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As viewers make tough choices about their SVOD subscriptions, AVOD “becomes a critical part of your bundle,” says Pluto TV CEO Tom Ryan.ĪVOD is coming into its own after several years of struggle, as the companies attempted to raise money at a time when the entire industry seemed convinced that its future would revolve solely around SVOD.

The idea that households will be subscribing to most of the new SVOD offerings “is just ludicrous,” adds Tubi CEO Farhad Massoudi. “For a long time, the industry was all gravitating toward SVOD, and nobody was running the math to realize consumers can’t afford any more than they spend on TV today,” says Scott Rosenberg, svp, gm of platform business, Roku. The AVOD platforms also stand to benefit from the upcoming SVOD glut: Most industry experts expect that consumers will only subscribe to two or three SVOD services, even as Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Discovery and Disney enter that market over the next year. Marketers are looking for additional outlets to capitalize on the decline in linear viewership.” That will right-size itself over time,” just as it did in the mobile space. Currently, says Cohen, “OTT represents something like 14 or 15 percent of an average consumer’s video diet, yet it’s under 5 percent of spend. While that is a drop in the bucket compared to the $70 billion TV advertising market, it’s a rapid growth area-especially as companies like Viacom begin deploying their massive ad sales forces. Last year, OTT ad spending topped $2.7 billion, a 54 percent increase over the previous year, according to Magna Global’s U.S. These are large-scale, full-sight, sound and motion opportunities with good targeting and good measurement.” “Marketers are starting to sit up and take notice. The velocity in the AVOD space “is an acknowledgment that OTT is really coming into its own,” says David Cohen, president, North America, Magna Global. AVOD also provides advertisers a long-awaited opportunity to secure a streaming toehold while reaching two elusive audiences: the adult 18-34 demo (which makes up half of Pluto’s audience) and cord-cutters (Xumo says 70 percent of its users are cord-cutters or “light TV” viewers). Cable subscribers have joined the party, too: Tubi became the first AVOD outlet added to Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Cox Contour set-top boxes.
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And with cord-cutters and cord-nevers only able to afford subscriptions to a small number of SVOD services, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, AVOD outlets-which now enjoy prominent placement on smart TVs and connected TV devices-have established themselves as a frictionless and free way to expand their viewing options.


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The largest AVOD outlets-including Pluto TV, Xumo and Tubi-now attract as many as 12 million users each month, and boast libraries of more than 10,000 movie and TV episodes. That’s because it’s the biggest spotlight yet for AVOD (advertising video on demand), which has been quietly, yet rapidly, gaining momentum in the OTT space over the past year.
