Teresa Antas Rio, Vice President of Marketing, OSN+ and Anghami.We live in a time where entertainment has never been more accessible, yet audiences have never felt more disconnected. The global streaming landscape is crowded, competitive, and increasingly overwhelming.
Deloitte’s 2025 Media Trends Survey found that nearly half of global consumers say they pay too much for the streaming services they use – a reflection of growing subscription fatigue and choice overload across the industry.
The fatigue isn’t about quality, it’s about clarity. In trying to give everyone everything, we’ve made it harder for people to find what they want. For marketers, this has become more than a creative challenge to be visible in all the noise. Our job has shifted to standing out with purpose. Because when attention becomes scarce, clarity and relevance are what truly stand out.
That insight has guided how platforms like OSN+ think about storytelling, a reminder that choice in entertainment should feel effortless, not exhausting, and that the best stories are the ones people genuinely connect with.
It’s a lighthearted take on a very modern truth. We’ve all made choices that weren’t really ours – the polite thank you, the friend’s movie pick, the trend we tried because everyone else did. But when it comes to what we watch, we believe choice should feel personal again, even when shared.
MENA’s entertainment scene continues to grow driven by a young, tech-savvy, connected audience and a strong appetite for regional and international storytelling. Omdia’s 2025 MENA video forecast projects streaming revenues reaching $1.5 billion this year.
But this growth also brings a responsibility to build with intention. The region has an opportunity to shape its own relationship with streaming before fatigue sets in, one that favors quality, cultural relevance, and balance over superficial volume.
As streaming matures, the real opportunity lies in focus, not scale. For platforms like OSN+, curation isn’t about offering everything, it’s about offering what matters most. That balance comes from combining global stories that spark imagination with regional productions that reflect the culture and nuances of MENA audiences. From global hits to regional originals such as The Last of Us, Game of Thrones, IT: Welcome to Derry, Sharab Al Tout, and The Fashionista reflect the culture and nuance of MENA audiences show how thoughtful selection can connect worlds rather than crowd them.
Ultimately, it’s less about catalogue size and more about creating moments that resonate. Understanding why people watch – their moods, routines, and the need to switch off or connect, allow us to bring meaning back to viewing. When entertainment feels personal, it becomes more than content; it becomes comfort, curiosity, and sometimes, calm.
Connection and content together will become the true differentiator. The role of marketing is to recognize that intention and create experiences that respect it.
As the industry continues to evolve, our greatest strength will be to scale at the speed the industry moves in, while never losing sight of curation and the power of great storytelling. The more we build toward an easier, more intuitive sense of choice, the more value we all find in what we watch.
In the end, marketing’s role isn’t to demand attention, it’s to purposefully make space for it.
By Teresa Antas Rio, Vice President of Marketing, OSN+ and Anghami.
