Chris Allen, Co-Founder & CEO of Red5 with 20+ years of experience in video streaming for developers, enterprises, and government.gettyFor years, the streaming industry optimized for one thing: scale. That made sense during the early growth of internet video. Broadcasters and platforms needed reliable ways to deliver streams to millions of viewers across inconsistent internet connections. On top of that, web server technology has advanced to allow for a huge volume of HTTP requests for standard websites. Technologies like HLS (HTTP live streaming) helped solve that scale problem and became foundational to modern streaming.But audience expectations have changed faster than streaming infrastructure. Today, consumers live in a real-time digital environment. They text instantly, join video calls instantly, react to breaking news instantly, and interact with creators in real time across social platforms. Yet many “live” streams still operate with delays long enough for viewers to see spoilers on social media before events appear on screen. That disconnect has become a serious business issue for media companies, sports organizations, betting platforms, retailers and interactive entertainment providers.Over the past year, I’ve been working with a growing number of companies who are investing heavily in technologies designed to reduce streaming latency and improve interactivity. Companies including YouTube, Cisco, Cloudflare, Akamai and others are actively building new approaches around MOQ (Media over QUIC), an emerging framework under development within the IETF standards process. The growing ecosystem around MOQ is also reflected by industry initiatives such as the OpenMOQ Software Consortium, where I sit on the steering committee. The attention reflects a larger industry realization that streaming is evolving from passive distribution into interactive communication.​The Business Pressure Behind Real-Time StreamingConsumers no longer separate communication from media consumption the way they once did. Sports fans expect synchronized experiences while discussing games online, viewers want to participate in broadcasts, and businesses increasingly rely on interactive experiences. Traditional streaming architectures were built for reliable large-scale distribution, not real-time interactivity, and even delays of several seconds can negatively impact engagement, retention and monetization. The industry has spent years trying to reduce latency through optimized HTTP workflows such as CMAF, LL-HLS, LL-DASH and HESP, or through WebRTC, which enabled sub-second real-time communication but introduced significant complexity and operational costs at broadcast scale. For technology leaders, the question is no longer whether real-time streaming is technically possible. It is whether real-time engagement is becoming strategically important to their business. Organizations should evaluate where latency directly impacts audience engagement, monetization, customer experience or operational efficiency.​Why Large Infrastructure Providers Are Paying AttentionOne of the indicators of an industry transition is when competing infrastructure providers begin investing in similar problems simultaneously. The companies involved in MOQ are not chasing a niche experiment. They are responding to growing market pressure around audience engagement and user expectations.Sports is one obvious example. Delayed streams create problems for betting platforms, live statistics, second-screen experiences and social engagement. But the same pressures appear across entertainment, retail, auctions, remote production, public safety, surveillance and industrial monitoring applications.Real-time contribution workflows are also becoming increasingly important. Broadcasters want the ability to ingest live footage directly from mobile devices. Organizations using drones or remote cameras want lower-latency delivery without introducing excessive infrastructure complexity. Interactive entertainment formats rely on audience participation happening in sync with the stream itself.In my conversations with our customers and partners, which include broadcasters, technology vendors and streaming platform operators, I increasingly see discussions shifting away from latency as a technical metric and toward latency as a business metric. Leaders are asking how delays affect engagement, retention and revenue. That change in mindset is one of the strongest signals that the market is entering a new phase.​The Emergence Of MOQMOQ represents a fundamental change in streaming architecture. It merges the benefits of real-time latency with the scalability of CDNs, offering a streamlined approach that bypasses the limitations of older HTTP-based delivery. By utilizing the UDP-based QUIC protocol, MOQ eliminates the "head of line blocking" common in TCP-based systems. MOQ also solves problems introduced by trying to scale WebRTC for one-to-many streaming scenarios. WebRTC proved how compelling real-time latency experiences can be. But scaling WebRTC for massive broadcast audiences introduced substantial infrastructure complexity and cost. It was originally designed for peer-to-peer communication, not global-scale media distribution.MOQ by contrast, was designed to be scalable, and it’s also being adopted by CDN vendors, allowing them to scale infrastructure for massive delivery at a reasonable cost. The industry is rapidly investing in MOQ to achieve real-time streaming economics and scalability necessary for mainstream broadcast and large-scale digital media, going beyond just lower latency. Practical MOQ-related workflows spanning playback, contribution, relays, packaging and interoperability were demonstrated at NAB Show 2026. With momentum accelerating through the OpenMOQ Consortium and the IETF, where the specification is nearing finalization, MOQ is moving toward production deployments far faster than many expected only a year ago.For executives evaluating streaming road maps, now is the time to ask your teams these questions:• Where does latency impact business outcomes?• Are current delivery workflows limiting interactivity or engagement opportunities?• Could real-time audience participation, contribution or synchronization create revenue streams?• What would it cost to support those capabilities using current technologies versus emerging approaches like MOQ?• How prepared is the organization to adopt new streaming architectures as standards mature?The Bigger Business TakeawayMOQ is quickly becoming the industry’s answers to the growing demand for scalable, real-time streaming. The cheaper operational costs and support from large CDN providers mean MOQ is poised to transform interactive video experiences.My recommendation for media executives, broadcasters and streaming platform leaders is straightforward: Begin evaluating real-time streaming now, even if deployment is not yet on your road map. The organizations that understand where real-time engagement creates business value will be better positioned as the technology ecosystem matures.Based on the momentum across the ecosystem, I expect to see large production deployments emerge this year and adoption accelerate rapidly into 2027. The companies that begin planning today will likely have an advantage when real-time streaming becomes an expected capability rather than a specialized differentiator.​Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?