Prep time is over for Jay Askinasi.
Paramount Skydance’s newly-installed chief revenue officer takes his role into the public sphere this week as the media conglomerate starts a series of “upfront” meetings with various agencies and advertisers. Most of Paramount’s rivals wait until mid-May to host a group of glitzy programing showcases to kick off this annual run of negotiations for billions of dollars of commercial time tied to the nation’s most watched video programing. Paramount has for the past several years opted for this less showy method.
Madison Avenue is keeping an eye on Askinasi to see how he will lead ad sales at Paramount Skydance, one of the most traditional of the nation’s big media companies. CBS and cable networks like Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, after all, still drive much of its revenue and operating profit. Even so, Paramount is working, like its rivals, to find new opportunities in streaming.
Under Askinasi, Paramount appears poised to try to erase the distinctions between linear and digital advertising. “I think about this every single day, having spent a long time on the buy side: What do customers need to do to solve their own challenges? How can we help them do that?” he says. “I think if you take that approach, you make it somewhat easy to understand and streamlined, then I think you’ll be in a good place. And we’re streamlining our organization. We’re simplifying the approach. We’re thinking about the portfolio and the platform, not the individual brands.”
The company wants to make streaming advertisers feel like they are getting some of the big-audience recognition that comes with traditional TV. Paramount is touting a concept called a “streaming fixed unit” that gives sponsors regular positions in streaming shows. Many streaming hubs fill each commercial break with an assortment of spots that appear due to programmatic buying that inserts ads based on algorithms tied to demographics and geography. But the new concept might give a specific advertiser a prominent position – like the first ad in a commercial break – for the first seven days after a new episode debuts.
Paramount has also started opening sports inventory to commercials that are inserted in programmatic fashion, making some of its top programming available in new ways that might bring in a wider array of ad backers.
Paramount needs to reverse difficult trends. While ad revenue is on the upswing for streaming outlets like Paramount+ and Pluto, the company’s longstanding TV networks have been ceding precious ad dollars to other venues. Approximately 27% of Paramount’s revenue hinges on ad sales, according to research firm MoffettNathanson. The company has already projected more declines in its TV operations for the first quarter of 2026. TV advertising fell 10% during the fourth quarter of 2025.
Paramount won’t have to contend only with inner dynamics. The world economy is shaky, as recent fluctuations in the stock market underscore. Any deterioration in the U.S. conflict with Iran could spur a meaningful deterioration in consumer spending or a broader demand shock,” the firm said in a recent research note, and under such circumstances “we would expect advertisers to pull back. But the signal we are hearing today does not support that scenario.”
Executives at Paramount “feel strongly about the market,” says Askanasi. Advertisers have muscled through the threat of Trump tariffs and other tough economic signals in the recent past, he says. “These are known unknowns for everybody. And we’re focused in trying to be ready” to focus on “the pain points” in every advertiser’s business.
Askanasi is new to selling traditional cable and broadcast TV, but he says he already has hard-won knowledge of what advertisers want more from media partners. He was formerly a senior buying executive at Publicis Groupe, and, before coming to Paramount, led ad sales for Roku. “Are there nuances that I’m learning? Certainly,” he says. “Is it very different than what I was doing a long time ago? Not as different as you may think.” He recently surprised the market by snatching Danielle Carney, an executive who lead sports ad sales at Amazon’s Prime Video, to oversee all U.S ad sales for Paramount.
As the Paramount upfront meetings commence, the company appears poised to keep them and is not at present entertaining any notions of returning to the days when CBS held court in front of advertisers at Carnegie Hall.
“They’ve worked well,” says Askanasi of the meetings “I think they’re unique in the sense that you get to have one-to-one dialogue for people. They are still big and talent driven and content driven like the big sort of on- to-many approaches, but in a more intimate environment. So I think that that’s an advantage for us. We know that the customers really enjoy them.”
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