The JustWatch Group opened JustWatch TV on October 20, 2026, a streaming service built into the JustWatch apps and website, in 11 markets with 30 content partners and three tiers: free with ads, rentals, and an ad-free option. The company says the service reaches its 50 million global consumers, though that figure covers a guide used in 140 markets.

In Short

JustWatch, a website and app that tells people which streaming service carries a film or show, now has its own streaming service where some of those films can be watched directly. It matters because a company that sees what millions of people search for is now also showing them ads and renting them films, and it sells ad campaigns to film studios using that data. If you live in one of 11 countries, the JustWatch app now has a free section with ads, a rental store and a paid ad-free option.

What went live on October 20

JustWatch TV sits inside products that already exist. According to JustWatch, the service is "directly available on the JustWatch website, mobile and TV apps," which means there is no separate download for people already using the guide. The release gives a US-specific address for the service, justwatch.com/us/justwatch-tv.

The 11 markets are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. The release is datelined Los Angeles and Berlin, the two cities that anchor the company's operations: Berlin is its headquarters, and Los Angeles is one of eight other offices, alongside London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Munich, Dubai and Sydney.

Three tiers make up the service, according to JustWatch:

  • JustWatch TV Free, described as "a free, ad-supported curated selection of titles."
  • JustWatch TV Store, "a growing selection of recent and popular movies to rent."
  • JustWatch TV Plus, offering "ad-free access to numerous titles from the catalogue and exclusive streaming guide/app features."

The free tier is an AVOD model, in which viewers pay nothing and ad breaks fund the content. The Store is a TVOD arrangement: viewers pay per title, with no subscription. The boilerplate at the end of the release frames the same structure slightly differently, describing "the newest movies on TVOD, a quality, free-to-watch AVOD library, and a growing catalog of ad-free movies and TV shows."

What the release does not contain is as notable as what it does. There are no prices for rentals or for Plus. There is no title count for any tier, no ad load, no word on which ad server or supply-side partners sell the inventory, and no breakdown of which partners supply which markets. The Plus tier is described only in terms of "numerous titles" and "exclusive streaming guide/app features," without naming those features.

Eleven markets, not twelve

The October 20 list differs from the one the company gave five weeks earlier. When JustWatch first presented the service at TIFF: The Market in Toronto on September 15, it named 12 launch markets, and PPC Land's coverage of that announcement listed Switzerland among them. Switzerland does not appear in the October 20 release, which states that the launch "will initially cover eleven markets." Every other market from September is still present.

JustWatch has not explained the change in the release. The word "initially" leaves room for Switzerland to follow, but no date is given. Switzerland is a multilingual market where rights are often sold alongside Germany and Austria, France or Italy, so a gap there could stem from licensing rather than technology. That is an inference, not something JustWatch has said.

The September announcement also referred to a standalone address, justwatch.tv, and to premium video on demand alongside rentals. The October 20 release mentions neither; it gives only the justwatch.com address and describes the Store as rentals of "recent and popular movies."

Thirty partners, four of them new

JustWatch says the service starts with 30 content partners, "with many more already in the pipeline." Nine are named. Four were added on October 20, each tied to a single market:

  • Cineverse in the US
  • Leonine Studios in Germany
  • SND in France
  • Altitude in the UK

They join five partners named in September: Paramount, New Regency, Fremantle, Bleecker Street and Vortex Media. The remaining 21 of the 30 are not identified. The release also gives no indication of whether any title is exclusive to JustWatch TV, how revenue is shared, or whether partners' titles sit in the free tier, the Store, Plus, or several at once.

The country-by-country assignment of the new partners matters for anyone trying to assess the catalogue. A German viewer and an American viewer opening JustWatch TV on the same day are likely to see different line-ups, because the four newly named partners are each attached to one territory. The release does not say whether Paramount, Fremantle and the other September partners supply all 11 markets.

The founder's account

David Croyé, founder and chief executive of the JustWatch Group, set the launch against the company's history. "The launch of JustWatch TV marks the most important new development in our company's twelve-year history, and it's only the start," Croyé said, according to the release.

He tied the move to the company's name. "We called our company JustWatch because we wanted to make it easier for people to find and 'just watch' the movies and shows they love," he said. "From the beginning, our vision was to create a single platform that directs fans to all of their entertainment options in one place."

The final part of his statement describes the service's role relative to the guide. "JustWatch TV will help fill in the gaps and will make it easier for the massive JustWatch audience to discover and watch great movies and series, including those hard-to-find titles, right from the app itself."

"Fill in the gaps" is the operative phrase. A streaming guide earns its place by pointing users elsewhere - to Netflix, Prime Video, a rental store - and earns money from data and media services built on that traffic. A title that a user searches for but cannot find on any service is a dead end for the guide. JustWatch TV turns some of those dead ends into sessions that stay inside JustWatch's own apps.

Built on demand data

JustWatch's pitch for curation rests on what its guide already records. According to the company, the service draws "on billions of data points from its audience about what people actually want to watch," and uses "unique demand insights to curate a catalogue of movies and series that complements the existing streaming landscape." The release describes a mix of "human curation and editorial recommendations," including the guide's existing "Why to Watch" feature, with "technology and data-driven discovery."

The release elsewhere refers to "a decade of viewer demand data." The numbers that frame that data come from the company's boilerplate. JustWatch says its guide helps "over 50 million users across 140 markets," lists streaming options for "over 500,000 movies and TV shows across more than 1,500 services worldwide," and provides where-to-watch data and streaming charts to "over 1,400 partner websites and apps." The group employs more than 200 people.

Here the 50 million figure needs care. The headline of the release presents the service as arriving "for its 50 million global consumers," and the body says the launch reaches them. The boilerplate attaches the same number to a guide operating in 140 markets. JustWatch TV is available in 11. The release does not say how many of the 50 million are located in those 11 countries, so the audience that can actually watch JustWatch TV is some unstated fraction of the headline figure. The September announcement described the 50 million as monthly users; the October release does not specify a time period.

JustWatch has worked with its data in public before. In July 2025, its catalogue data underpinned a European study of subscription viewing that found under 0.1% of works accounted for about 14% of total viewing time across Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max in nine countries. JustWatch supplied the record of what was available; viewing figures came from another provider. That concentration - a small number of titles taking a large share of attention, with a long tail of rarely watched works - is the landscape a curated "complement" service is designed to sit within.

Why JustWatch Media is part of the story

The most consequential paragraph for advertisers is the one about the group's ad business. According to JustWatch, JustWatch TV "will provide even deeper audience data and insights for JustWatch Media, the group's campaign planning and buying service for film marketing campaigns across digital platforms like YouTube, Meta and TikTok for studios, distributors, streamers and media agencies."

JustWatch Media already uses first-party data from the guide, according to the company's description of its divisions, and "delivers scalable, highly targeted campaigns across YouTube, Meta, TikTok, and other major platforms." Until now, the guide's data showed intent: which titles people searched for, saved and clicked through to watch elsewhere. A streaming service adds consumption: what people actually played, for how long, and whether they paid to rent it or sat through ads to watch it free.

That changes the position of JustWatch in the film marketing chain. The same group would sell campaign planning to studios and distributors, operate a guide that tells users where those studios' films can be seen, and run a service that streams or rents some of those films itself. The release names Paramount among its content partners; JustWatch Media's client list is not disclosed in the release.

Several questions sit unanswered in the text. The release does not say whether viewing data from JustWatch TV will be used to target ads within JustWatch TV, whether it will be sold or used as an audience segment outside it, or how the company will handle consent for that use in the European markets on the launch list. It also does not say whether the free tier's ad inventory will be sold by JustWatch Media directly, through programmatic channels, or both. PPC Land noted in September that none of these points had been addressed; the October 20 release leaves them open.

Where it fits in ad-supported streaming

JustWatch is entering a market that has moved toward ads over the past two years. In the US, 89% of paid streaming subscribers use at least one ad-supported service, according to figures compiled by the Video Advertising Bureau in June 2026, and the number of FAST channels grew from 424 in 2020 to 1,700 in 2026 in the same compilation. Nielsen's 2026 upfront guide found that streaming accounted for 66.7% of ad-supported TV time among adults aged 18 to 49.

Europe is behind but moving. A ShowHeroes and Omnicom Media Netherlands survey published in March 2026 put FAST household adoption at 27% across six European markets, with the UK and Italy at 37% and Germany at 26%. Four of those six countries are JustWatch TV launch markets.

The largest free services already operate at a scale JustWatch cannot match on day one. Fox's Tubi passed 100 million monthly active users in June 2025. Fox has since agreed to buy Roku in a deal valued at about $22 billion in enterprise value, expected to close in the first half of 2027, combining a free streaming service with the platform that controls the home screen on millions of televisions.

Home screens and discovery are where JustWatch's guide already competes. Samsung Ads opened its Smart TV home screen placements to programmatic buying through The Trade Desk and DV360 in June 2026. A Gracenote survey in September found that 26% of sports fans cannot always tell which channel or service is showing a game, a measure of how fragmented viewing has become. A guide solves that problem by pointing outward. A guide with its own service has a reason to point inward as well.

That tension is not addressed in the release. JustWatch says the service "complements the existing streaming landscape" and helps audiences "discover great content across all their streaming services and JustWatch TV." The release does not say whether JustWatch TV titles receive any different placement in search results or recommendations than titles on competing services, or whether partners such as Paramount, which run their own services, place the same titles on JustWatch TV and on their own platforms at the same time.

What JustWatch says comes next

According to the company, "today's launch is only the starting point." Teams are "bringing more content partners and titles on board, continuously improving the product and building the foundation to scale the service globally." No further markets, partner counts or dates are given.

For CTV buyers, the open items are concrete. A free tier inside TV apps in 11 countries is new ad inventory, but its size, measurement and sales route are undisclosed. For studios and distributors, the open item is whether the company planning their YouTube, Meta and TikTok campaigns will also be competing for viewers' attention with its own catalogue - and what it will do with the viewing data that results.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The JustWatch Group, the Berlin-headquartered company behind the JustWatch streaming guide, with founder and chief executive David Croyé. Content partners named are Cineverse, Leonine Studios, SND, Altitude, Paramount, New Regency, Fremantle, Bleecker Street and Vortex Media, out of 30 in total. The group's ad business, JustWatch Media, is directly affected.

What: JustWatch TV, a streaming service inside the JustWatch website, mobile and TV apps, with a free ad-supported tier, a rental store and an ad-free Plus tier. Prices, catalogue size, ad sales arrangements and the use of viewing data were not disclosed. The company says the service will feed deeper audience data to JustWatch Media.

When: October 20, 2026, five weeks after the service was first presented at TIFF: The Market on September 15, 2026.

Where: Eleven markets: the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Switzerland, listed in September, is absent. The guide itself operates in 140 markets.

Why: JustWatch says the service fills gaps for titles that are hard to find elsewhere and builds on demand data from its guide. For marketers, it creates new ad-supported inventory and gives a film campaign planning business access to viewing data from its own streaming service, while leaving open how that data and inventory will be used.