TV upfronts

Netflix flubbed its second-ever livestream, and blames it on a bug. But the fail raises a critical question about where Netflix belongs in the streaming wars.

The MRC reinstating its accreditation of Nielsen’s national ratings might improve the measurement giant’s standing in the TV currency race.

Comcast-owned ad buying platform AudienceXpress upgraded its targeting chops, including more data for audience segmentation and new conquesting capabilities.

The TV industry is on the path toward better measurement – but buyers are still lacking basic standards. The industry needs to get its act together if it plans to transact on new video currencies at the upfronts this year, says Kelly Metz, managing director of advanced TV activation at Omnicom Media Group.

Warner Bros. Discovery decides to transact media with VideoAmp and Comscore currencies during its upfront this year.

It ain’t easy being a broadcaster these days. Or a TV tech company. TV budgets are getting cut, the streaming wars are raging, and the axe of supply-path optimization is hovering.

Netflix and Disney are both building out a new ad revenue stream to court advertisers ahead of the upfronts.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Take It To The Max Google’s Performance Max is a black box that uses automation to serve ads across the Google portfolio, and there’s no arguing that it’s a powerful tool. But PMax also invites tinfoil hat theories about how Google might be serving […]

The NewFronts are old news. Now it’s all about the upfronts, which are old. But don’t forget about the podcast upfronts, which are newer than the NewFronts but named after the TV oldfronts … or upfronts. Okay. Now that we’ve cleared that up, tune in for frontline reporting from the upfronts (TV and podcast varieties).

If the NewFronts is where buyers flirt with newer media channels and streaming services, the upfronts, which wrapped up this week, is where things start to get serious, as legacy broadcasters showcase their new content in the hopes that advertisers will put a ring on it – but this year, pretty much all of the major programmers had streaming on the brain.

You’d be forgiven for thinking of the Video Advertising Bureau as a professional thorn in Nielsen’s side. The TV ad industry trade org is largely responsible for the chain of events that led to Nielsen losing its MRC accreditations last year. But “this isn’t personal,” says VAB CEO Sean Cunningham on this week’s episode. “I don’t know that anyone’s rooting harder than we are for [Nielsen] to get it right.”

This year’s Upfronts need to continue the conversation about measurement that includes outcome-based guarantees in a linear and, eventually, convergent TV world. Otherwise, the TV industry risks falling further and further behind digital capabilities, writes Spencer Lambert, manager of product and partnership success at datafuelX.

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Rob Bochicchio, President of Marketsmith. Coming out from last year’s unpredictable upfront season, the rules have completely changed. The playbook is different. The upending of the norms between TV buyers and sellers still hasn’t […]

Television upfronts normally showcase sizzle reels of upcoming shows to guide buyers’ investments. But with programming in flux due to the coronavirus pandemic, Disney’s virtual upfronts turned the sizzle to its initiatives around linear addressability, attribution, programmatic and digital platform unification. “We had more time to talk about our investment in data and technology,” said […]

Digitally native companies made nearly $1 billion in commitments during this year’s upfront, making them the biggest advertiser category in NBCUniversal’s $7 billion upfront, the company said during its Q2 earnings Thursday. The digitally native category includes the “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) as well as direct-to-consumer companies like Peloton, NBCU’s CEO Steve […]

Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for IPG Mediabrands’ Initiative, will discuss dynamics for this year’s upfronts alongside other TV power players at Industry Preview on Jan. 18 in New York City. The 2016 TV upfronts ended with networks posting double-digit CPM increases, but will that momentum carry into 2017? Two key factors could help buyers wield […]

Advanced audience targeting is taking a seat at this year’s TV upfronts. Sellers are lining their arsenals with new products promising cross-platform reach, partially out of necessity. Viewer attention is fragmenting and advertisers want assurance that if they commit an upfront buy, there will be multiple points of execution. It’s unclear the extent to which buyers […]

Creating a futures marketplace is easier said than done, but over the years, the TV upfront model has been adopted and refined by parts of the ad industry in a multitude of ways. The latest comes from AOL, which this past week unveiled a plan to hold a “Programmatic Upfront” in September. The AOL event […]

About seven days ahead of last week’s NewFronts digital content showcases held by Yahoo, Aol, The Weather Company, Blip, Digitas and others, NBC Universal tried to get a jump on things with its own interactive presentation, which it dubbed “Digital.Amplified.” Although it was a participant in the NewFronts last year, the feeling this year was […]