Paramount+ Plans Free Content to Compete with Its Free Service Pluto TV
KEY POINTS
- •Paramount+ CEO David Ellison and his team unveiled plans in January focused on adding short-form videos and interactive shopping.
- •Their strategy involves merging technology stacks of Paramount+, Pluto TV, and BET+ to improve efficiency and content delivery.
- •Despite profitability, Paramount+ trails Netflix and Disney in users and engagement, prompting innovative yet convoluted product tests.
In a plot twist dreamt up by corporate committee purgatory, Paramount CEO David Ellison is spearheading a plan to flood Paramount+—the streamer with a modest 79 million subscribers that still chokes on Netflix's 325 million—with free content, despite already owning the ad-supported Pluto TV. Mid-January emails reveal a dizzying array of Q1 priorities: short-form clips, sports multiview toggles for broadcasting simultaneous UFC and NFL events, and a bizarre 'Shop the Scene' interactive shopping tool that sounds like a desperate Tinder for consumers and brands. Meanwhile, tech convergence efforts aim to finally unify Paramount+, Pluto TV, and BET+ onto one platform after decades of cobbled tech duct tape from the CBS All Access era. All of it comes amidst Ellison’s grand chess match to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, where apparently streaming wars are fought with A/B tests on registration walls and dynamic ad inserts instead of actual swords.
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When you have a free streamer but want to compete by making your paid streamer free too, you know the streaming wars have officially become Payless ShoeSource 2.0.
Paramount+ adding free content to compete with Pluto TV is like selling bottled water next to a free water fountain in a desert.
Ellison’s plan boils down to 'if you can’t beat free, join free—on a paid service with ads and confusion!'
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 1/29/2026 | Author: James Faris
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