Why TV advertising’s upfront model won’t fade away

TV advertising’s 60-year-old upfront model may be all but inextinguishable. It’s in the midst of an overhaul but is unlikely to be abolished.

For years — and especially over the past three years — the end of the upfront, as TV ad industry observers’ favored forecast, has been rivaled only by the divining of Netflix’s entry into advertising. Well, now that the latter has happened, surely the former isn’t far off. Erm, probably not.

Despite the financial confines of the upfront’s year-long commitments, TV ad buyers and sellers continue to seek economic comfort in the upfront model’s revenue guarantees and pricing assurance, as broken down in the video below.

More in Future of TV

Future of TV Briefing: FAST platforms have become a fixture among audiences and ad buyers

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the state of the free, ad-supported streaming TV market.

Future of TV Briefing: 6 charts that sum up the state of streaming subscriptions

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how deceleration in streaming subscription growth and steady subscriber churn have coincided with a rise in people subscribing through aggregators.

TV with dollar sign representing balancing multichannel tv advertising to create revenue.

Future of TV Briefing: How the TV, streaming and digital video industry spent its summer (2025 edition)

This week’s Future of TV Briefing recaps a summer during which the future of TV began to bore many more shades of its past.