An Upfront Week recap and upfront market preview with Horizon Media’s David Campanelli

In the past, last week’s Upfront Week presentations by TV and streaming ad sellers would be swiftly followed by the start of the annual haggle with advertisers and their agencies. But the TV and streaming ad market has become more of an always-on marketplace.

“Really CES in January kicks it off. We had our pre-upfront meetings, had the information sharing back and forth – what our needs are, what our clients’ needs are, what networks, publishers, media companies are looking for – so a lot of that groundwork has been laid,” said Horizon Media’s president of global investment David Campanelli in the latest Digiday Podcast episode.

Now that talk turns to how much money advertisers and agencies will commit to spend on TV and streaming ads over the next year and how much those ads will cost them. 

“What comes up next is really when you start to get a little bit more into the pricing discussions, when the budgets become more real and the pricing discussion starts,” said Campanelli.

And there’s plenty to discuss when it comes to pricing in this upfront. That includes to what extent streaming ad prices will come down after last year’s rollbacks, how TV networks and streamers will price their sports inventory and to what extent Nielsen’s transition to its big data measurement system and its out-of-home measurement should be reflected in ad prices.

“Unlike in the past where it was just like everyone’s at the starting gate and it started and then it was like a mad scramble and everyone had their late nights and then it was closed – it’s a very different marketplace now. Things are so much more complicated,” Campanelli said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Will upfront spending be up or down?

We see it similar to last year, which was in totality a negative marketplace. 

The upfront buckets

We look at it in those three buckets: streaming, sports and then essentially linear entertainment. [Linear entertainment]’s obviously an area where ratings continue to decline, advertisers continue to shift out of that to streaming and other media types.

The sports upfront

[Sports is] really not separate anymore. It’s really part of the overall discussion. It used to be sports even was like its own upfront, like much later in the summer. But now it’s just part of the portfolio discussion, both because it’s sought after by advertisers but also sellers want to use it for leverage.

Upfront Week’s fuzzy math

One of my takeaways from this week of presentations were those numbers start to become so meaningless to me. My new favorite is the minutes viewed [metric]: billions of this and millions of this and trillions of this. Say what you want about Nielsen; there’s a consistent and understanding that an 8 rating’s a good rating for primetime NFL. And that kind of consistency and context is just gone.