Industry thought leader highlights how cloud cost accountability is becoming a cross-functional responsibility across media organizations.
Digital Joy recently announced that its co-founder and president, Tracey Shaw, has published a new thought-leadership article in TVNewsCheck examining the growing role of FinOps in media and broadcasting organizations as cloud infrastructure becomes central to modern content delivery.
The article, titled “Why FinOps Is Becoming a Cross-Functional Discipline in Media and Broadcasting,” explores how media companies are shifting their approach to cloud cost management as hybrid and multi-cloud environments become the industry standard.
In the piece, Shaw highlights the scale of the issue: global public cloud spending surpassed $700 billion in 2025, with research suggesting that 20–30% of that spend may be wasted due to over-provisioned or unused resources. For broadcasters and streaming platforms already navigating declining linear revenues and growing infrastructure demands, the implications are significant.
“Understanding the cost of delivering content is becoming as important as producing it,” said Shaw in the article. “Organizations that treat cloud infrastructure as part of their core business model—not just a technology layer—will be better positioned to compete in the evolving media landscape.”
The article explores several key trends shaping cloud financial management across the industry, including:
- The rise of FinOps as a cross-functional discipline, shared by engineering, operations, product and finance teams
- The growing importance of cost allocation, ensuring cloud spending is mapped to specific workflows, services or productions
- The need for accurate forecasting as content schedules and audience demand create highly variable infrastructure costs
- The increasing focus on unit economics, such as cost per streaming hour or cost per viewer session, to connect infrastructure spend with business performance
Shaw also notes that hybrid architectures—spanning on-prem systems and multiple public cloud providers—are now the norm across media organizations. According to industry research, more than half of media companies have already adopted cloud services, with hybrid environments expected to dominate for years to come.
“As workflows become software-defined and AI-driven, infrastructure demands will continue to grow,” Shaw writes. “The organizations that succeed will be those that build financial accountability into their cloud operations from the start.”
Digital Joy works with media organizations to help manage the operational and financial complexity of modern cloud environments through scalable, cloud-based solutions.
The full article can be read on TVNewsCheck.
