Pluto TV is revamping the user interface of its video-on-demand (VOD) library as the free, ad-supported streamer looks to capitalize on growing consumption of the platform’s offerings, TheWrap has learned.

The redesign includes a modernized user interface as well as improved features, with improvements such as a hero carousel, personalized and trending content recommendations and horizontal navigation categories. The new layout will also streamline the Continue Watching feature, making it easier for viewers to pick up where they left off.

The redesign has been tested on Apple tvOS and Android TV and will roll out to Amazon Fire TV this week.

Pluto, which is a profitable company generating $1 billion in revenue annually and with the majority of its consumption coming from its over-the-air linear channels, generated a record total of 5.6 billion hours of viewing over the third quarter 2024, up 5% year-on-year. year. (The company declined to disclose the exact split between live linear and VOD hours generated.)

Overall, the platform accounted for just 0.7% of streaming’s 41% overall usage share in Nielsen’s Gauge report for September. However, the company noted that VOD is growing “much faster” percentage-wise than linear, due to increased VOD consumption due to more available content with thousands of movies and episodes added each month, better visibility and user experience.

“We recognized that our overall consumption has increased significantly through the consumption of VOD content. A significant area of ​​growth has been facilitated and recognized on the demand side,” Tad Ro, Pluto TV senior vice president of product management, told TheWrap. “We have significantly expanded our catalog to make more content available on our service. So how can we ensure that our users’ content discovery can go deeper into our content catalog? This is what is supported in the new on-demand experience.

Ro said Pluto TV would continue to evolve its VOD experience, with themed content collections and “spotlights” as a way to highlight specific pieces of content. It will also roll out a filter in its search function that will allow users searching for VOD content to differentiate between movies and TV shows.

Pluto TV users should also expect to have more control over their live linear channel viewing experience in the future, with the platform planning to roll out more features in its electronic program guide (EPG), Ro teased.

“We offer hundreds of channels within the EPG grid, but this very traditional view of an EPG can sometimes be very cumbersome to navigate through to discover very quickly what’s inside all the content,” he declared. “So there will be some features coming that will allow for quick browsing of some of the content in the channels themselves, but also ways to surface and allow users to personalize the channels that are most important to them.”

He added that the product team is working on better discovery of on-demand content in the live linear experience.

“The linear experience has always been this passive, laid-back experience. But as you can imagine, it’s all based on time. So if you start watching linear channels and you’re in the middle of some content when you first open the app, how do we let the user know that they can watch that from the beginning and give him the opportunity to do so? ” says Ro. “We already have some of these features today in the content detail pages or in the player itself, but how do they actually see them when they browse the EPG? so that’s where our next step is because a lot of users are just staying in the linear experience and actually using the EPG as navigation to search for more channels. But we want to let people know, even in the EPG experience, that we could have this content available on demand to actually relate.

While artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are currently used for content recommendations and ranking, Ro revealed that Pluto is also working on “conversational search” with generative AI to improve its search function. research, which he plans to test and deploy soon. year.

“This is definitely an area where we want to utilize the simplicity of our service and provide less friction to discover content,” he said.

Pluto’s development comes as Paramount Global is expected to merge with David Ellison’s Skydance Media in an $8 billion deal expected to close in the first half of 2025.

RedBird Capital Partners’ Jeff Shell, who is expected to become chairman of New Paramount, has previously called Pluto a “very strong and powerful asset,” while the private equity firm’s partner Andy Gordon said the merger of Skydance and Paramount saw an opportunity in the technology platforms for Paramount+ and Pluto to generate “much greater efficiency” and “additional cash flow generation.”

“For the moment, we maintain our separate paths. I think the plans for the Convergence Zone are not entirely clear,” Ro said when asked if Pluto could merge or have a dedicated section within Paramount+. “But in the meantime, we’ve really focused on the fact that Pluto has a lot going on in the FAST linear experiment.”