As the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) enters its final stage, attention is focused on how Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison (David Ellison) will map out a streaming strategy to take on Netflix and YouTube.

Business Insider reported on Sept. 30 (local time) that Rich Greenfield (Rich Greenfield), an analyst at Lightshed Partners, cited scaling up streaming as one reason Paramount Skydance pursued the acquisition of WBD. He assessed that Paramount viewed it as difficult to catch up with Netflix through investing in itself alone and sought to expand its content and user base quickly through buying WBD.

Even after the merger, the streaming structure has not been decided. Key decisions remain, including whether to combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into one service, whether to keep the HBO brand and how to structure pricing tiers. Paramount has also told employees it is still reviewing specific integration plans.

Greenfield said simply merging the two services would make it difficult to secure competitiveness at the level of Netflix or YouTube. He said more diverse content is needed to increase viewing time and improve recommendation accuracy. The more users consume across genres and formats, the more signals recommendation algorithms have to learn from, he added.

He proposed a shift toward becoming a platform as a solution. He argued the company should go beyond its own films and dramas and actively bring in content from outside studios and creators, as well as short videos. Paramount+ is testing a free tier, vertical short-form videos, micro-dramas and user-generated content as it explores a YouTube-like structure.

AI video generation is also a variable. Greenfield said the cost of large-scale AI video production could fall sharply within the next 12 to 18 months, and in that case a surge in content supply could make open platforms like YouTube the biggest beneficiaries.

Ellison’s task does not end with bringing together well-known content from Paramount and HBO. Whether the company can translate merger-driven scale into actual viewing time and engagement, and evolve into a platform that also includes outside content, is expected to determine competition with Netflix and YouTube.