In an interview, Paramount Chief Executive

Bob Bakish

said the success of “Top Gun: Maverick” vindicated the company’s decision to wait 45 days after a movie’s theatrical release before making it available on its Paramount+ streaming service.

“We believe in the theatergoing experience,” Mr. Bakish said.

Paramount+ added 3.7 million subscribers during the second quarter, a smaller number than in the first, when it gained 6.8 million. That was partly because of the removal of the service’s 1.2 million customers in Russia after the country’s invasion of Ukraine, Paramount Global said. Overall, Paramount+ had more than 43 million subscribers at the end of the period.

The growth of Paramount+’s subscriber base comes shortly after industry leader

Netflix Inc.

NFLX 1.40%

lost subscribers for two quarters in a row, a decline that highlighted the challenges facing newer streaming companies that have to compete with a much larger field of rivals.

Shares in Paramount Global shares rose 1.1% to $25.31 each on Thursday

Paramount has taken steps to make its streaming service more attractive. In recent weeks, the company removed the CBS crime series “Criminal Minds” from Netflix—where it was often among the top-streamed series, according to Nielsen—and the show now lives exclusively on Paramount+, Mr. Bakish said.

Overall, revenue at the company’s streaming business, which also includes Pluto TV, Showtime, Noggin and BET+, rose 56% to $1.19 billion.

The business of streaming remains costly. Paramount said its streaming losses would reach about $1.8 billion this year, and it still expects to experience its most extensive losses in 2023.

Revenue at the company’s TV business, which includes CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, rose 0.7% to $5.26 billion, in part because of a 6% decline in advertising revenue.

“We see both headwinds and tailwinds in advertising,” Mr. Bakish said during a call with analysts earlier Thursday. On the one hand, he said, there are challenges in the digital-advertising market and the so-called scatter market—the market for TV ad time bought and sold closer to its air date—primarily because of supply-chain constraints affecting advertisers such as car makers. On the other hand, the company expects ad spending to grow in specific categories later in the year, including political ads ahead of the midterm elections, he said.

An ad-spending slowdown could affect Paramount’s streaming business, the company said Thursday. The company’s services generated $363 million in advertising revenue in the second quarter, or about one-third of the segment’s overall revenue. As a result, the company might not achieve its target of boosting revenue by 60% this year, Chief Financial Officer

Naveen Chopra

said on the call with analysts Thursday.

“It’s possible we may not get all the way to that 60%, but I think it’ll probably be relatively close,” he said.

Overall, Paramount’s quarterly net profit fell 60% to $419 million, or 62 cents a share, from $1.04 billion, or $1.56 a share, a year earlier. The fall in profit largely stemmed from a decline in net earnings from continuing operations. Stripping out one-time costs, per-share earnings were 64 cents, slightly ahead of the 61 cents projected by FactSet analysts.

Revenue rose 19% to $7.78 billion, ahead of analyst expectations for nearly $7.6 billion, according to FactSet.

Write to Connor Hart at connor.hart@wsj.com