Hot Takes: What To Expect From The NewFronts

It’s already April and time for the 2022 IAB NewFronts where the team of Wolk and Rogowsky has been replaced by a Peloton instructor. Undeterred, we asked our TVREV Thought Leaders Circle members to share their thoughts on this year’s events.

Adam Bergman, SVP of sales at VIZIO Ads focused on the role that data will play in this year’s buys.

The upcoming Newfronts will mark the year that programmers and brands take a fully data-informed approach to TV. This means leveraging glass-level ACR data at the core of everything they do, from programming and content creation decisions, to powering the next generation of measurement currencies that will help advertisers prove ROI.

Stu Schwartzapfel SVP of Media Partnerships at iSpot, reflected on his role leading currency initiatives, including the recent deal between NBCU and iSpot for the Olympics and Super Bowl and pilots with Warner Media.

This will be the most dynamic upfront season in history. You'll see dollars shift to new currencies based on tracking and verifying modern, multi-platform consumption habits.

 Perianne Grignon, VP Strategy at Mediaocean focused on the massive shifts the industry is undergoing as omnichannel takes center stage. and how that plays out in the actual events themselves.

Excitement is building around the annual media marketplaces this year. The industry is standing at the moment of three big shifts in media: useable unified data for omnichannel decisioning, multiple currencies for setting baselines and some transactions, and let’s face it – the live, in-person experience of the of the annual broadcast upfront presentations. The buzz factor coming off the presentations will be real this year – and not only for great programming but for improvements in omnichannel media workflow and data management.

Allen Bush, Chief Marketing Officer at LG Ads looked at the advantages of audience-based buying as a way to eliminate the risks inherent in betting on future audiences.

The Upfront marketplace is a futures market. It is rooted in brands making big bets on future outcomes, namely the audiences to TV programming. Brands stake dollars to programming that may or may not unfold the way they expect. Recently, that programming has underperformed. But not because Americans have given up on TV, rather their options have increased and they are giving their attention only to the content they really want to watch - which is now served across myriad sources. Deterministic audience-based buying with guaranteed outcomes, which LG Ads offers to advertisers, eliminates the risk associated with the traditional Upfront market. We're excited to join the NewFronts party this year, see you there!

Nick Cicero, Vice President of Strategy at Conviva looked at the correlation between social media activity and streaming viewership and how that would play into what brands were up to at the NewFronts

It will be interesting to see what types of social partnerships will be announced at the NewFronts. We have seen TikTok and YouTube surge in popularity and importance to streaming publishers, as both a point of distribution and a marketing tool. As we found in the recent Conviva Content Discovery Report, there's a direct synergy between high social media usage and high streaming viewership - High social media users are more than twice as likely to spend more than eight hours per day streaming, while the converse is true for low social media users who are three times more likely to watch just one hour per day. We are also seeing YouTube making moves in the OTT space by licensing more and more TV series and movies. Already one of the biggest AVOD/CTV players today, video consumption time drives massive revenue for YouTube. Their decision to integrate premium publisher content into the same experience as regular YouTube content is an enticing opportunity for many companies who might consider distributing to other FAST services, or are looking for a way to stand out.

Our TVREV take is that data will be very much at the center of both the upfronts and the NewFronts. Especially data in the form of the new non-Nielsen currencies the networks are relying on for the first time ever.

It’s an interesting time for both events in that the line between what is an “upfront “and what is a “NewFront” is increasingly blurry. And with so much TV being bought on a programmatic/audience basis, the numbers are starting to be as important as the shows.

That said, the shows are still the sizzle—they are what people come out to see any why TV is such a powerful medium for advertisers. But as TV audiences continue to be split between streaming and digital, a situation that looks like it will be the norm, at least for the foreseeable future, then data is going to be just as important as content, and the industry is going to have to give its attention to both in order to help advertisers reach the audiences they need to reach.