The Asia-Pacific screen economy is projected to reach $179 billion in 2026 and $200 billion by 2031 – but the story behind those numbers is one of structural reallocation rather than headline growth, Media Partners Asia executive director Vivek Couto told the APOS 2026 conference in his opening address Wednesday.

Couto framed the sector’s trajectory around what he called four forces driving a single reset: the scale of the region’s screen base, which he projected at 5.2 billion screens by 2031; the shift in monetization toward retail media and commerce; the convergence of video, social and commerce onto unified platforms; and AI, which he described as resetting the cost, speed and formats of content production.

The central tension running through his presentation was a per-capita gap that remains vast. APAC earns roughly $46 per capita annually against roughly $890 in the U.S. “That gap is the single largest pool of latent value anywhere in global media,” Couto said, “and the whole question for the next five years is who is equipped to close it – because closing it is no longer about adding reach. It is about converting reach into money.”

On subscriptions, Couto said the debate over streaming versus pay-TV is settled. SVOD overtook pay-TV subscriptions as far back as 2022 and is on track to out-subscribe pay-TV by more than five to one by 2031. India is the primary engine of that growth, adding 366 million SVOD subscriptions across the decade – more than the rest of APAC ex-China combined – with the JioHotstar bundle driving a step-change in 2025. JioHotstar surpassed $1 billion in revenue last year and is on track to surpass YouTube in total revenue by year’s end. Bundling, he argued, has moved from a promotional tactic to a structural pillar: the mechanism through which streaming reaches the next hundred million homes across India, Indonesia and Thailand, and through which mature platforms in Australia, Japan and Korea defend their subscriber bases.

The advertising picture is more complicated. APAC adspend is on track to grow just 5.2% year-on-year in 2026, the slowest rate since the pandemic. TV advertising is falling for the eighth consecutive year. Digital advertising, now accounting for three-quarters of all APAC ad spend, is growing at 7.8% – but the gains are accruing to a small number of platforms with targeting and pricing power. “Reach without addressability no longer commands the budget,” Couto said.

Connected TV is one place where that calculus could shift. CTV homes ex-China are projected to more than triple across the decade, from under 80 million to 255 million, as smart-TV prices fall and home broadband penetration deepens. The ad dollars have not yet followed the audience onto that screen, and Couto attributed the lag to fragmented measurement standards across streaming platforms, device-makers and ad-supported channels. “The prize on this screen is large, and it is still unclaimed,” he said, “and it will go to whoever builds the measurement layer first.”

The fastest-growing advertising line overall is retail media – advertising tied directly to a purchase transaction – and Couto argued it leads the digital ad increment in every major market from China to Australia. The scale of the commerce layer behind creator content illustrates why: in Southeast Asia, influencer advertising amounts to roughly $2 billion, while creator-driven commerce sits at around $50 billion – more than 20 times the ad layer. “The centre of gravity in advertising is moving from the impression to the transaction,” he said, “and the screen businesses that thrive will be the ones that sit closest to the point of purchase.”

On microdrama, Couto put the ex-China market at around $3 billion today, set to triple by 2031. In China, the format has already scaled to between $11.5 billion and $16.8 billion. He noted that marketing costs – not production – are the dominant expense, with titles typically required to earn back their user-acquisition spend within 48 to 72 hours. He identified ReelShort and DramaBox as the two operators that have most convincingly converted scale into margin. AI-generated content, he said, already accounts for close to 40% of the top-100 microdrama chart on Chinese platforms, with tens of thousands of AI-native titles produced in a single month on Douyin.

Couto presented what he called a five-year ledger for premium video in APAC ex-China that lays out the stakes in stark terms. On the advertising side, television loses around $3.6 billion while streaming adds roughly $3.3 billion – leaving net premium video advertising essentially flat. On consumer spending, pay-TV loses close to $3 billion while streaming gains more than $5 billion, for a net gain of around $2.4 billion. Put together, premium video grows by roughly $2 billion across five years. Content costs, meanwhile, rise by more than $3 billion over the same period.

“The top line is not going to save the margin,” he said. “The margin has to be engineered – and the engine is intelligence.”

MPA estimates that AI could deliver between $9 billion and $15 billion annually in profit-and-loss improvement across APAC ex-China by 2031, with production efficiency improvements worth between $4.6 billion and $7.7 billion representing the largest single component. Couto framed AI not as a cost story but as a technology operating simultaneously on both sides of the income statement. “This is the first technology cycle that works on both sides of the income statement at once,” he said. “It lowers cost, and it lifts revenue.”

He closed with a caveat that carried the weight of the full presentation. “This dividend is paid only to those who industrialize AI without spending their audience’s trust. The cost savings are real, and they are bankable. The trust is the constraint.”

APOS 2026 runs June 16–17.