Why FinOps Is Becoming A Cross-Functional Discipline In Media and Broadcasting

For many media and broadcast organizations, cloud infrastructure has evolved from a path to flexibility into a growing and often unpredictable cost center. Global public cloud spending exceeded $700 billion in 2025, with estimates from firms like McKinsey suggesting that 20%-30% of that spend was wasted due to over-provisioning and unused resources. That represents a significant amount of capital that could otherwise support content, distribution, audience growth and other revenue-generating functions.

In broadcasting, the stakes are high. As streaming grows and linear revenues decline, operations are evolving into software-defined workflows that span the entire content lifecycle. The rise of AI, powering everything from metadata generation to audience personalization and localization, is accelerating this shift while significantly increasing infrastructure demand. These workloads rarely reside in a single environment. Instead, media companies operate across a mix of on-prem systems and private infrastructure, as well as multiple public clouds. This creates a highly distributed architecture that introduces both operational complexity and new cost.

IDC research shows that more than half of media companies have already adopted cloud services, and that hybrid environments will remain the dominant operating model for years. The result is a level of operational complexity that makes it difficult to understand not just how much is being spent, but why.

This is where FinOps is changing the conversation. Rather than sitting solely with finance, cloud cost accountability is becoming a shared responsibility across multiple roles spanning from engineering and operations to technology, product and finance. 

Each of these groups impacts cloud spend in different ways. Engineering decisions affect storage, compute and data transfer. Operations teams determine how efficiently live workflows scale during peak events. Product teams influence audience growth and engagement, which directly drives usage costs. Without clear ownership across these functions, costs can scale faster than the business value they support.

To manage this complexity, organizations are placing greater emphasis on cost allocation. The goal is simple: every dollar of cloud spend should be mapped to a service, workflow or business outcome, with a clear owner responsible for it. Whether it is a live sports event, a news production pipeline, or a streaming app, assigning ownership turns cloud costs from a shared burden into a managed responsibility.

Forecasting is also becoming more important. Cloud spending in media is inherently variable, driven by content schedules, audience spikes and distribution patterns. Aligning forecasts with actual usage allows teams to plan more effectively for major events, avoid surprises and make more informed decisions about capacity and vendor agreements.

Beyond allocation and forecasting, many organizations are focusing on unit economics. Instead of looking at total spend, they measure the cost of delivering a specific outcome, such as cost per streaming hour, cost per channel or cost per viewer session. These metrics help connect technical decisions to business performance. They also provide insight into which workflows or content types are more expensive to deliver, informing both operational and strategic decisions.

In an industry where margins are under pressure and distribution models are evolving, understanding the cost of delivering content is becoming as important as producing it. The organizations that succeed will be those that treat cloud not just as infrastructure, but as a core part of their business model.

Tracey Shaw is founder and president of Digital Joy.

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