What the Skydance Merger Means for CTV Ads

Tomorrow, two of the biggest names in Hollywood become one company.

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery close their roughly $110 billion merger on Tuesday, October 6, and the combined company will be called Skydance, according to TechCrunch. It starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange that same day under the ticker SKYD, per Variety.

Paramount+ and HBO Max. CBS, CNN, TBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Food Network. Game of Thrones, Yellowstone, the DC Universe and The Lord of the Rings. All under one roof.

Most of the coverage is about studios, executives and who keeps their corner office.

I want to talk about the part that matters to anyone who buys TV advertising.

How We Got Here

This deal almost didn't happen this way.

Netflix had originally agreed to buy Warner Bros.' streaming and studio businesses before Paramount's bigger offer moved ahead, TechCrunch reports. Twelve states sued to block the merger, arguing it could hurt competition. A judge approved a settlement with those states last week.

According to Variety, the deal cleared regulators in 68 countries before that final green light.

So after a year of bidding wars, lawsuits and headlines, the biggest content combination in years is done. Now the work starts: turning two streamers into one.

And that's where advertisers come in.

One Streamer. About 200 Million Subscribers.

Back in March, David Ellison told investors that Paramount+ and HBO Max would be combined into one streaming service if the deal went through. On that call, he said the combined service would have about 200 million subscribers based on existing totals.

He also said, "HBO should stay HBO." HBO is likely to live as a sub-brand inside the bigger service, according to CNBC's reporting.

Here's the honest asterisk: nobody has announced a name, a price or a launch date for the combined streamer yet. The company hasn't said how its ad tier will work either. So anyone telling you exactly what the new CPMs look like is guessing.

But the direction is clear. And it's good news for CTV.

Dana White Already Called This

Back in June, we wrote about Dana White explaining the future of advertising better than any analyst. His point was simple: cable is fading, and streaming is re-bundling into a handful of giant global channels. Every one of them runs ads.

This merger is that prediction coming true in real time.

And White isn't quiet about it. Speaking after UFC 332, he called the merger "huge for us and everybody else on the platform, like 200 million more homes," as reported by BroBible. The UFC has a business relationship with Paramount, and he called them "the greatest television partners I've ever had."

When the man who runs the UFC gets this excited about reach, advertisers should pay attention.

Sports Just Got Stacked

This is the part I'd circle twice.

When the deal was announced, Paramount talked up bringing TNT Sports and CBS Sports together on one combined service. According to CNBC, that sports lineup would include March Madness, the NFL, MLB, the NHL, NASCAR, the French Open, The Masters and college football.

That's a lot of live, can't-miss, nobody-is-scrolling-their-phone television in one place.

We've said it before: live sports is the most premium inventory in CTV. Nobody half-watches a game in overtime. Put that next to HBO-level drama and you get a streamer where your ad sits next to content people actually lean in for.

What This Probably Means for Advertisers

Let me separate what's confirmed from what's my read.

Confirmed: two of the biggest premium streaming libraries are now owned by one company, with plans to merge them into one service. JB Perrette, who ran global streaming at Warner Bros. Discovery, is now co-chair and chief business officer of both Skydance TV and Skydance DTC, per Variety.

My read on what follows:

One bigger premium pool. Instead of two streamers with two audiences, you'll likely see one larger ad-supported audience to reach. That means more scale in a single buy.

Fewer doors to knock on. Two separate sellers become one company. That can make premium buying simpler. It can also mean more leverage on their side of the table when pricing gets set.

Pricing will move. When a service rebrands, repackages and resets its tiers, ad pricing usually gets revisited too. Which way it moves, nobody knows yet. Plan for it instead of reacting to it.

Frequency gets easier to manage, or easier to mess up. Today, a household that watches both HBO Max and Paramount+ is watching two separate services run by two separate companies. One platform has the chance to manage that household as one viewer. If it doesn't, unmanaged frequency becomes a brand tax.

None of that changes the core truth. The household is still on the couch. The biggest screen in the house is still on. The ad still creates demand that shows up in your sales.

The menu just got consolidated.

What Smart CTV Buyers Should Do Now

You don't need to wait for the new streamer's name to get ready.

Don't pause. Nothing about Tuesday's close stops your current CTV plan from working. The inventory you're buying today keeps running.

Revisit your mix. Premium inventory is consolidating. That makes it even more important to know which part of your budget goes to premium and which goes to everything else. If you haven't read it, start with the two-bucket rule for FAST vs. Premium.

Know your number before the rate card changes. If pricing resets, you want to know your cost per order by channel, by publisher and by geography. That's how you'll tell a good new deal from an expensive one.

Measure on your own data. Big platform changes are exactly when outside reporting gets messy. Your own orders, read against where your ads ran, don't care what a streamer is called. Triangulate and keep score yourself.

Watch the sports calendar. If live sports fits your brand, the new combined lineup is worth planning around early, before everyone else figures out the same thing.

The Final Take

Two giants just became one, and the TV in your customer's living room got a little more powerful.

One company. One planned streamer with about 200 million subscribers. HBO, CBS, CNN, TNT Sports and a stack of the biggest franchises in entertainment, all under one remote.

For CTV, that's not a threat. It's more proof that premium streaming is where the audience lives now, and where the money is heading.

The brands that win this shift won't be the ones waiting for a press release about the new name. They'll be the ones who already know what their CTV dollars return, so when the new menu shows up, they order fast and order right.

That's how we plan every campaign at CS & Co. It's built into the CS Method™. Want to know where premium CTV fits in your plan? Find out if CTV is a fit.

Cory Poccia
CEO, CS & Co. Marketing Studio™

Two Giants, One Remote: What the Skydance Merger Means for Your CTV Ads