TV Upfront 2017, What’s Next, presented by FreeWheel

If you thought broadcasters’ newfangled ways of selling TV ads using advanced audience-buying tools in 2017 will freeze traditional TV measurers out in the cold, think again. Fox, Turner and Viacom teamed to co-found OpenAP, a new consortium to agree on commonality in the way granular audience-describing datasets are described and made available. To many, these new techniques may […]

Premium video provider FreeWheel believes that guaranteed, programmatic transactions on a one-to-one basis between publishers and buyers represent the future of both video and linear television. The programmatic guaranteed world is the “next generation of programmatic transactions for premium publishers because this guarantees a safe transaction for both the seller and the buyer and it […]

National marketers want “scale that’s smart” by combining the best data from digital platforms with premium television content. And to close the loop, they want to be able to transact on a currency that reflects their desired business outcomes, says NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino. She wants to “shine a light on the need for […]

As it has for many decades, financial giant Bank of America will have a presence at this year’s UpFront. But having recently changed to a calendar year for planning purposes, BOA will be focused mainly on selecting the most appropriate publishing partners. BOA’s agency, Publicis GroupeConnect, decided that the UpFront planning model “just wasn’t suiting […]

With all the talk about more precise audience targeting for linear TV, some basic things can get overlooked. For veteran buy-siders like Jason Kanefsky, who’s witnessing his 30th Upfront, those things include basic supply and demand dynamics. So while “we’re taking a lot of first steps in lots of different directions,” sometimes there’s progress in […]

Technology has done amazing things to create a variety of ways people can consume premium television content, helping to spark a “golden age” for content creators. But is the same technology and the data it enables encouraging the hyper targeting of audiences just because the capability exists? David Sable is quick to point out that […]

Having veered into negative territory over the past few years, the pendulum of industry discourse about digital video is swinging back to positive. And while there’s work to be done to streamline the planning and execution of premium video advertising, more marketers now have a deeper understanding of the benefits of being in its brand-safe […]

The latest FreeWheel Council for Premium Video position paper contains many insights and conclusions, one of which in particular stands out to James Rooke. When it comes to delivering optimal ad experiences across different screens, there is shared accountability and responsibility. “There was a clear understanding, based on the conversations that we had with brands […]

It has taken a while, but methods of targeting TV ads at the household level have now hit a critical mass in the United States, according to an exec from a brand new company hoping to help ad agencies take advantage. “Right now the scale for addressable television – either linear or VOD – is  57mn,” says […]

If you’ve ever dressed like a Ninja Turtle or a SpongeBob character, you know what it’s like to be a passionate fan of a television show. Viacom spends a lot of time studying what its fans do online and offline and uses the data to best connect them with brands. “Fans are at the heart […]

Lyle Schwartz isn’t known for sitting back and letting things happen at their own pace, particularly when it comes to television and video audience measurement. GroupM’s President of Investment for North America feels he’s at “the 50-yard line” in his company’s push for the industry to be able to measure commercial impressions across screens, despite […]

AT&T AdWorks chose to go vertical in 2017 with what it calls the industry’s first-ever Addressable Upfronts. Its 100 events across the country are tailored to specific industry product and service categories and clients with a focus on the attributes of both television and cross-platform addressable advertising. “Instead of a one-size-fits-all, one big event, we […]

Discovery Communications’ Discovery Engage audience targeting offering has been well received from a mix of product and service categories going into the 2017 TV Upfront. And the company is always open to new ways to standardize audience targeting beyond traditional age/sex demographic targets, says Ben Price, President of National Ad Sales. Having pushed its content […]

Every television advertiser is trying to identify what their specific audience means outside of broad age and sex demographic targets. While the latter represent a “fairly blunt instrument that we use as a currency,” more media owners are executing in ways that line up better with how buyers want to execute their plans. An audience […]

Supply and demand for television inventory is still a big part of conversations during the TV Upfront season, but it’s now accompanied by talk of OTT and VOD opportunities along with new transaction models like non age/sex audience targeting. When media agency Assembly talks with its clients, “These are all areas we feel are important […]

Having set aside $1 billion in inventory for non-Nielsen audience guarantees during this year’s TV Upfront, NBCUniversal has seen demand for its audience targeting products double year over year. Although it’s a big commitment, market dynamics are in the company’s favor. “The reason we’re continuing to be confident about increases in demand is because we’re seeing […]

Shortly before the 2017 TV Upfront began, Disney unified the way it sells ABC, Freeform and its Disney entertainment cable networks to advertisers. If only the advertising/media industry could coalesce around standardized cross-platform audience measurement. Like other media executives whose content is distributed on an ever-increasing number of platforms, Debra O’Connell “would like to see […]

We are right in the middle of the upfronts, the spring season in which TV networks and publishers tout their upcoming content roster to secure upfront committed advertiser spend. But what do brands get out of the upfronts? One woman who guides advertisers through their upfront buying strategy says there are both pros and cons involved […]

After reducing the ad load in some of its programming on truTV and TNT, Turner has seen a corresponding ratings lift while seeking to bring more native ads to television as a complement to the ad reduction. And in this interview with Beet.TV during the 2017 TV Upfront, Ad Sales President Donna Speciale says she […]

There might not be anything revolutionary per se about the 2017 TV Upfront, but that’s not to suggest there aren’t a variety of evolutionary forces reshaping the competitive landscape. They range from competitive pressure to build out dynamic ad insertion capabilities to offering more precise audience targeting and ensuring brand-safe digital ad environments. These are […]