Paramount’s new self-serve ad platform aims to bring smaller marketers to TV

Paramount launched a self-serve ad platform this week in the U.S. aimed at attracting new TV advertisers as traditional media companies seek to tap into growing digital advertising budgets. See America's Hottest Brands 20 brands that are trending in 2024 Click here Paramount’s announcement follows similar launches from TV media companies such as Disney and NBCUniversal, which have also developed platforms meant to entice digital-native marketers to TV. The trend also seeks to automate processes as marketers seek more efficient and short-term deals in the TV marketplace, which traditionally prioritized long-term deals prior to shifts brought on by streaming. GroupM predicts U.S. TV ad revenues will decrease 0.6% in 2024 while digital media will grow 8.9% compared to the year prior. Paramount Ads Manager will give small-to-medium-sized businesses access to Paramount streaming inventory on Paramount+ and free streamer Pluto TV with a minimum commitment of $500, with the ability to run campaigns starting the next day. The platform will allow the advertisers to target ads by location, demographic and content genres or by inputting the brand’s own data to match against Paramount’s streaming audience. Recent news: Streaming platforms are lagging in TV upfront deals “[Paramount Ads Manager] breaks down the barriers to entry for TV advertising—historically, you’d either have to call up someone at Paramount or go through programmatic,” said Emily Huo, who was appointed as senior VP of SMB advertising at Paramount in January. “However, there is a cohort of advertisers out there—brands and agencies—who have never even thought about TV advertising, or don’t know where to start. The self-serve ad platform allows them to have a first entry point into TV advertising.” The self-serve platform will also offer creative generation AI tools to ease the transition for brands from social and digital platforms to TV. The capabilities will allow a marketer to generate new 15- or 30-second spots based on text and imagery from its website via a partnership with generative AI video company Waymark or to repurpose social assets with Spaceback, a company that specializes in formatting social ads for TV. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Paramount’s pitch to SMB advertisers is to “put your business in show business,” said Huo. Huo added that Paramount will emphasize the functions of TV advertising that are different from advertising in social and digital, such as unskippable ads, while positioning the self-serve platform as a simple access point for the complicated TV ecosystem. While other media companies such as Disney have said national advertisers and media agencies have also shifted portions of their dealmaking to the media company’s self-serve platform, Huo said Paramount’s emphasis is squarely on SMB advertisers at launch. Paramount will self-report metrics on the platform, prioritizing performance metrics for SMB advertisers. At launch, the platform will share ad impressions, reach, frequency, completion rates, cost-per-second and the top content and geographic regions. In the future, Paramount will roll out business attribution tools to measure the business impact of Paramount ads.

Paramount’s new self-serve ad platform aims to bring smaller marketers to TV

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