Paramount Skydance isn’t waiting around for its planned merger with Warner Bros. Discovery to bolster its flagship streaming service.
Paramount’s streaming leaders have told employees that they’re planning major upgrades to Paramount+ in the coming weeks.
An internal presentation, which was unveiled during a streaming town hall this week and viewed by Business Insider, shows “Product Priority Highlights” for Paramount’s streaming business this quarter, including:
- Testing micro dramas, which are soapy shows with bite-sized vertical episodes, on the Paramount+ mobile app
- Creating a “Free Front Porch” that will allow access to movies and shows without a Paramount+ subscription
- Adding vertical video podcast segments, which executives see as a growth opportunity
- Expanding multiview, which has been a priority, as Business Insider reported in January
- Continuing to develop an interactive viewing experience for live events like UFC fights, including stats and highlights in the app
- Personalizing artwork for shows and movies in Paramount+
Paramount is also cooking up other features like new interactive ad formats, which it thinks will better serve audiences and advertisers.
These initiatives are part of Paramount CEO David Ellison’s plan to improve the tech of a 114-year-old media company that trails Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney in streaming subscribers. Buying WBD would help Paramount catch up quickly and give it over 200 million streaming customers, the company has said.
A supercharged Paramount+ combined with HBO Max would make Ellison’s company a far bigger player in the ultra-competitive streaming wars.
In the meantime, Paramount isn’t sitting on its hands, especially since the Paramount-WBD merger is on pause following an antitrust lawsuit from 12 states.
Below are more details on Paramount’s top streaming projects:
Micro dramas
Paramount+ is testing micro dramas in hopes of building “mobile daily habits at scale” and “recalibrating consumption behavior” by training viewers to make its phone app a destination during the day, even if they only have a few minutes to spare.
Paramount’s namesake streamer added a short-form video feed this spring, following in the footsteps of Netflix, Disney+, and Peacock (which has also moved into both original and licensed micro dramas).
Free tier
Paramount is planning to expand free access to shows and movies on its flagship streamer through a feature dubbed the “free front porch.”
This will let anyone browse the Paramount+ app and sample content before subscribing, though they’ll need to first create a free account.
There are two overarching strategic goals for the free tier: bring new users to Paramount+, so they form habits and eventually subscribe, and earn more ad revenue from viewers, even if they never pay directly.
Adding free content to Paramount+ would make it more like Pluto TV, which is Paramount’s fully free streamer. Ellison’s company is in the process of putting those streamers on the same tech platform and is creating a unified identity for users to easily log in across the apps.
Video podcasts
While Paramount+ already has video podcasts, it’s adding vertical podcast clips to its app as part of its short-form strategy designed to “drive engagement and session depth,” according to the presentation.
Streaming product EVP Dan Reich told staffers that they’re trying to “get more of the video podcasts” and “slice those up into segments for us to surface” in its short-form feed, Business Insider reported in May.
Video podcasts can boost “long-form discovery” and “viewing itself,” Reich had said.
Paramount is focused on adding a podcast category to its app and podcast clips from shows it already has, including those from CBS News and CBS Sports. The presentation said it’s “extending the clip infrastructure to make podcast episodes discoverable.”
“That is a competitive advantage for us against companies like Netflix that don’t have that volume of content,” Reich said of podcast clips in May.
Multiview for sports
Paramount+ is strengthening the multiview feature on its TV app by adding customization and personalization elements. Multiview has been popular on services like YouTube TV and has “proven demand” on Paramount+, the presentation said.
Users will soon get more control over which sports games they’re seeing with a customizable “start card” for the multiview quad box. They’ll also be able to choose which game’s audio is playing.
Interactive viewing experience
Paramount is also bolstering its sports viewing experience on its app with interactive elements like stats and highlights that are viewable alongside the game or match.
This feature, which has come online in recent weeks, lets users “stream real-time stats in live matches to keep fans informed” and “support in-stream highlights, letting viewers relive key moments instantly,” the presentation said.
The UFC, which Paramount has the exclusive rights to in the US, is the first to get this treatment, though the presentation said these interactive elements “will expand to more sports.”
Personalized artwork
The product priorities slide said that Paramount+ plans to “expand personalization” through artwork in its app, referring to thumbnails for shows and movies.
Paramount+ has long run A/B tests on thumbnails, an industry-standard practice among streamers.
A person familiar with this initiative described it as an “incremental” enhancement.
New ad formats
Interactive ads weren’t listed as a “top” third-quarter priority for Paramount+, but the presentation said the company hopes they’ll “deliver better outcomes for advertisers and better experiences for viewers.”
Paramount wants to have “intelligent ad selection” and for ads on its streamer to be in “lean-in formats” that connect with audiences, the presentation said.
One slide showed thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons on an ad, which would let viewers give feedback on the ad.
Its goal is to “invest in premium, interactive ad experiences to generate richer signals and viewer engagement” and for advertisers to build awareness for their brands while generating sales.
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