Paramount CEO sees Q4 ad business ‘a bit below’ Q3

Asked during the UBS Global TMT Conference about what he is seeing in the ad market and some of the macro drivers that affecting the business from an advertising standpoint, Paramount CEO Robert Bakish replied: "So let me start with, we love the ad business. It’s an extraordinary business. It’s a way to obviously create significant incremental monetization around your investments. But that said, — the current market is challenging. And we’re in it every day, and we see it, and that challenge is both on the linear side and on the digital side, again, no surprise as probably what you heard yesterday, I didn’t actually look at Jeff’s remarks. But given that on our third quarter call, we talked about our fourth quarter performance being in line with the third quarter. And again, as we’ve transacted in the market, as we’ve seen the state of the scatter market, as we look to our international networks, which are impacted by the economy but also by what’s going on in the FX on exchange rate side, we do now see the fourth quarter coming in a bit below the third quarter. And as we have navigated leading into this point, we had looked for some improvement in certain sectors. We haven’t seen that. But nonetheless, again, I go back to the main point, we love the ad business, point one. Point 2 is while challenging, advertising is cyclical. I’ve managed through a number of these cycles as recently as through the beginning of the decade. This too is a cycle. This too will turn. The only question is when — and not being an economist, I can’t tell you exactly when, but I know for sure it will turn. And when it does, you really see the power of the portfolio of assets that we have with the #1 broadcast network in the United States, which is gaining share the #1 fast service in the United States, Pluto TV, which continues to do extremely well on the MAU and engagement side. We’ve got a cable network portfolio at scale, which leads serving many specialized audiences. And of course, Paramount+, which from day 1, had an ad-supported tier which is a material part of the service and provides access to very high-quality reach for advertisers."