What’s in and out in this year’s TV and streaming ad upfront market

Donald Trump’s tariffs have put the economy on edge just as TV networks, streaming services, advertisers and agencies are set to negotiate their year-long commitments — which has called into question ad buyers’ interest in making those commitments. That’s not to say that advertisers are likely to sit out of this year’s upfront market en masse, but they will look to amass a greater degree of flexibility in their upfront commitments and could push the upfront sellers to a breaking point.

“I think this year is going to be kind of wonky for those reasons, and it could end up being a little bit more contentious,” said Digiday senior media buying editor Michael Bürgi, who joined the Digiday Podcast to discuss what are set to be the hot topics heading into this year’s upfront market.

Flexibility, principal-based buying and live sports are likely to be the standouts in this year’s marketplace. On the other hand, fixed commitments, mid-sized advertisers and — unfortunately — underrepresented audiences are less likely to be fixtures, as advertisers pull back budgets and pull away from their previous pledges on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I remember GroupM literally declared [the WPP-owned media agency network was] going to set aside X percent of [its clients’] budgets to ensure it goes to multicultural media. And of course now I think WPP just scrubbed the word DE&I from their website. So just to see this rollback is so unfortunate and very frustrating,” Bürgi said.

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

In: flexibility

[Advertisers and agencies] want to lay down money for the long term — or at least set those budgets for the long term — but they’re very much expecting sellers to let them out of commitments in much, much shorter time frames than ever before.

Out: Fixed commitments

Agencies are talking about year-round buying that inherently moves more dollars to a scatter marketplace, especially if scatter pricing gets more on an even keel with the upfronts. In years past, if it was a soft scatter market going into the upfronts, it probably wasn’t going to be a great upfront year either.

In: Principal-based buying

I call it principal media, which is agencies purchasing inventory on various publishers directly and then essentially reselling that back to their clients. The upside of that is they’re usually getting pricing that is very, very favorable to the agency because the seller wants to make the deal and guarantee that inventory. The downside is that there’s a complete lack of transparency.

Out: Non-Nielsen measurement currencies

This is very much shades of the year of mobile that we heard about for six years. Alternative measurement, it’s going to have its place. But right now it’s still a Nielsen game.