Paramount Ad Chief on Trump’s Tariffs Hitting Upfronts: ‘Everything Continues to Be Redefined and Fluctuating’

President Donald Trump’s continuously changing tariff policies have introduced “a tenor of uncertainty” going into this month’s upfronts presentations, Paramount advertising president John Halley told TheWrap, complicating an already high-stakes process involving billions of dollars in ad commitments.

Multiple ad buyers have previously said they were taking a “wait and see” approach to the 2025-26 season, emphasizing how the economic instability caused by Trump’s actions could potentially add to the pressure faced by the declining linear TV business, which has already watched ad dollars shifting towards streaming services and tech giants like Amazon and YouTube.

Those forces were at work before Trump created chaos among Hollywood giants this week, specifically with talk of imposing tariffs on films produced internationally while providing no insight into the mechanics of that or the TV side of the business.

When asked about what the media giant is experiencing, Halley said advertisers’ plans remain “all over the place” and are ultimately dependent on what each brand, agency and category is looking for.

“Everyone involved in this landscape that is defined by tariff fluctuations, inflation, regulatory uncertainty and shifting go to market are all grappling with that in a time period where we’re talking about longer-term commitments. Everything continues to be redefined and fluctuating,” he explained. “It’s not happening in unity, it’s a bunch of individual assessments going on that are impacting individual advertisers within the individual marketplaces.”

In addition to tariffs, Paramount is facing regulatory uncertainty as its pending $8 billion merger with Skydance Media awaits approval from the FCC due to a required transfer of broadcast licenses. The deal, which was initially expected to close on April 7, recently triggered its first 90-day extension.

“I think there’s curiosity about it, obviously, but it doesn’t impact our discussions in the short term,” Halley said. “Advertisers want to invest in media assets to drive their businesses, and who owns the company is not relevant to that.”

Advertisers prioritizing streaming, live events and sports

Unlike its competitors, Paramount opted to scrap its traditional upfront presentation in favor of smaller, more intimate gatherings with its advertising clients and their ad agency partners — a move that’s been beneficial for the company in the current environment.

“This is a very good year to be having two-way conversations and be doing our upfront presentations in rooms where there’s a lot of air and it’s not linear and bombastic. There’s a lot of conversation back and forth,” Halley said. “We’ve been able to focus and listen in a very constructive way to what our clients and agency partners are telling us.”

Paramount is doing a total of nine events with advertisers this upfront season, including Chicago and Los Angeles, with the remaining seven in New York.

Halley said the events were unlike upfronts week, “where people have to worry about getting in and saving seats and that highly impersonal cattle call,” adding that there has been “a lot of appreciation for our format,” allowing the sales team to spend more time with its most important buyers.

Citing “strong demand” across Paramount’s portfolio, Halley said advertisers understand streaming is a “central tactic to brand building, targeting and performance.” He also said live events such as the Grammy Awards and the VMAs remain a “big-time priority” as brands look to stay culturally relevant and “cut through saturation in a very crowded media marketplace,” especially with Gen Z and Millennial audiences.

Halley also highlighted Paramount’s sports portfolio with the NFL, college football, March Madness, the PGA Tour, the Masters and UEFA.

Measurable impact

Beyond the focus on content, Halley emphasized that advertisers are scrutinizing every dollar they’re spending and demanding “measurable impact.”

In order to help advertisers measure their spending decisions’ performance, Paramount launched a new Outcomes at Scale platform in partnership with iSpot.tv to offer more transparency into consumers’ responses to ads. It will allow brands to see which programs, day parts and audience segments generate the best response to ad campaigns, while providing an almost immediate view into how ad impressions connect to a brand’s key sales-performance metrics, such as store visits, online activity, ticket purchases and more. 

“The degree to which you can report not just on impression delivery but also engagement metrics is very, very important to assure your place in advertisers’ process,” he said. “We’re very well positioned, given our investments in content, our investments in scale and our investments in measurement to differentiate ourselves and stand out in this marketplace.”

Paramount reaches a total of 115 million ad-supported viewers per month across its streaming footprint, half of which are Gen Z and millennials, and 165 million unique viewers per month on broadcast and cable. Together, Paramount accounts for 9% of all U.S. viewing.

Per Nielsen, ad-supported platforms across the media landscape accounted for 72.4% of TV viewing in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 27.6% for ad-free platforms. Cable and broadcast made up roughly 28.9% and 28.7% of ad-supported viewing, respectively, while streaming accounted for the remaining 42.4%.

“Certainly, the amount of viewing share in ad-supported environments has increased notably over the last couple of years. It’s very, very important in those kinds of environments to really differentiate yourself around content, which is what we’re doing,” Halley said. “The product itself is easier for buyers to understand. They know what they’re getting. There are very, very few places with the reach and the brand safety and the impact of our digital properties.”

Paramount recently renewed its measurement partnership with Nielsen following a four-month standoff in contract negotiations, as well as with its partner during the dark period, VideoAmp. Despite its new agreement with Nielsen, Halley emphasized the company’s views on a “multi-currency future” remain unchanged and that Nielsen’s move to big data panel measurement will come with “marketplace turbulence.”

“People tend to conflate our contractual dust up and resolution with a change in point of view of the currency marketplace and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said. “We really do see a place for multiple players.”

“We have really built ourselves to be as facile and inter-operable as we can possibly be,” he continued. “I think that Nielsen’s move into a big data product portends a lot of evolution in the measurement space. It’s not just about change. It’s about bringing better fidelity and something that is closer to the truth, so that buyers can understand the value of our products in a better way.”

The post Paramount Ad Chief on Trump’s Tariffs Hitting Upfronts: ‘Everything Continues to Be Redefined and Fluctuating’ appeared first on TheWrap.