Paramount+ Marketing Push Will Rely Heavily on ViacomCBS Networks

The streaming wars have led to a rush in new movie and TV production, and billions of dollars in spending on content. Marketing budgets are rising, too, as media rivals seek to raise consumer awareness of new services in a landscape dominated by Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Walt Disney Co. ’s rapidly growing Disney+.

Paramount+, named after the famed movie studio owned by ViacomCBS, will launch in the U.S. on March 4. It will be an expanded and rebranded version of the existing CBS All Access streaming service, giving it a jump on services that start from scratch. ViacomCBS aims to make Paramount+ stand out by promoting its range of content, including live sports, news, movies and TV shows.

ViacomCBS will also exploit a key advantage media giants have over their technology competitors: TV and digital empires with promotional ad inventory, celebrity talent and intellectual property at the ready.

The AFC Championship and the Super Bowl, for example, will air on CBS, the flagship broadcast network of ViacomCBS. A series of ads in and bookended by the games will feature talent and characters from the ViacomCBS portfolio, such as CBS late-night host James Corden and Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer, on a journey to reach “Paramount Mountain.”

The broader campaign will total more than 6,000 spots airing across the company’s TV networks, which also include MTV, BET, CMT and Comedy Central. The campaign will use promotional inventory reserved for so-called house ads instead of commercial ad time sold to other marketers, said Josh Line, executive vice president and chief brand officer at ViacomCBS.

The extensive TV effort will be complemented by ads running on ViacomCBS’ digital platforms, such as the free streaming service Pluto TV, and social channels.

One of the top priorities for ViacomCBS following the merger was to establish a system for companywide marketing efforts making use of an expanded portfolio of assets, Mr. Line said. This included creating a group of 17 top marketing executives overseeing a committee of 65 employees, including media planners and social-media staffers, meeting regularly.

“We have been developing and refining our operational model on how to do it for this moment,” Mr. Line said.

Making use of owned assets has become a familiar model for the streaming services of media conglomerates as they try to take on the likes of Netflix, which just topped 200 million subscribers.

Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, for example, last year planned to spend more than twice as much promoting its Peacock service on its own channels and platforms than outside of its own properties. Ads and promotional graphics for Disney+ are frequently shown on Disney siblings ABC and ESPN.

“All the TV companies do that—and they have that ability, which Netflix doesn’t,” said Ross Benes, senior analyst at research firm eMarketer. “They’ll still drop money elsewhere, but they have so much I.P. (intellectual property) between a combined Viacom and CBS, they can get more marketing support out of that than by dropping $200 million on other channels.”

ViacomCBS has said it would also advertise on properties it doesn’t own, including print, digital, streaming and out-of-home media.

ViacomCBS executives declined to say how much the company plans to spend marketing Paramount+ this year, but said outlays would be at levels competitive with rivals. Media giants including Comcast and AT&T Inc. budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars to promote their streaming services in 2020. Netflix, meanwhile, spent more than $2.2 billion on marketing last year.

ViacomCBS had 17.9 million domestic subscribers across its paid streaming services including CBS All Access and Showtime at the end of its third quarter last year, up 72% from a year earlier, according to the company. Subscribers were split roughly evenly between CBS All Access and Showtime, a person familiar with the matter said.

Disney+ grew to 86.8 million subscribers by December 2020 after its November 2019 launch, but several newer streaming services, including Peacock, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and Discovery Inc.’s Discovery+ have since joined the battle for consumers’ time and money.

“[ViacomCBS] has had a head start on Peacock and Discovery+,” Mr. Benes said. “I don’t see them skyrocketing the way Disney did with Disney+, but even being the fourth-most successful streaming service would still mean a lot of viewers and subscribers.”

ViacomCBS’ experience in building out CBS All Access, Showtime and other subscription services underscores it knows how to attract new subscribers and keep existing ones, said Domenic DiMeglio, executive vice president, head of operations and chief marketing officer for Paramount+.

“You’re marketing to and acquiring subscribers day in and day out,” he said.

Write to Sahil Patel at [email protected]