Paramount ANZ held its first Paramount branded Upfront this week as the company announced a slew of new initiatives across its brands and platforms.
This included the addition of Pluto TV Fast Channels to 10 Play, new content for Channel 10 and Paramount+, and new commercial deals with Twitter and Innovid Digital.
The full list of announcements can be found here:
• Paramount Upfront 2023: Every Announcement
• Paramount Upfront 2023: New and Returning Content
• Pluto TV Fast Channels coming to 10Play in 2023
• Paramount and Twitter expand partnership with The Checkout
• Paramount launches AdSelector feature with Innovid Digital
• Taskmaster coming to 10 in 2023 with Tom Gleeson
• Location, Location, Location returns to Australia after over a decade
• MasterChef Spin-off Dessert Masters coming to 10
• Channel 10 announces Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly for 2023
Mediaweek caught up with Beverley McGarvey, the executive vice president and chief content officer for Paramount ANZ, as well as, Rod Prosser to discuss these announcements, and the company’s goal to provide a progressive product to the market.
BM: “The breadth of content and platforms that we have, puts us in a really differentiated position in the market. It gives us the capacity to invest in local content and we also get a great pipeline of global content. We’re in a very fortunate position and the timing is really good for us to bring to market Paramount ANZ and its consumer brands with that overarching commerce stream.”
RP: “The message to the market is that we are acting in a very progressive manner. We understand that audiences are shifting between platforms and we also understand that we’ve got an asset with connected TV that is growing rapidly. We know that in the digital environment, users want a much more personalised experience and these products allow them to do that. The message to the market is that we’ve got a really progressive view on how we engage with our brands and advertisers.”
Paramount Upfront: Pluto TV
At the Upfront, Paramount revealed that in 2023 a selection of Pluto TV Fast channels will launch on 10 Play, expanding Paramount’s free streaming offering to consumers and partners in Australia. The announcement marks an initial step in introducing Pluto TV in Australia.
Pluto TV is a free streaming television service with hundreds of channels that bring audiences movies and television series on-demand. Pluto TV is recognised as a FAST (free ad-supported television) service, not AVOD.
For partners, clients, and investors, advertisers will be given an additional premium environment to reach hard-to-find audiences.
McGarvey and Prosser agreed that this would bring a new dimension in Paramount’s offering both to consumers and advertisers.
BM: “We consider it to be something that’s additive. We obviously have Channel 10, 10play, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount+. What the Fast Channels allow us to do is really operate in that fast channel curated linear channel space. There can be multiple genres on there, or a single genre channel perhaps a cooking channel or a MasterChef channel for superfans of that show where they can find all the different MasterChef series. What we find with that is that people tend to watch for a longer time because they are fond of that particular genre. Some of the channels might be super niche like fishing.
“It gives us the opportunity to offer consumers a linear experience in that FAST space that is curated for them. One of the things we talked about at the Upfront is that we will schedule primetime for you, if you want to sit down and watch Survivor at 7:30pm, brilliant, we’ll do it. If you want to watch things in a different way, we’ll also do that and what the Fast Channels through Pluto allow us to do is offer that curation.”
RP: “The ultimate goal has always been an all screens proposition. This allows us to further expand that proposition. The introduction of VOZ means the measurement across screens will become more robust. We are definitely going to look at ways that we bundle and go to market together. Of course, it can be bought on its own as well. With all of our assets whether it’s STV, linear TV, or digital our team is working across all those various platforms, and in many instances, we bring them together and sell them as a package.”
Paramount Upfront: New and Returning Content Slate
Paramount announced several new shows, including a local adaption of the UK hit, Taskmaster, which will be helmed by Tom Gleeson. It also announced several changes to its established shows, with a shorter version of MasterChef, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! moving to the Easter slot, and The Bachelors moving into the summer primetime spot occupied by I’m a Celebrity for several years.
BM: “We have taskmaster, which I’m sure you’re probably aware is a hit in the UK. We’ve really wanted to make the show for years. It’s a really particular show to cast, if you don’t get the cast right, you can’t really make the show. We’re really excited to have Tom Gleason as the Taskmaster – it feels like he was born for the role. Comedy is resonating really well with our audience at the minute, and in the economic environment we’re in we tend to find comedy does well in these types of cycles.
“We have I am a Celebrity moving to Easter next year, we really believe that show is strong enough to play in a more competitive part of the year. We have The Bachelors in January because it feels like it’s a guilty pleasure summer viewing type show. Survivor is back in Samoa for Heroes vs. Villains. MasterChef has a slightly truncated run, only because we really want to keep our big family-friendly legacy brands fresh. Asking people to watch 13 weeks of a show now is pretty unusual. We want to keep making it a slightly shorter run because we feel that’s what our audience wants.”
Paramount Upfront: Expanded partnership with Twitter
Paramount ANZ has also announced an Australian-first partnership with Twitter Australia to deliver a new advertising product called The Checkout.
The Checkout builds on the success of Twitter Amplify, a global deal announced by the two companies in May that has already secured sponsorship sales and delivered results accessing audiences across content including sport and tentpole programming.
Prosser said that this is a fun announcement, but one that will also drive serious revenue.
RP: “It is fun and I suspect it will be fairly lucrative for both ourselves and brands that get involved. It plays into our E-commerce strategy and it begins with the Twitter audience, which is our audience. We know that our viewers on Twitter consume more of our content than any other broadcaster. It allows those viewers to purchase the look of any of our talents, or any certain products that fit within our show that it clipped up and served on Twitter. All of that is done in real-time, there’s an opportunity to tap away and It’ll direct the user in the direction where they can purchase it.”
Paramount Upfront: Samba TV levels up addressable advertising
Paramount has announced an Australian-first partnership with Samba TV that will help improve audience targeting and empower advertisers to reach TV viewers across every screen and achieve
deduplicated, incremental reach across premium and differentiated digital programming inventory.
Prosser said that this is an exciting announcement that will help level up their offering to advertisers.
RP: “It’s addressable advertising going to the next level, because Samba offers a rich data set that really enables the connection of digital and linear audiences enough to be able to upsell segments that get created through the viewing experience.”
Paramount Upfront: AdSelector bringing ads on demand
Paramount has also announced a new partnership with Innovid, providing new interactive, connected television (CTV) ad products to Paramount’s suite of digital advertising solutions.
AdSelector is a new, Australian-first product providing a non-disruptive audience experience that asks the viewer simple, interactive inquiries related to the content. This builds scalable market segments that are interested in products or services relevant to their needs or interests.
Prosser said that this is an evolution of Paramount’s E-commerce strategy.
RP: “It’s an important part of that strategy. The easiest way to explain it is that it gives consumers choice. They can choose their own journey. An example would be when an ad for a particular brand pops up, and they have a collection of ads that they can run, the consumer will be able to pick which is the most appropriate for them to view. There are other products that sit around that but the one that we’re really talking about that we think will really gravitate with the market. AdSelector, is really about ads on demand.“