Paramount+, introducing an ad-backed offering in Australia from June, is seeing strong interest from brands.
Beverley McGarvey, Paramount Australia & New Zealand's EVP, chief content officer and head of Paramount+, said a lot of clients have been "really interested" ever since Paramount first talked about the ad tier offering last year at its upfront.
"They're interested in the ad tier as a standalone offering, but also in the opportunity to really get involved and trade across all of our assets – linear, BVOD, FAST and now SVOD," she said.
Paramount's EVP and international GM of Paramount+, Marco Nobili, said from an advertising market standpoint, there is plenty of pent-up demand in the market.
"Advertisers really want to have premium inventory as well as access to customers that are attached to premium content that they haven't had access to before," he told AdNews.
"Despite the fact that it's a 27 million people market, Australia actually punches above its weight - people tend to take multiple streaming services and there is a good average revenue per user in the market, so we're very bullish about the next couple of years."
Samsung research found that two-thirds of all streaming time is spent with SVOD, with time spent in ad-funded streaming growing the fastest.
Samsung also found that brands advertising on streaming platforms are seen to be five times more modern and more innovative when compared to those in non-streaming environments, as well as three times more relevant, premium and unique.
A study from Magnite shows positive tailwinds too - among ad-supported viewers, 83% trust the ads they see within TV and streaming services, while 92% of ad-supported streamers view streaming content for more than 30 minutes each time they tune in and those who only watch ad-supported streaming are watching over 2 hours a day, on average.
More than half (55%) of non-streamers would likely use a new free or reduced-rate service with ads; 63% of paid, ad-free streamers are happy to see ads in order to lower their monthly streaming service bills; 77% of ad-supported streamers consider streaming services a must-have in their household; 48% said they are watching more streaming content than the year prior; and 69% of ad-supported streamers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that they engaged with across multiple devices.
With streaming giant Netflix having been in the ad-supported market in Australia for over a year - and media agencies taking advantage of the opportunity to connect brands with premium content - as well as both Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ releasing ad-supported options later in the year, Nobili said that at $6.99 AUD on a per month basis, Paramount+'s ad tier is one of the most affordable prices available.
"With cost of living and inflation, it’s a perfect moment for us to have an offer like that that can allow us to enlarge the market, so we actually feel very strongly about where we stand," Nobili said.
"We are quite uniquely positioned in order to go to market from an advertising standpoint. We've been selling on linear and on streaming with 10 Play now for quite a good amount of time and adding to that mix can only make us stronger and different from other players."
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