Olivier Jollet on Pluto TV’s Gains

Olivier Jollet, executive VP and international general manager at Pluto TV, delivered a keynote at the FAST Festival on what’s driving viewership gains at the Paramount-owned AVOD service.

Jollet took part in a keynote conversation with World Screen’s Anna Carugati that you can view in its entirety here on the growth of the service since its U.S. launch in 2014, a time when “the whole TV business was moving toward an SVOD-only future,” Jollet said.

The conventional wisdom at the time, Jollet said, was that media consumption was headed toward an ad-free, on-demand future. Pluto TV had a different approach, believing that “well-curated linear channels will be appealing as TV moves to the internet.”

Consumers don’t want to waste time trawling for on-demand content they want to watch, he noted. “Pluto was there to try to solve the paradox of choice.” Advertising, meanwhile, “has funded so much of the best TV content over the decades, so why should it completely go away?” Plus, “free is a tremendously attractive price to viewers.”

Betting big on AVOD early has paid off for Pluto TV, which is live in 35 markets, reaching 80 million users.

Carugati asked Jollet about Pluto TV’s approach to expansion as it seeks out new territories to enter. The platform has taken a well-thought-through strategy for international expansion, beginning in the U.K. before extending to other key European markets and Latin America. The key, he said, is to think local.

“You need to make sure that your content offering resonates well with the audience. In every single market, when we go live, we are tailoring our market approach. We’re not going with the same content, channels or marketing messages. We’re trying obviously to apply a global strategy, but we are localized.”

Beyond access to a deep well of local content, a territory ripe for Pluto TV expansion also needs to have a digital ad market that is of size and scaleable, Jollet said. Partnerships are also crucial, Jollet said, referencing pacts with Viaplay in the Nordics and Corus Entertainment in Canada. Those moves illustrate how “a leading local player and an international player like Pluto TV can join forces to build a leading free streaming destination in the market.”

While all markets are different, with varying degrees of free-TV offerings for consumers, interest in FAST crosses geographical boundaries for several reasons, Jollet explained, including the lean-back experience, “ease of use and the content bandwidth you can have. At a time when the traditional TV channels are going more mainstream because of the way of monetizing, FAST can serve specific audiences, even niche audiences that are underserved by traditional television, but also underserved by the SVOD services.”

Curation is also paramount, Jollet noted. “This mix of expertise in content and data is important.”

Pluto TV can also reach younger audiences that are moving away from traditional television. “That makes a pretty successful formula across all markets.”

Jollet then discussed the sophistication of the digital ad markets in the international markets he oversees. “We all need to acknowledge that the U.S. market is way more advanced than most other territories. The U.S. is not only a very advanced ad market, but it is also the biggest ad market in the world and a great market for FAST. But a lot of the markets are catching up with the U.S. The programmatic advertising adoption is booming. The U.K., GSA, France and Canada are probably two to three years behind the U.S. but are catching up at a speedy pace. I expect those markets to be more or less at the same level quite quickly. It means a brilliant future for digital advertising in those territories.”

On the relationship between Pluto TV and the sister SVOD service Paramount+, Jollet noted: “We have the chance to have a premium offering with franchises and IP and original content behind the paywall with Paramount+, and we have Pluto TV, which is serving a different audience. We’re trying to connect the dots between the two platforms. We did a lot of teasing of new episodes, like two episodes for free on Pluto TV and trying to funnel users to Paramount+, and vice versa. Users who are churning from Paramount+ are redirected to Pluto TV.”

Paramount’s dual-approach streaming strategy is also working because of the power of the company’s brands and its broadcast TV footprint that allows for synergies across the group. For example, Gran Hermano, on Paramount-owned Telefe in Argentina and Chilevision in Chile, has a 24/7 channel exclusive to Pluto TV. “We build different content propositions for different audiences across our assets within Paramount.”

The majority of the Pluto TV slate is library fare, Jollet noted. “We have more than 450 partners we work with globally, providing amazing library content, either as a single-IP channel, but also curating some of that library content into movie or documentary channels. It’s content that people are familiar with. It’s easy watching content.”

There is no plan to commission new content for Pluto TV, with Jollet noting that the channels themselves, in their curation, are original propositions, and the service has been “working on getting exclusive content on the platform.” For example, in Sweden, season 15 of Paradise Hotel was exclusive on Pluto TV via its alliance with Viaplay. “And the way we work with licensors is certain content is non-exclusive and certain content is exclusive to Pluto TV.”

On the map ahead for Pluto TV, Jollet noted, “FAST is about to boom in all the key markets,” boding well for revenue and audience gains. “The key to success is ensuring you have strong distribution, so users can find Pluto TV where they usually use the streaming services. A lot of our strategy is scaling the existing markets. We launched recently in Canada. The next market we will launch is Australia,” where Pluto TV will roll out a slate of FAST channels on 10Play, Network Ten’s BVOD service.