The 2014 Upfront were “slightly underwhelming” says Furious Minds’ CEO and Founder Ashley J. Swartz. “The numbers weren’t so great.”
Although television was up 3.3 percent overall, broadcast volume was down by 800 to 815 million and cable volume was down by 500 million. This was largely due to cuts by major advertisers like P&G, GM and Kellogg’s.
“Volume was down and overall spend was, per se, but CPMs increased in many regards,” Swartz says. “But they definitely were not the big jumps that a lot of the networks held out for last year.”
But why?
“Does it mean that total spend in television is being cannibalized by other mediums, like online video?” Swartz asks. “Does it mean that there’s channel cannibalization? Does it mean that total spend is less? Or does it mean that dollars are being held back?”
Online video is estimated to be up 42 percent to $6 billion in 2014, while television saw only 3 percent from 2013 to 2014.
“At the end of the day, online video is going to become more and more relevant,” she says. “It’s going to be interesting to see how online video becomes a business lever used in the scatter market to drive scatter pricing as a long tail over the course of the year, especially when it’s coupled with event or sports-driven stuff that is more real time.”
