What’s the message you want marketers to take from these dinners?
Our message last year was about a unified organization, a streamlined, simplified operating model for the agencies and advertisers. It was, “Here we are.” This year, we’re talking about expansions. In addition to the content slate, expanding our advertising product suite, which will see us providing, as part of our base media product, a lot more transparency around outcomes-based data. That’s just fundamentally transformed the way that our product is viewed and the way that our clients and agency partners understand our value.
Part of that transparency comes from recently announced partnerships with Mastercard and EDO to enhance measurement across linear and digital, correct?
There are other elements to it, as well. But our story is that TV, which has historically been viewed as a one-to-one awareness generator, actually operates as a mid-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel conversion product, as well. And as the product moves into connected TV, we have the data and frameworks to prove that and to tell that story. I often get asked, “What do you think about the burgeoning supply environment in connected TV?” My answer is that there is also going to be a lot more demand because this product is much more flexible, it’s addressable and it works in a bunch of different lanes.
Live events such as the MTV Video Music Awards, the Golden Globe Awards and the Grammy Awards were all up in viewership, and the company has more than 12,500 hours of new, original content in 2024. What are the tentpoles and content that buyers are excited about?
It’s extraordinary how people are focusing now on these cultural moments, which are scarce. That is a cornerstone of our calendar. We have a lot of them. It’s something that people are very excited about. Our new program, Tracker, is a runaway hit. It’s the biggest show on television and—nine episodes in—it was delivering higher average audience than the National Basketball Association Playoffs. Elsbeth is another big hit. As we look forward, we have the final season of Yellowstone; a new Taylor Sheridan show called Landman, which stars Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm; and a lot of epic storytelling there. We’ve got an amazing slate. The content piece really matters. We are a content machine.
Speaking of content, CBS announced its fall schedule, but the upfront doesn’t operate around that anymore. For instance, you’re seeing more than 100 million full-episode monthly viewers across your platforms, with a lot being driven by Paramount+ and Pluto TV.
It’s completely different than it was a decade ago. It has to do a lot with the fragmentation of audiences, the move into streaming and the investments, which are not always centered on broadcast. This underlines our upfront format change. Upfront week is anachronistic. We look at this as an important opportunity to combine the messaging around content across all of these platforms with a discussion around expansion of the product suite and how we’re going to create bridges.