Paramount Targets Small Business as Streaming Ad Sales Priority

Smaller businesses whose tight marketing budgets limit their promotional activities to internet communication and rare local media spots now have a chance to expand their exposure through more affordable ads tied to Hollywood content. Television and film group Paramount says it’s making modest-sized companies a priority of its advertising recruitment efforts. To kick off its effort, it announced it has hired two veteran executives with stints at social media sites Tik Tok, Reddit, Spotify, and Twitter to bring those marketing messages to increasingly popular streaming platforms.

Paramount Advertising is offering to help smaller companies publicize their businesses to larger premium content audiences, and use digital streaming’s more precise distribution capabilities to focus ads on desired consumers. Paramount on Monday announced it hired Spotify executive Emily Huo and TikTok veteran Luke Peng, both of whom have extensive social media experience orchestrating ad services for midsized companies. 

It’s an acknowledgement that these clients are now considered important advertising priorities for national entertainment, news, and other content providers. This gives them leverage when considering marketing channels beyond email, SEO-powered web ads, blogs, and social media campaigns.

Paramount, the parent corporation of legacy media companies and formerly formidable content gatekeepers like CBS, VH1, MTV, and CW, is hustling to stay ahead of the competition and adapt its revenue models wherever possible. Its turn to smaller companies that could never have dreamed of doing national advertising using Madison Avenue agencies is a critical aspect of its strategy. 

The move follows Paramount’s recent launch of EyeQ, which bundles content from CBS Interactive, Viacom Video, and Pluto TV with simplified advertiser options and access to national audiences. 

As companies slash ad spend on legacy media–and remain uncertain about the benefits of newer platforms–content providers are looking to smaller enterprises as a huge, virtually untapped source of business to fill the gap with tailored offers.

“With 100m people a month engaging with our ad supported steaming services, Paramount Advertising is one of the few premium video companies that has the scale of inventory to genuinely open up to the huge SMB market,” Paramount Advertising chief operating officer Steve Ellis said in a LinkedIn post. “Paramount will offer companies in the most valuable segments of the SMB space proof that premium video viewed on a big tv screen-with non-skippable 30 sec ads, brand safe premium content, and no bots-can be more effective in driving outcomes than social video.”

Huo and Peng are tasked with setting up a simple, direct, and responsive advertising interface to allow smaller companies buy ad space on streaming or other content platforms they desire, and designate customer segments they want those messages reaching. 

That will likely involve enhancing the online Paramount Ad Manager. The service’s site describes itself as a “self-service buying platform optimized for local and small business that allows advertisers and agencies to create, manage, and track campaigns in real-time.” As such, it sounds a tad sexier than promotional text messages and spam to customer email lists.

Companies that previously had to settle for the online or social media messaging their budgets would afford can now run them linked to well-known premium content for what Paramount says is as little as $500 per campaign. That’s roughly the monthly price of higher-end, larger volume email marketing communication services, though popular providers like Constant Contact, Brevo, and Omnisend cost far less.

Perhaps more importantly, the targeting capabilities of digital transmission will allow smaller businesses to target specific viewer demographics. Moreover, those cohorts can be reached through both television-linked streaming services, and the ones viewers connect to directly through other devices. That not only means current customers watching Paramount content are more likely to see those ads, but those messages will be reaching far greater numbers of potential clients.

“Exponential growth in the advertiser base was always the promise of digital, where impressions are bought one at a time, and there is no minimum threshold for campaign investment,” said Paramount Advertising president John Halley announcing the arrival of Huo and Peng. “And while we have seen the advertiser floodgates open across EyeQ, we now seek to evolve and scale our relationships with the small and medium businesses (SMBs) that are fueling this expansion.”