ahead.

While I don’t see streaming concurrent viewership of 20-25 million as the norm, at a regional level, we are starting to see some very large concurrent audiences for one-off live events and specific sports matches. DAZN is a good example of a platform that sees large concurrent audiences for Serie A and Spanish LaLiga, where the audiences are large, and the demand for the content is strong.

As part of DAZN’s multi-CDN distribution approach, working with MainStreaming, DAZN built and operates a private CDN-as-a-Service, deployed and managed in close partnership with the largest ISPs in DAZN’s core markets where DAZN Edge is deployed. Not every streaming platform or broadcaster can, or should, build their own CDN; for most, it doesn’t make sense. But in cases like DAZN’s, especially at a regional level, a private CDN-as-a-Service can work well at the core of a multi-CDN strategy.

From a QoE perspective, DAZN says the private CDN has proven its worth, fine-tuning configurations and deployment plans with MainStreaming to ensure the best possible performance to support regional spikes from large audiences tuning in for specific games. The chart above, published in 2023, shows why DAZN’s private CDN at the core of a multi-CDN model provides the base performance it requires.

The internet is constantly in flux as demand on networks fluctuates without notice. Network connections change without warning as ISPs adapt their networks. Yet this ability to change continuously creates different network paths for streaming video to traverse. For example, BGP Routing tables for IPv6 connections (see below) show a general growth trend over time. Still, connection counts have gone down and up quite dramatically, immediately changing how video traverses the internet.

Unlike broadcast, which has standards about QoE, in the streaming industry, there are no agreed-upon definitions of what HD or 4K streaming even means, let alone the term “Broadcast-grade” streaming. I like how MainStreaming defines the term as six key components, and I’m curious to hear in the comments session how others define it:

• Deliver media with consistently high quality and low latency; and
• Scale to many millions of viewers; and
• Achieve predictable delivery costs with economies of scale; and
• Take real-time QoS actions from real-time QoE analytics; and
• Protect against Piracy through CDN-embedded controls; and
• Deliver in Ultra-Low Latency to meet or beat an App’s speed

Broadcast-grade streaming is necessary for broadcasters and streaming platforms to protect their business as they move to a more streaming-first strategy. While this brings new opportunities to engage audiences better and increase revenues, it also brings extra threats to content security, advertising revenue, subscription revenue, and brand reputation. Private CDN platforms will need to adapt to address all those concerns and, in many cases, will need to integrate with other vendors in the video workflow who are specialists in addressing some of those problems.

Edgio announced that it has voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and I expect the company to be delisted from the NASDAQ by the end of the day or shortly after. (Updated: Edgio was delisted on Monday September 18) This news does not mean the company is going out of business. Edgio will receive approximately $15.6 million in financing from Lynrock that, following approval by the Court, is expected to ensure that Edgio continues to operate like it is today and throughout the sale process and Chapter 11 Cases.

The purpose of the filing is so that Edgio can sell off part of the business it no longer wants or the entire company, which should allow for the continued operation of the Company’s business under new ownership. It wouldn’t be an asset sale but a business unit sale or the entire company. There is a 40-day bid procedure process, and once all bids are in, the court will decide which is best for the company.

Edgio says they have recently engaged in discussions with several parties that could be interested in acquiring all or part of the Company’s businesses and assets, and by using the Court-supervised sale process, they seek to get the highest or best bid for those assets. As part of this process, Edgio has entered into a “stalking horse” asset purchase agreement with its primary lender Lynrock, which has agreed to acquire assets of the Company through a credit bid for $110 million of the existing secured debt held by Lynrock.

Whatever assets might be sold, Edgio says it is targeting the sale process to be completed in approximately 80 days, if not sooner.

Note: I have never bought, sold, or traded shares in any public CDN, and even in my managed portfolios, Akamai, Fastly, Cloudflare, and Edgio are excluded.

Here’s a list of streaming viewership numbers from NBCU for the Olympics across Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms, averaging 4-5 million viewers. NBCU clarified that these numbers are AMA (Average Minute Audience), even though their releases don’t say that.

• August 3: coverage was streamed by 𝟰.𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms
• August 1: coverage was streamed by 𝟰.𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms
• July 30: coverage was streamed by 𝟱.𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms
• July 29: coverage was streamed by 𝟰.𝟱 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms
• July 28: coverage was streamed by 𝟲.𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms
• July 27: coverage was streamed by 𝟰.𝟳 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms
• July 26: coverage was streamed by more than 𝟮.𝟱 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms

The above language is taken directly from NBC Sports press releases.

As Paramount Global evaluates its strategy for all of its linear and streaming assets, multiple sources tell me that Pluto TV’s co-founder and current CEO of Paramount Streaming has been in discussions with the company about repurchasing it. These discussions started before the Skydance deal was announced, but I’m told no valuation has been placed on Pluto TV, and no official offer numbers have been exchanged.

Interestingly, during the Paramount Global all-hands meeting on June 25th, employees say the company didn’t mention or include any reference to Pluto TV during the newly announced go-forward plan. Those who sat in smaller internal meetings also say the brand was absent from the discussions. Since the Skydance deal was announced, Skydance has featured Pluto TV as one of the six core pillars of the company on slide ten of its presentation. However, that doesn’t guarantee that Pluto TV, or any other content brand, will be part of the company going forward. During a call with investors after the Skydance deal was announced, Jeff Shell stated, “Current management is also talking about a couple of transactions that, if they get the right price, we’ll be supportive of.” So Paramount Global’s current management team can sell off assets and make deals they think will help the new management team as long as the new management team is consulted.

The financial metrics of Pluto TV and its platform usage have been a mystery since Viacom acquired it for $340 million in cash in January 2019. In 2022, several Pluto TV executives said the company exceeded $1 billion in revenue in 2021 and was profitable. However, I have not encountered any SEC filing that provides detailed P&L metrics for the company or mentions its profitability. If I missed a filing, I would welcome correction. When a co-founder of Pluto TV mentioned on LinkedIn that the company was profitable, I found it interesting and reached out to Paramount Global’s IR department, which said they “Would not confirm” Pluto TV’s financials. Executives I privately asked within the company said they were unwilling to comment on Pluto TV’s financials, even off the record.

Previously, Viacom, and now Paramount Global, have not broken out revenue, detailed profitability, advertising ARPU, or discussed how they define a monthly active user on Pluto TV’s platform, which totaled 80 million when they last reported it about nine months ago. Pluto TV disclosed that in 2023, users streamed seven billion hours of video, up 40% from 2022, but total viewing hours alone isn’t a useful metric. In a LinkedIn post two months ago, Tom Ryan said Pluto TV had “record viewing hours” in Q1, but no numbers were highlighted. 

It’s unclear how Pluto TV defines profitability, considering they get much of their content from Paramount Global at no cost. However, one thing is clear, Paramount’s content is of significant importance to Pluto TV’s business. The potential sale of Pluto TV could profoundly impact its operations. One could make a valid argument that if Pluto TV were sold and had to license Paramount’s content, it would negatively impact its balance sheet and skew the numbers drastically. Pluto TV executives have discussed the importance of Paramount’s content to their business with the media, being quoted as saying, “With the acquisition, the access to the content that we’ve been able to get from Paramount has just been a pivotal moment for us.” Another executive said, “Paramount brings a healthy chunk of premium content to our platform.” Without Paramount’s content, Pluto TV would be a very different service and be less attractive to consumers. 

The potential sale of Pluto TV would be less valuable to a new owner if it did not include exclusive access to Paramount’s content. The Skydance management team said it is looking at all options regarding its content strategy to determine which content it should keep exclusive to its platforms and which it can license to others. It’s possible that Paramount could generate more revenue by not restricting content exclusively to Pluto TV, regardless of who the owner is. Whatever strategy they decide on, the value placed on Pluto TV by any potential new owner will depend on what content they get from Paramount in the deal and whether or not it comes with exclusivity.

[The short URL for this blog post is cdnmarket.com] The market for third-party CDN services, which I define as the delivery of video and small and large objects, was about $5 billion in 2023, which I break down in detail below. This figure does not include revenue for services tied to security (WAF, DDoS, etc.), compute, hardware, and storage and excludes delivery in China. The number excludes any company with its own DIY CDN, like Netflix and YouTube, that doesn’t sell its infrastructure as a service to other companies.

The figure also excludes revenue from vendors offering online video platforms, including Brightcove, Uplynk, AWS Media Services, Quickplay, Deltatre, Mediakind, Sports Radar, Cognizant, Endeavor Streaming, StreamAMG, Bedrock Streaming, etc., which combined saw revenue of about $1.8 billion in 2023. Based on what I know, AWS Media Services is the largest of the group, with about $450 million in revenue in 2023.

While reports produced by research firms say the CDN market was multiple times larger than my number, they are wrong. Full stop. Do not buy their reports. Akamai, Fastly, Edgio, CDN77, and others disclose enough details tied to their delivery revenue that we have numbers to form a good foundation for market sizing. The market is not as big as many suggest, and those writing about the size of the CDN space don’t define it and include non-CDN services like transcoding, hardware, hosting, storage and transit in their numbers.

In most cases, these reports also include vendors who no longer exist in the market. Limelight Networks is frequently mentioned, yet it changed its name two years ago. CenturyLink changed its name to Lumen four years ago, and MaxCDN was acquired eight years ago. These bad reports also like to list vendors AT&T and Rackspace, neither of which has or sells its own CDN but resells Akamai and other third parties. Reports also list vendors like Imperva and Fortinet that don’t sell CDN services but cloud security services.

Many use public revenue numbers given out by Akamai and others incorrectly, changing the revenue definition to video when that’s not how the companies report it. Akamai breaks out company revenue into three buckets: “Delivery,” “Security,” and “Compute.” Fastly uses the terms “Network Services” (solutions designed to improve the performance of websites, apps, APIs, and digital media), “Security” (products designed to protect websites, apps, APIs, and users) and “other” (emerging products offering which includes compute and observability products). It’s important to understand these distinctions to interpret the revenue figures accurately.

Limelight Networks previously defined their revenue as delivery since, at the time, that was their primary service offered, and in their SEC filings, they broke out the percentage of their revenue tied to “delivery” services as nearly 80%. Since Edgio’s acquisition of Layer0 and Edgecast, their revenue is now blended across services outside of just bit delivery. With Edgio’s subsequent filing, we must see how they bucket their revenue and define it. However, we know how much revenue Layer0 and Edgecast had when acquired, separate from the Uplynk business. CDN77 breaks out revenue with the definition of “content delivery,” but no vendor has ever broken out revenue explicitly tied to the delivery of video content. Only once did Akamai disclose, during their 2021 investor summit, that for the fiscal year 2020, 57% of all the bits they delivered under their “Edge Delivery Traffic” heading were OTT/video. We all know that delivering video takes up the largest percentage of bits on any CDN while contributing the least amount of profitability as a service.

There are three main reasons why the CDN market has not grown at a higher CAGR rate over the past few years and will continue to be in the low single digits in the future. The first reason is that since the pandemic, all companies strive to be more efficient and do more with less. More than two years ago, I documented how many streaming services focused on optimizing their bitrates and, in some cases, reduced the highest rungs from their bitrate ladders to save money. Content owners, including Disney+ Hotstar and the BCC, documented on their tech blogs how they cut the number of bits they were delivering and optimized other cloud-related services to save money.

During Akamai’s Q2 2022 earnings call, the company highlighted this trend amongst customers and noted they saw reduced video bits delivered due to bitrate optimization. What started as a trend during the pandemic is now the new norm. An interesting data point that just came to light in Paramount Global’s presentation discussing their plans after they merge with Skydance is the company’s goal to “Unify cloud providers for all distribution services (e.g., Paramount+, Pluto) to provide CDN efficiencies.” Cost savings are the priority.

Previously, many clients evaluated traffic metrics, usually every quarter and allocated traffic at the regional level. Now, evaluations happen within days for some accounts or almost in real-time for others, with traffic relocations within a multi-CDN stack becoming significantly more dynamic and happening at the country or even single ISP level. As a result, more customers are no longer willing to make year-long and high-volume commitments. A data point to back this up comes from Fastly’s Q1 2024 earnings call when the company said, “We are seeing a slight uptick on the typical level of rerates with our largest customers, but we have not yet seen the commence or a traffic expansion usually associated with this motion.” In other words, there is pressure on CDN pricing, as always, with the largest customers demanding lower pricing, even without offering more traffic or larger commits.

The second main reason for CDN vendors’ lack of revenue growth is that a small number of customers account for the largest share of revenue. By my estimate, less than 50 customers of CDN services account for 75% of the revenue generated by third-party CDNs. We have data to back this up. As an example, for the year ended December 31, 2020, sales of Limelight’s top 20 customers accounted for approximately 75% of their total revenue, and they had two customers, Amazon and Sony, who represented approximately 36% and 11%, respectively, of their total revenue. Akamai had not broken out its split of customers the same way but disclosed for many years that when it broke out revenue under the “media” bucket, six customers accounted for 18% of its media revenue at the highpoint.

In Q1 of 2024, Akamai’s delivery revenue declined 11% year-over-year due to lower bitrates and lower pricing amongst a small concentration of large customers. Many assumed the decline was due to Akamai losing market share, but that wasn’t the case. Lower bits plus lower pricing equals a shrinking market for all CDN vendors. Multiple large customers, all repricing in the same quarter or year, hurt revenue growth. I’ll publish a post shortly on CDN pricing and highlights from my latest CDN pricing survey.

So, who are the largest CDN customers for content delivery? Here’s a list of customers spending more than $100 million annually on delivery services. It includes companies using third-party CDNs to deliver video, software downloads, and small object delivery, but it is not a complete list. Many customers are making revenue commits with CDNs across all the services offered, so contracts from the largest customers vary, and there are lots of variables based on the type of traffic and regions.

The list consists of Amazon Prime Video, Disney, Comcast, Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery, TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Sony Entertainment Network, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Riot Games, Valve, Take-Two Interactive, Roblox, Ubisoft, Roku, NFL, MLB, ESL FACEIT Group, Spotify, Reliance Industries (Jio), TV18 (Viacom18), Snap, The Times Group and Reddit amongst others. I’ve been collecting CDN pricing data for almost twenty years, routinely talking to many of the companies mentioned, and there are public data points one can look at tied to traffic volumes and public filings to get numbers. For instance, when Reddit filed to go public, their S-1 said they planned to spend at least $385M on cloud services by September 2026. Many of the details I have from the customers on what they buy from CDN vendors are off the record, or I am under NDA not to disclose it.

The third reason for the challenging market conditions is that 4K streaming simply isn’t in demand by consumers and isn’t driving more bits. Many streaming services charge more to stream in 4K, and consumers have shown that, in most cases, they are not willing to pay for it. And yet, the industry still wants to hype 4K, 8K, VR and AR as if they are catalysts for CDNs, which they aren’t. No NFL game, including the Super Bowl, is in 4K. Neither are streams from the NHL, MLB, MLS, or cricket games on Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema. In 2014, I wrote a blog post entitled “The Dirty Little Secret About 4K Streaming: Content Owners Can’t Afford The Bandwidth Costs,” which is still the case ten years later. Even big companies that could afford the additional costs that 4K brings, like Amazon, Google, and Apple, don’t offer 4K for Thursday Night Football, NFL Sunday Ticket or Friday Night Baseball. In 2022, multiple CDNs told me that of all the bits they would deliver that year, 4K/UHD would make up “less than” 10% of those bits, flat year-over-year. Last year, it was flat as well.

As I stated earlier, the total revenue of all vendors offering delivery services, excluding the China region, was about $5 billion in 2023. This includes delivery revenue from vendors listed at cdnlist.com and comprises Akamai, Amazon (Cloudfront), CDN77, Cloudflare, Comcast Technology Solutions, Edgio, Fastly, Google Cloud Media CDN, MainStreaming and Qwilt. It also combines revenue from smaller vendors into one number, including Bunny, CacheFly, CDNsun, Gcore, GlobalConnect, KeyCDN, Medianova, and other small regional CDNs.

In 2023, Akamai had $1.54 billion in delivery revenue, down 8% year-over-year. From 2021 to 2023, Akamai’s delivery revenue shrunk by over $300 million due to fewer bits being delivered, no adoption of 4K video, lower pricing, and all large customers using a multi-CDN strategy. These trends in the market impact Akamai the most since they are the largest vendor for delivery revenue. Amazon doesn’t disclose how much income they generate from CloudFront, but I put it at $1.1 billion in 2023. I am not disclosing my source for the number, but note that at one time, Amazon published how many paying customers they had on CloudFront.

Cloudflare had $1.29 billion in company revenue in 2023, up 33% year-over-year, of which I am counting $500 million towards my market sizing numbers. Cloudflare offers many cloud security and DNS services that would not fall under my definition of delivery, and the company does very little in the way of streaming. Fastly had $506 million in total revenue, of which I am counting $380 million towards delivery. Based on Fastly guiding Q1 2024, 79% of their revenue in the quarter came from “Network Services,” where delivery falls under. While we await an updated filing from Edgio, in November of 2023, the company guided to $392 million at the midpoint. Some of that revenue is tied to security and application services and Edgio’s Uplynk platform, so I am using $200 million from their revenue guidance for my market sizing number. CDN77 disclosed that their 2023 revenue was in the $ 140M-$150 million range and that they expect 40% growth in 2024. By my projections, the top six largest CDNs combined had revenue of $3.8B in 2023, making up 74% of the total market.

Outside of the top six largest CDN vendors, all other CDNs have less than $100 million in revenue. None of them, including Google, CTS, MainStreaming, Medianova, CacheFly or Qwilt, discloses revenue numbers publicly, and the numbers I have been given are under NDA or given to me only on background. Grouping all of them is another $400 million in 2023 revenue. In addition, many smaller regional CDNs around the world target SMB customers and those who don’t have a lot of traffic. By my last count, at least two dozen vendors were in this bucket, for which I estimate another $500 million a year in combined revenue. Of course, it has to be pointed out that while all these vendors fall under the category of delivery revenue, they don’t all compete. Many smaller customers spend less than $100 monthly, which is not a segment of the market that Akamai, Fastly or Edgio target. Adding up all these numbers brings the total 2023 revenue to $4.7 billion.

Separate from the revenue of CDN services, in 2023, approximately $200 million was generated from vendors offering a CDN platform to operators and carriers. These vendors include ATEME, Broadpeak, Gcore, Jet-Stream, Netskrt, Qwilt, Varnish Software, Vecima and Velocix, who license their software/platform to carriers, network operators and content owners who have a DIY CDN as part of their overall delivery strategy. While some of the vendors mentioned are public, for instance, Broadpeak and ATEME, none of the vendors break out the percentage of their revenue tied directly to their CDN platform offering. My $170 million number discounts their total revenue with the percentage I believe going toward their CDN product. In addition, in many cases, the vendor has privately told me the percentage of revenue without allowing me to break it out per vendor. The market for selling CDN platforms to carriers, network operators and content owners is tiny. In 2023, Broadpeak’s overall revenue was down 6.8% year-over-year.

Combining all vendors in the market broken out for content delivery, as I define it, puts the market at $4.9 billion in 2023 revenue. That number could fluctuate a few hundred million, depending on how much of a company’s total income is bucketed towards “delivery.” But as you can see, the numbers put out by firms that say the CDN market was $25.5 billion, $21.3 billion, $16.3 billion, or $13.2 billion are all wrong. Do not use those numbers. Overinflating the size of the market helps no one and sets false expectations.

Because of Amazon’s CloudFront offering, I expect the CDN market to grow in 2024. While most other large CDNs, including Akamai, Edgio, and Fastly, are seeing year-over-year revenue declines, I expect Amazon’s CloudFront revenue to grow 10% or more this year. Cloudflare and CDN77 will also see growth in their delivery business, which will help offset revenue declines from the other CDN vendors and help the overall market grow by about 3% in 2024. Without Amazon and Cloudflare growing, revenue growth of the CDN market would have been negative in 2023 and 2024. Amazon is winning more share of traffic in specific regions, including for cricket events in India and other large live events, as we recently saw with Peacock’s NFL Wild Card game. All customers of Peacock’s size use multiple CDNs, but they change how they split up the share of traffic. I’ve seen Amazon win more of a share of the traffic for large-scale live events and expect that to continue.

If you have any comments or questions on the topic, you can put them in the comments section on this post on LinkedIn or contact me directly at dan@danrayburn.com

Listen to my special CDN-focused podcast from July 2024 for more details and updates regarding 4K, low/ultra-low latency, CMCD, DIY (TikTok, Disney), Open Caching, pricing and multi-CDN.

Note: I have never bought, sold, or traded shares in any public CDN, and even in my managed portfolios, Akamai, Fastly, Cloudflare, and Edgio are excluded.

In this comprehensive podcast update on the CDN market, I separate facts from opinions, providing a detailed analysis of the latest trends. I cover everything from CDN pricing trends, market sizing (𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 $𝟓.𝟑𝐁 𝐢𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑), traffic and revenue growth rates, DIY initiatives (TikTok, Disney, Apple, Netflix), tech trends and demands across 4K, ULL, CMCD, bitrate optimization, multi-CDN, Open Caching deployments, changes in performance testing, to unique delivery challenges in regions like India.

Revenue numbers for CDN vendors, including Akamai Technologies, AWS, Cloudflare, CDN77, Edgio and Fastly, are broken out, along with where the numbers come from. Other CDNs discussed include Comcast Technology Solutions, Google Cloud Media CDN, Netskrt Systems Inc., Orange, Qwilt, Tata Communications and others.

I discuss the potential impact of market consolidation, Netflix streaming NFL games on Christmas, and the trend that will continue with customers looking to save on delivery costs. I also highlight bad data and red flags within reports in the market so you know what to avoid and data to stay away from. Listen here: 🎙 https://lnkd.in/epzXSMVA

I mentioned many numbers in the podcast, nearly all from public sources, and I believe I got them right. But if I misspoke, I welcome any corrections. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments section or contact me anytime. (dan@danrayburn.com)

My thanks to the nearly twenty CDN vendors, customers, sports leagues, OTT platforms, carriers and DIY content owners I spoke to in the week before the podcast.

The podcast transcript provided by my podcasting platform has many mistakes, so I will work on editing it and posting a transcript when I can.