Key Points
- Paramount will relaunch Pluto TV within Paramount Plus to enhance the user experience, CEO David Ellison said on Monday.
- The integration aims to improve personalization and content discovery across both platforms.
- Pluto TV is shifting focus toward on-demand content, with VOD viewing up 60 percent compared to last year; Paramount sees stronger advertising value in VOD as it refines its streaming content strategy.
Paramount‘s free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform Pluto TV will relaunch on the Paramount Plus platform this summer, the company’s chief executive told investors on Monday.
In a letter to shareholders that accompanied Paramount’s first quarter (Q1) financial earnings report, Paramount CEO David Ellison said the relaunch of Pluto TV on the Paramount Plus platform will allow the company to offer a better user experience, including more-personalized content recommendations.
Ellison said the relaunch of Pluto TV on the Paramount Plus platform is the “most-significant update in a decade” for the streaming service, which Paramount’s predecessor Viacom acquired in 2019. Last year, reports indicated Paramount was interested in moving Pluto TV off its own technology stack in favor of using that of Paramount Plus.
It wasn’t clear from Ellison’s statement if Paramount Plus and Pluto TV will remain separate apps for the foreseeable future.
Pluto TV doesn’t require a subscription to view content, and doesn’t require users to log in to stream its hundreds of channels and thousands of on-demand shows and movies. But the app has quietly nudged users in the United States to sign up for a free Pluto TV account, which allows streamers to build on-demand watch lists and sync their activity across devices while giving Paramount better insights into its users.
More than two-thirds of Pluto TV’s users in the U.S. are now registered with an account, Ellison told investors on Monday, an increase of 60 percent on a year-over basis. Paramount will continue pushing Pluto TV streamers to register with an account, he said.
While Pluto TV originally launched as a curated collection of linear streaming content channels, Ellison said Paramount sees more value in the app’s video on-demand (VOD) library, which has become a greater focus of Pluto TV’s offering in recent months. Moving forward, Paramount intends to market its VOD content more-aggressively to Pluto TV users, which Ellison said will unlock stronger opportunities for the company and its advertisers.
“We believe (VOD content) presents a better overall consumer experience and is more valuable for advertisers given the intent associated with VOD,” Ellison said. VOD hours per user are already up 60 percent on a year-over basis, he noted.
On the content side, Ellison said Paramount continues to “sharpen our content strategy, building a virtuous cycle in which greater programming attracts more users.”
“This approach is already showing results, with strong performance from recently added fan-favorite titles,” Ellison affirmed, saying nostalgia-driven titles were resonating with existing Pluto TV users and introducing a new generation of streamers to popular franchises, though he didn’t provide specific examples.
Paramount’s streaming platforms accounted for slightly more than 2 percent of all time spent with TV in February, according to Nielsen’s most recent “The Gauge” report. Similar data for March and April have not yet been released.
