Why Choose Paramount Ads Manager Over a DSP

Connected TV isn’t just growing—now, it’s how most households watch TV.

According to recent viewership trends, over 80% of U.S. homes stream content through a CTV device. And ad spend has surged accordingly.

Demand-side platforms are a common approach for many marketers dipping their toes into this space—a demand-side platform that automates access to ad inventory across a range of streaming apps, publishers, and devices.

But while DSPs offer reach and flexibility, some come with tradeoffs: mixed content quality, limited transparency, and extra steps to ensure things like brand safety, measurement, and creative are handled properly.

Paramount Ads Manager offers a more direct route.

Instead of going through intermediaries, advertisers can access premium streaming inventory from Paramount properties directly, along with simpler pricing, real support, and built-in tools for targeting, creative, and measurement.

In this post, we’ll break down how it compares across:

• Inventory quality and brand safety
• Placement visibility
• Creative tools and support
• Measurement and attribution
• Pricing model and CPM efficiency

Let’s take a closer look.

What Sets Paramount Ads Manager Apart?

When you compare the core features of Paramount Ads Manager to a typical DSP, a number of key differences stand out.

Content Inventory & Brand Safety

With Paramount Ads Manager, you're buying ad space straight from the content owners themselves—Paramount.

Simple enough. But that also means your placements appear within brand-safe shows across Paramount—e.g., Paramount+, Pluto TV, CBS, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, and more. You won’t need to worry about third-party resellers or navigating long-tail inventory, or the kind of content your ad might end up alongside.

DSPs, by contrast, provide content from a wide range of publishers and supply-side platforms. While that can offer advertisers a broader audience, it often includes a mix of premium and lower-tier content. And, frankly, you may not always have as much control over where your brand appears and what other brands are featured alongside yours.

Paramount Ads Manager removes that concern from the equation entirely.

Content Visibility

Not all ad impressions are created equal. With Paramount Ads Manager, your ads run in full-screen, non-skippable environments where viewers are actively engaged—usually, on an actual television. Completion rates with Paramount Ads Manager tend to stay high—often north of 96%—largely thanks to this context.

Aside from being non-skippable, our viewers watch for longer amounts of time. As an example, our Paramount+ viewers have a higher average viewership time of 101 mins/visit compared to CTV average of 94 mins, meaning that they're engaging longer. (Source: CTV - Nielsen R&F Time Period Report, Jan. 2025-March 2025)

That’s not always the case with DSPs. Campaigns can end up scattered across a wider range of environments—mobile apps, browser windows, or even user-generated content. Some placements might be skippable. Others might be running in the background while someone scrolls TikTok. It all depends on the sourcing for your inventory—which can make it harder to predict how your ad will actually land.

Creative Support

Just because a campaign is labeled “CTV” doesn’t mean every impression pops up on a television screen.

With Paramount Ads Manager, however, most of your ads (around 85%) show up where you'd want them to—on a TV, and not on a mobile or desktop device. That can lead to some particularly effective outcomes, including extremely high video completion rates (over 96%).

That can be a tougher bet with DSPs. It’s more likely to appear in distracting contexts—yes, on TVs, but also more likely on phones, browsers, desktops, or even buried amid unrelated content. Simply put: you have much less control over where your ad will be featured.

*Some *placements might be solid. Others will feel like an afterthought. It really depends on the publisher, the settings, and how the DSPs retrieve content from the supply chain.

In short? If you're aiming for consistent delivery in high-quality, high-attention environments, visibility and placement control are everything.

Related: OTT & CTV Advertising Example: Breaking Down a High Performer

Measurement

One of the more overlooked differences between platforms is what happens after your ad runs.

With Paramount Ads Manager, measurement is baked into each step of the process. For example, every campaign includes a free tracking pixel that doesn’t just collect views and clicks, but also site visits, purchases, and leads—all without stitching together third-party tools or platforms. Our platform can also track in-person visits that can be attributed back to your CTV ad, making the connection between digital viewing and physical action.

It’s also built with brand-building in mind. Paramount’s approach leans into upper- and mid-funnel growth—things like reach, completion rate, and overall impact—because that’s where CTV tends to shine.

DSPs tend to lean hard into performance metrics, but setting up an effective metrics dashboard can be a bit of a patchwork job. You’ll usually have to plug in your own pixel, sync with a third-party analytics tool, or chase down reporting across different dashboards. And even then? The results often hinge on last-click attribution models that barely scratch the surface of what CTV is actually doing.

That setup makes it easy to chase the wrong signals—tweaking campaigns for short-term clicks while missing the longer arc of brand impact. If what you care about is what stuck, not just what got tapped, Paramount Ads Manager gives you the tools to track the stuff that actually matters.

**Related: **CTV Attribution: How to Keep It Simple

Support

Customer support isn’t always the first thing marketers think about when choosing an ad platform—but it can make or break the experience, especially when something goes sideways mid-campaign.

Paramount Ads Manager offers straightforward, human-accessible help: there’s a full Help Center, a chatbot for quick questions, and a support team you can reach directly via email. Unlike some platforms that only prioritize large accounts, Paramount Ad Manager’s support is available to every advertiser, regardless of budget.

With DSPs, the picture varies. Some platforms offer hands-on account managers—but usually only to high-spend clients or agency partners. Others are fully self-serve, meaning you're largely on your own unless you're paying for managed service tiers. Even when support is available, it’s often routed through ticket systems or siloed departments, which can slow things down.

If you’re not looking to become your own ad tech expert overnight, having access to a responsive team—and not just documentation—can make a big difference.

Pricing Model

Paramount Ads Manager keeps things simple.

To start: the minimum spend is $500, unused funds get refunded automatically, and there are no surprise fees lurking in the fine print. You get flat, upfront pricing, a self-serve dashboard that’s easy to navigate, and campaign setup that takes minutes, not weeks. If you’ve got creative ready, it could be live on TV within 24 hours.

DSPs tend to be a different story. Pricing can be all over the map—some platforms require high minimums; others tack on extra fees for tech access, managed services, or platform use.

And the buying process itself? You’re often dealing with auction-based pricing, private marketplace deals, bid floors, and a whole glossary of new jargon to wrap your head around.

In short: one platform is built to demystify CTV buying. The other assumes you’ve got a media team or creative agency on standby.

CPM Efficiency

On paper, DSPs might seem to offer lower CPMs. But because those rates are often auction-based, your actual pricing will be highly dependent on factors like prevailing competition, bid strength, inventory quality, and even time of day. And that’s *before *factoring in added tech fees or managed service markups, which can inflate your cost per impression pretty quickly.

Paramount Ads Manager takes a different approach. You get flat, upfront CPMs—what you see is what you pay—with no added fees or complicated bidding dynamics. Yes, CPMs may be slightly higher than what you’d see on the open exchange, but that’s largely because you're buying premium placements directly from the content owner. There’s no reseller in the middle, and no guesswork around what kind of inventory you're getting.

In short: if your only goal is to buy the cheapest possible impressions, there are places to do that. But if you’re looking at value per impression—where your ad runs, how it performs, and what you’re paying to get it there—Paramount Ad Manager’s model is built for efficiency that actually delivers.

Why Marketers Prefer Paramount Ads Manager

For advertisers focused on quality and transparency, Paramount Ads Manager just makes sense.

You're not guessing where your ad ended up or hoping for the best in a sea of aggregated inventory. Instead, you're buying directly from the source with content-level reporting, first-party measurement, and a platform designed to make premium streaming placements easy to access, no matter your budget.

You also get the kinds of tools that usually require agency-level spend: built-in AI creative tools, free tracking pixels, transparent pricing, and real human help if you need it. No hidden fees, no complex bidding strategies—just the ability to launch a campaign in minutes and actually know what it’s doing.

If your goal is to drive impact in brand-safe, high-attention environments, this is how you do it without overcomplicating the process.