Paramount Australia is breaking with convention by turning its back on a glitzy mass upfront event in favour of more intimate meetings with media buyers.
The network, with Channel 10 and 10 Play, is going its own way with an upfront structure, setting up small briefings over several days, rather than a big reveal event with lights, action and stars.
“This year’s intimate Upfront presentations facilitates greater connections and conversations with our partners and further strengthens our relationships with agencies and clients on the ground," says a Paramount Australia spokesperson.
Industry insiders said they had not seen small meetings for more than a decade.
However, these intimate sessions are said to be similar to those held by CBS/Paramount in the US.
Today and tomorrow (Wednesday) are reserved for a series of meetings in Sydney with four to five media buyers in each.
Representatives of the big holding companies appear to be getting in first, according to agencies AdNews spoke to.
Then on to other states for meetings over two weeks. One media buyer in Melbourne said he was booked in for Friday but wasn't sure he would attend.
Paramount’s upfront pitch, as positioned to a media briefing this morning, is a raft of new content for 2024 with innovation in targeting and measuring advertising.
The local Australian arm of Paramount also announced that it is running, for its US parent, a project testing shoppable viewing via the hit program Australian Survivor.
“We've really tasked ourselves with focusing on attribution and measurement,” Chief sales officer Rod Prosser told AdNews.
“We bring to the market next year a suite of measurement products to prove Paramount's performance, the role we play”
Shoppable, a buzz round the world for its promise of delivering new revenue to networks, is being touted as a first for Paramount globally but for the Australian market.
The shoppable TV pilot will provide valuable insights on the technology before rolling out to other international markets in Paramount’s global business.
“We are fortunate enough to be a market that is quite progressed in addressable advertising, which opened up an opportunity within our global business for us to run a proof of concept around shoppable,” says Prosser.
“We will work with a major global brand, which we can't we can't talk to just yet.”
In partnership with Innovid, Paramount is extending dynamic video capabilities to the BrandBOOST ad product suite, offering personalisation and relevancy at scale.
This will integrate data triggers such as time of day, day of week, weather and location, to automatically generate real-time and relevant creative content.
Paramount is also releasing a suite of measurement products to be launched in 2024.
The network says the four tools will ensure marketers can validate and amplify the impact of connected TV (CTV) advertising within their entire marketing mix.
On the content side, Paramount is going hard over Summer.
Daniel Monaghan, senior vice president, content & programming at Paramount Australia & New Zealand, says the network will have alternatives to sport.
“We've got a re-energised summer,” he told AdNews.
“From January next year, we've announced Gladiators, a big broad family entertainment show, to compete against sports.
“It’s something you can sit down and watch with the kids. It's all shot and done and looking amazing.
“We have a re-energized early evening schedule where we are launching Deal or No Deal at 6pm. We're bridging that gap now between the news and 630 when the project starts, just to give a great alternative to what our competitors have.
“We've had game shows there in the past, a great success, and Deal or No Deal is one of the biggest brands that you can get for that period.”
Among the content is Gladiators, to return to Australian screens early in the new year, hosted by Liz Ellis and Beau Ryan.
The latest crop of castaways will once again be at each other’s throats when Australian Survivor: Titans v Rebels lands back on the beaches of Samoa.
And 2024, Paramount is celebrating a 10th season of the Logie-winning I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!
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