David Ellison said Pluto TV will relaunch on pluto tv through the Paramount Plus platform this summer, giving Paramount a single place to push its free, ad-supported service. In a letter to shareholders, he called it “the most-significant update in a decade.”
Ellison's Summer Reset
Paramount’s free service still does not require a subscription or a login to watch its hundreds of channels and thousands of on-demand shows and movies. More than two-thirds of Pluto TV’s U.S. users are now registered with an account, and Ellison said that level is up 60 percent year over year.
The company is also pushing registration harder because it wants more users inside a system it can personalize and monetize more tightly. That is a practical shift, not a cosmetic one: the streaming company is steering attention toward the parts of Pluto TV that can be tracked, targeted, and promoted more directly.
VOD Takes Priority
Paramount sees more value in Pluto TV’s video on demand library than in its original curated collection of linear streaming channels. Ellison said, “We believe (VOD content) presents a better overall consumer experience and is more valuable for advertisers given the intent associated with VOD.”
Video on demand hours per user are already up 60 percent year over year. That is the operational proof behind the move: Paramount is shifting Pluto TV’s emphasis toward the behavior that appears to be growing fastest, while giving advertisers a format with stronger user intent.
2019 Deal, 2024 Pressure
Viacom acquired Pluto TV in 2019, and Paramount’s streaming platforms accounted for slightly more than 2 percent of all time spent with TV in February, according to Nielsen’s most recent The Gauge report. Nielsen had not yet released similar data for March and April at the time of the report.
The unresolved point is whether Pluto TV and Paramount Plus will remain separate apps for the foreseeable future. For users, the immediate change is less about a new subscription and more about where the service lives, how often it nudges account creation, and how aggressively Paramount surfaces on demand viewing inside its own platform stack.
