Paramount Advertising is pushing to put a positive spin on its performance as this year’s upfront market approaches.
Big hits on a broadcast network? CBS has them with Tracker and Elspeth. Big ratings for specials? Check. Another season of Yellowstone? Yes. Giving clients free attribution research so they can see their return on investment? Done.
That hit list has been overshadowed a bit by the corporate intrigue at Paramount, with bidders for the company coming and going.
But John Halley, president of advertising for Paramount, told Broadcasting+Cable that those headlines are mere background noise as the company met with its clients.
“It doesn't really matter to them,” Halley said of the clients he talked to. “The question is: How can we enable their vision? How can we help advertisers achieve their goals? That's the topic of the day. And that’s what’s going to ultimately drive our messaging and performance in the upfront.”
Paramount held a series of meetings with agency media buyers and advertisers to spell outfits upfront plans, instead of holding a big event at a grand venue like Carnegie Hall.
“We have an amazing story to tell,” Halley said.
While Paramount’s ownership may be in question, the people in ad sales who service their accounts won’t, Halley noted.
That’s important because the job of ad sales has changed, and the upfront is morphing rather than disappearing.
“The business is moving from one that used to be a singular ad platform measured by sample and into one that’s multiplatform and there’s a lot more data,“ he said. “It’s sold on Identity and it’s measured on census.”
Paramount, and Viacom before that, were among the earliest in trying to use data to target television advertising. Now Paramount is looking to bring the full marketing funnel to the living room.
“Even though consumption is migrating into streaming environments, what we call TV has really been viewed as kind of a top-of-the-funnel awareness generator,” Halley said.
“Here's the change: It doesn't have to be,“ he continued. “There are so many interesting data sets. Retail media has fundamentally changed how advertisers can understand the effectiveness of their marketing.”
With a lot of data at their disposal, digital media platforms claim credit for sales that TV commercials inspire.
“The onus is on us to show brands investing in advertising how it’s working up and down the funnel because, as we say, all media ultimately is performance media,” he said.
Paramount is showing off its advanced advertising products, plus new attribution products capabilities with Mastercard and EDO. Paramount is providing attribution data for all advertisers when they buy a campaign.
“We always say performance is Paramount and Paramount is performance and it’s our mission to show performance in our ad buys,” he said.
The TV advertising market has not been strong and last year’s upfront was difficult for the networks. Ad revenue at Paramount’s traditional media business was down 15% to $2.3 billion in 2023. Ad revenue from direct-to-consumer products was up 14% to $526 million.
“Believe it or not, we’re only now really coming out of the economic dislocations of COVID,” Halley notes.
That was followed by supply chain disruptions, inflation interest rates and not-so-soft landings.
But now, Halley sees signs to be optimistic about.
“You can see the advertising market operating a little better than it has been,” he said. “I would say just organically there's a few points Improvement.”
And that’s enough to make Halley think he can achieve his volume and price goals.
“We will get there,“ he said. “Yeah, I'm confident that we're going to have a good outcome here.”
