WarnerMedia hosts its upfront sales presentation on May 19 amid high expectations for its HBO Max streaming service that will start carrying advertising in June. The company also will showcase upcoming programming that builds on its vast library of intellectual property from the past 100 years.
“Brands have an opportunity to take part in this IP,” JP Colaco, head of advertising sales at WarnerMedia, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We believe it’s a multiplier effect, which is: you take great content, you attach brand stories to that, and you also are able to deliver that to audiences in unique ways.”
WarnerMedia’s hits include everything from TV series such as Friends and Game of Thrones to hit movie franchises from DC Comics and Harry Potter.
“We have incredible brands that resonate with the hearts and minds of people all across the world,” Colaco said. “We’re going to release new content. We’re going to talk about our advertising proposition to the marketplace. This is the first time that we’re getting together as one company.”
WarnerMedia offers advertisers a way to target audiences based on its trove of first-party consumers data. Among its various distribution channels, the company has 85 million subscribers to its networks.
“We have a tremendous storehouse of data that we can bring to the party, and allow advertisers to connect the right ad to the right person at the right time,” Colaco said. “We’re building compelling packages across all of our touchpoints, whether that’s linear, digital, et cetera, that advertisers can tap into, and can be really successful about delivering their brand message.”
WarnerMedia will highlight the power of HBO Max’s ad-supported service to engage audiences with advertisers.
“We’re bringing all of this content…to consumers directly and on top of that, we can weave a very elegant non-intrusive ad experience so that there’s a tremendous harmony between the amount of advertising you watch and the amount of content you consume,” Colaco said. “We’ll have the lowest ad load in streaming. That will allow our advertisers’ messages to resonate in great ways and drive incredible advocacy.”
WarnerMedia also plans to showcase its plans for addressable advertising, building on its experience with providing marketers a way to deliver different ads to different households during the same TV shows.
“We are the pioneers of addressability,” Colaco said. “We’ve done campaigns for thousands of advertisers over the years. We’re going to apply that experience to national addressability. We’re moving very fast to have a national footprint by the end of this year.”
This year’s upfront presentation comes days after AT&T announced a plan to spin off WarnerMedia into a new venture with Discovery by the middle of next year. The proposed deal will unite WarnerMedia’s HBO, CNN, TNT, TBS with Discovery’s Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC and other network brands.
