Paramount Finishes Upfront Ahead of Cannes Lions With High Single-Digit CPM Gains

Paramount is joining The CW across the upfront finish line. The company is "virtually done" with upfront negotiations, just ahead of Cannes Lions next week, becoming the second upfront week presenter to wrap talks this year, a source familiar with the matter told Adweek. According to the source, there was strong demand and pricing across Paramount's entire portfolio, with CPM (cost per thousand viewers reached) increases in the high single digits, echoing what Bob Bakish, Paramount Global’s president and CEO, promised on Tuesday during Credit Suisse's communications conference. The CPM increases align with those reported by NBCUniversal and Fox, which said earlier this week they were also close to wrapping negotiations. However, only The CW and now Paramount have said they've finished talks. Jo Ann Ross on Trying to Deliver Paramount’s First In-Person Upfront in 60 Minutes Volume increased across platforms, with digital volume seeing material gains. Paramount's EyeQ ad sales platform, which has more than 80 million full-episode monthly viewers from Paramount+ and AVOD service Pluto TV, drove expanded investment. Additionally, the content slate, including event tentpoles, franchises, CBS’ new fall primetime lineup and the NFL schedule, resonated with clients. Volume was also up in every daypart for CBS. Other highlights include significant commitments and accelerated adoption of audience-based buying and convergent deal structures with the Vantage ad targeting platform and clients leaning into Paramount as a partner in serving and reaching diverse audiences. In terms of categories, travel and entertainment continued to rebound and grow. There was also healthy growth in pharma, DTC, banks and household/personal care. During the Credit Suisse conference, Bakish said Paramount was 80-90% done with negotiations and had “real engagement” on the agency side for its upfront, with CPM increases across both digital and cable. "We’re delivering high singles on both, and that’s a reflection of the quality of our product, but also the way we’re bringing it to market,” Bakish said. Last year, Paramount, then ViacomCBS, claimed to have historic pricing in the upfront, though the company didn't provide specifics about CPM or volume increases. Yellowstone among upfront priorities At Paramount's first in-person upfront since 2019’s Viacom-CBS merger, the company focused on its EyeQ platform and its streaming offerings, including Paramount+, which has grown to 40 million subscribers, and Pluto TV. The ad-supported streamer now reaches 68 million global active users monthly and has 333 custom channels. Paramount currently has around 62.4 million total subscribers across its platforms and plans to reach 100 million DTC subscribers by the end of 2024. "We are just thrilled to have this. It’s a great offering. We can control reach. We can control frequency. The content bundles with EyeQ bring new scale and brand impact. All the keywords clients are looking at when they’re developing their KPIs," Jo Ann Ross, Paramount’s president and chief advertising revenue officer, U.S. advertising sales, told Adweek in May. Ross gave Adweek an overview of the company's priorities following Paramount's upfront presentation, saying the company is looking to build off of Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone universe with its new shows and wants to work with clients to better understand what they're looking for. "We want to be able to do bespoke packages if needed, if asked for. And the good thing about that, or the thing that makes us feel very confident that we’ll be able to build off of the opportunities that we’ve offered with Yellowstone, is that we own so much of the IP that you see across our portfolio. They will feature, if clients want, integrated marketing that’s customized or bespoke. Obviously, they’ll have time for their commercials there, but we’ll also be able to do EyeQ packages or genres fitting to that. So more to come on that," Ross said.