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The Digiday Podcast
A postmortem on this year’s TV and streaming upfront ad market with UM Worldwide’s Marcy Greenberger
00:47:00
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- [00:10]
Tim Peterson
Hello.
- [00:10]
Kimiko McCoy
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digiday Podcast. I am your co host, Kimiko McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
- [00:17]
Tim Peterson
And I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of Video and Audio.
- [00:21]
Kimiko McCoy
Tim, welcome back. How has the week been? We're on the other side of Advertising Week at this point.
- [00:28]
Tim Peterson
I know, but like, you know, being based here in Southern California, I've been able to miss out on much of it. And like, I don't know how much FOMO I have about this. I feel like years ago I would have had a fair amount of fomo. This year, maybe this week I was just busy with other things. But you've been in the thick of it. How's Advertising Week been?
- [00:50]
Kimiko McCoy
Yeah, I have been watching from afar. Now. At the beginning of this, we did an in and out list. Um, there were some things that absolutely tracked, I think on our In n Out list. We had talk about conversation. Conversations, excuse me, about creativity. That is definitely a big talking point. I actually wrote a story about kind of how the balance is trying to be better struck between performance and brand storytelling. Retail media hype was another thing that was expected to be in. It is. It is still very much hype. There was a couple of panels focused on that and then we had again conversations around performance marketing and how dollars are being spent or not spent. The week was pretty busy.
- [01:36]
Tim Peterson
I feel like that tees up our interview for this week's episode pretty nicely because it's with Marcy Greenberger, who's the chief Investment Officer at um, Worldwide. And what she and I spoke about is basically like a upfront post mortem of, you know, Marcy's one of those people I like to talk to about the TV and streaming ad. And so coming out of this year's upfront, just like how the money moved, what all was going on there, which it also sounds like was very much part of the advertising week. And then before we get into the interview, we want to talk a bit about Advertising Week, but we have some other fairly significant stories of the week to talk about a retail media check in, because there's been a fair amount of activity on that front in this past week. And then maybe the biggest story of the week, the threat by the U.S. justice Department to break up up Google, potentially just in search business, potentially more. It's unclear at the moment, but a lot going on. But yeah, Advertising Week, like retail. You mentioned retail media being a big one. But then creativity with brand versus performance. It feels like that brand versus performance tension has been around for a While do you get a sense it's coming to something of a breaking point?
- [02:51]
Kimiko McCoy
Yeah, I think it's coming to a head based on the conversations that I'm having. You're having marketers. What's interesting is that not only is it coming to a head, marketers are being tasked with doing more storytelling because, you know, the bottom line is who's going to buy your stuff if no one knows that it exists or they found, you know, I guess a better relationship with a different brand because you didn't maintain that relationship as a brand. So that's become a bigger talking point as the digital ecosystem continues to get more and more crowded. And you're even seeing that with like retail media, the way it's shaping up, there's more competitors in these spaces and you have to find a way to stand out. Now, what's most interesting here is that the current debate is that there's not more money being thrown at these initiatives. So while you're having to perfect until the word economic headwinds is no longer in marketers lexicon, there's this task of we've got to do more brand storytelling and initiatives without having more money to be able to do it. So I think it forces creativity to kind of come back into the picture. Which shameless plug here. Speaking of creativity, I recently did a profile of Todd Kaplan about creativity and fighting for it in the C suite. So if you haven't read that, please go do that.
- [04:02]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, yeah. And I feel like the whole creativity emphasis is probably like well timed to what we talked about in the last episode of Ads are just showing up in so many more places, like we're being inundated that if they're garbage ads, they're gonna be way more annoying. Whereas, like, you know, anyone who's old enough to remember, like the Budweiser frogs, like, I don't know that I could see those enough times. Granted, I was like, I don't know what, 10 when those are around. But at the same time, like, if it's a good ad, there's more of a tolerance for seeing it all over creation.
- [04:41]
Kimiko McCoy
I don't know how much money went into the College Education Connection commercial. If you guys remember that I went on the Internet, College Education connection, fantastic down here in the south, went platinum in my household. Right. But that's something that kind of stands the test of time. And you know, it wasn't a commercial that struck me as they, you know, had this massive budget to be able to do it. We talk a lot about kind of Creativity and the role that it played in Nikes up and down. And when that story was written a while back for today, one of the themes in the agency executives that I talked to came up with is the idea of like the prioritization of Nike's creativity is kind of what kept it type of mind in its stacking itself against competitors. And by foregoing that for D2C business and for business goals, that's where they lost their footing to some of these other competitors. But yeah, right.
- [05:38]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. I'm also curious to see how that like creativity emphasis plays out with there's still so much of an emphasis on media. Like, I mean, this past week we had PayPal say, oh, retail media network business. That seems like good money there. Let's join too. Which is, I don't know, when I saw that news break, my first thought was just like, just now they're getting into this.
- [06:06]
Kimiko McCoy
Yeah. You've had, I think Chase bank and a handful of other fintech companies have come up with retail media networks or ad networks. Right. And they're stocking themselves on top of the pile of at least 200 retail media networks that exist at this point, and counting Belk, the southern department store down here also recently released their retail media network. But I think what's interesting about PayPal's retail media network is that it's being headed up by Mark Grether, who was formerly of Uber Ads. And given how Uber ads has gotten high praises, I suspect that PayPal's got a better chance than some of the other retail media networks, some of which have shuttered. Like Microsoft's retail media business.
- [06:59]
Tim Peterson
Right. Which is, I mean, I feel like when Bergey, Kalin Ronan broke that story earlier in the week, my first reaction was like, Microsoft had a retail media business.
- [07:11]
Kimiko McCoy
Who doesn't? I have a retail media business. I'll announce it soon.
- [07:14]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, but then it was interesting like in reading their story on that and like they named two of the, like, bigger clients for Microsoft's retail media business, which was this company, Promote iq, that Microsoft had acquired years ago were Kroger and then I think Home Depot was the other one, if I'm not mistaken. And just like, well, those are two retailers that have their own retail media networks. And as much as they may have been using promote IQ's tech to power those, I feel like the history has shown that when these businesses become bigger businesses, these companies want to take that stuff internally. They want to have proprietary technology especially. There's a lot of data involved here and companies are rightfully being very cautious with that data. And so as much I'm not saying promote IQ is, there's any reason to believe promote IQ is not being a good custodian of that data. But I could also see folks at Kroger or at Home Depot or any of these big retailers being like, let's keep that one in house.
- [08:24]
Kimiko McCoy
I think as retail media networks start to, well, I can't even say they start to grow, but as the scaling continues, right, you start to have a narrative of the haves and the have nots. Retail media, in light of Google's third party reversal. Where it was on off the table, now it's back on the table. But while it was off the table, you had a slew of retailers jump in and say, we've got data, we'll hawk it for X amount of dollars. Right? This will be a fantastic revenue stream. We'll bring in some extra cash. They've been doing some wink, wink, nudge, nudge and bullying to get some extra cash. But that's a conversation for another day. But again, I think you're starting to reach this head where the have and the have nots are starting to show up. Do you have the infrastructure to be able to bring those things in house and keep it going? Or then do you have to then divvy up your business? Which then starts bringing up questions of why am I paying you as a retailer when I can get to this third party, you know, data point or a third party customer without having to pay that high cpm. Some of the people that I've talked to say some of it is because it has, they've been stand up by, stood up by retailers as opposed to someone like Walmart who, you know, we'll, we'll have on the podcast, different date, but having those stood up by a media buyer as opposed to a seller. So it's an interesting dynamic.
- [09:45]
Tim Peterson
All right, well, and then like retail media, as much as that's like a somewhat newer, I mean granted Amazon's had an advertising business for more than a decade at this point, but over the past handful of years we've seen kind of this rush of other major retailers join the space as well as kind of anyone else who has people's credit cards basically seems to be the thing like PayPal. It does seem like it's getting past that shiny new object stage. Because you just wrote about kind of the questions that buyers have or the issues buyers are having with these retail media networks. What are their gripes at the moment?
- [10:30]
Kimiko McCoy
Microsoft's selling or shutting down its business. They're pushing clients to critio. Right. And again, it brings up this conversation of like, all right, well, shouldn't I could have just gone with them in the first place and paid a cheaper cpm, Right? Or you're going through off site, which is a big push right now to make retail media more a brand awareness channel through like social reach, a bigger audience and things like this. But again, that begs the question, like, okay, well, should I just go to the social platform or should I just go to the streamer as opposed to going through you and having to pay the you as the middleman. So there's calls for transparency, excuse me, around pricing, around media buying. And then like I said, with the shiny object syndrome dying down a little bit, retailers are still asking for a ton of money year over year. So I think, I mean, it sucks because it's happening after the fact, but, you know, so is the. So was the case in this industry of where we spent all this money, we threw all this money at this shiny object, and now we're finally starting to be like, wait, where's the return on the investment? Is this panning out the way that I thought it was? And who am I paying and what am I paying for? So we are only now starting to ask those questions.
- [11:44]
Tim Peterson
Right? And I guess like, obviously hindsight's 20 20, but like, this is probably somewhat inevitable because my understanding of it is with retail media, you're paying a premium for that shopper data that the networks have, which effectively is a data tax. And now we get into the whole working dollars versus non working dollars thing. And advertisers have always had an issue with non working dollars. And I believe the data, the data related fees have always been considered non working dollars. And so it's that thing of like, I don't know that I'm getting the return on these additional fees because it's kind of like in Hollywood, producers or studios want to see the money on screen. They don't care how much you're paying for, like craft services. They care how much you're paying for the actors that are in the show or, you know, the filming locations, things like that.
- [12:41]
Kimiko McCoy
Yeah, exactly. All again, while we're working under constrained budgets, we'll call them.
- [12:47]
Tim Peterson
Right? Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see how budgets could shift with our, I mean, really, I think the biggest story of this past week, the Justice Department coming out and saying, okay, we've won this case against Google on the search antitrust front. We would like to See, some sort of breakup. The Justice Department was fairly vague in what exactly it's calling for, but effectively is threatening to break up Google's business in some respect, it seems like the most. I don't, I don't think anyone has any idea, like, is it going to be like a full breakup where search gets siphoned off into or spun off into its own company and then Chrome's its own company and Android's its own company, or is it something that seems more likely of just, hey, Google, you can't be cutting deals with Apple or anyone else to be the default search engine in their browsers anymore.
- [13:44]
Kimiko McCoy
Yeah, I think that's interesting. And I mean, they're fighting the government on one fight, but then also they've got some competition stacking up on the other side, where you've got some entrants in the space looking to take some search dollars. With AI powered search, which I think we've talked about this before too, you've got competitors from the social media platforms that are vying for those dollars, so they're kind of getting hit on all fronts here. And the DOJ bringing down the hammer is just another nail in that coffin.
- [14:11]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. So I mean, obviously it's going to be potentially years before there's any sort of remedy there. And obviously whatever gets proposed, Google is going to fight tooth and nail, you would expect. But you have to imagine something's going to happen beyond just financial penalties. And regardless of what happens, that's going to be pretty significant. I mean, I think you and Kayleigh discussed this back when that ruling first came out in, I think, August or so. But just like, what does that open up for something like OpenAI search, GPT or Perplexity or, I mean, even Bing going back to Microsoft?
- [14:54]
Kimiko McCoy
Even Bing.
- [14:56]
Tim Peterson
Even Bing. So we didn't get into, we didn't get into any of that with Marcy, but we did talk a lot about the TV and streaming for marketing. There was a lot to talk about. It was weird because I think I start off the conversation by kind of with the sense that this year's upfront was a little quieter than the past years because it felt like the past year is just like breakneck paces, big price jumps, big price drops. Is there going to be an ad market post Covid all of that stuff. But then in talking with Marcy, he's like, oh, no, actually, this year's upfront cycle was fairly significant.
- [15:40]
Kimiko McCoy
Well, it sounds like a juicy scoop and I won't hold up any further, so let's get into it.
- [15:46]
Tim Peterson
All right. Thanks, Miko. Marcy, thanks for joining us on the show.
- [15:57]
Marcy Greenberger
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
- [15:59]
Tim Peterson
Oh, I'm excited to have you here because I'm hoping you can help me to kind of unpack what happened in this year's upfront and what kind of the takeaways were, because I think there's. For me, it felt like the past four years, every upfront was kind of so seismic and so momentous that this year almost felt a bit anticlimactic. But that's like as an outside observer point of view, as someone who as investment chief at UM Worldwide was very much in the thick of it, what were your big takeaways or was there any big takeaway for you from this year's upfront?
- [16:37]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah, to your point, it definitely was a slower marketplace, a little bit similar to last year, and I would say it continued to be a buyer's market again this year. A soft marketplace from a linear standpoint, as dollars continue to shift. I think the biggest. I don't know if takeaway is the right word, but the biggest shift or change this year is it was really a reset year from a digital video standpoint. In terms of pricing, I think there was such an explosion of supply last year from the, you know, increase from Amazon prime creating their ad platform, from just more consumers opting into an ad forward subscription tier, as well as just, I think some reduced churn in that space. There's just so much more supply that finally convinced the suppliers or the publishers to kind of rethink what the right pricing is. There often in exchange for volume, but really saw a reset that benefited advertisers tremendously.
- [17:38]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. And so how did that pricing coming down, how did that affect the amount of money or the share of dollars that went to streaming?
- [17:49]
Marcy Greenberger
I don't know if it was that way or more the other way around. I think there was money already coming to the table even without the understanding that there would be sort of this price reset. I think still not. It's not like any one year was a big pivot where all of a sudden we saw like a 50% increase in spend. But as advertisers continue to spend there and again, I think with new players coming into the marketplace with a lot of supply, there was more volume to begin with and that incentivized a lot of the partners to reset the pricing as well as, again, just, you know, even without increased volume. I think it's just that's what they needed to do in order to secure the volume in the first place.
- [18:28]
Tim Peterson
Got it. And I imagine from your point of view and from clients point of view, like pricing can never get low enough. But do you feel like with this being a reset year in terms of pricing, do you think pricing is like the pricing levels are stabilizing where they are? Is there still a lot of room for them to come down even more as volume goes up?
- [18:49]
Marcy Greenberger
I think there's a little bit of room. I don't know that I see another massive reset like we saw this year. That said, I think from a business standpoint, there's still room to come down in terms of how it can benefit advertisers. I think there's still a disparity between what we see in terms of linear TV pricing and digital pricing when you think about it on a total audience perspective. Because again, in linear tv, even if you are guaranteeing on a demo, you're still reaching everybody. And so when you think of that P2 plus rate, it can be incredibly efficient, sometimes less than $10. We're still not even close to that from a digital video perspective. So it is still a challenge for some advertisers to fully, either fully move away from linear or substantially move away from linear because of that disparity. So I would like to see them come down a little bit more, But I don't think we're going to see the 30 to 40% reductions that we saw this year.
- [19:42]
Tim Peterson
Okay, where would you kind of put the streaming prices at this point on that P2, the basic rate card?
- [19:49]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah, it definitely varies depending on, you know, I would say the publisher. Some. I hate to, I hate to use the word premium and consider some more premium than others, but there are some that I would say still have more scale and benefit from being a more efficient place. So those could be in the mid teens. But then I would say the, what I'll call a more premium publisher, or at least the ones that are maybe newer entrants to the marketplace are more in the, in the twenty to thirty dollar range. Somewhere in there.
- [20:19]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, yeah, because I know like, well, I think Max was the one who gave everyone the most sticker shock on the streaming side of things. This would have been three years ago or so, maybe even longer that. But when they came out at like that $80 asking price and then Netflix did something similar with the $65 starting asking price, it felt like that kind of tier of things. And throw Amazon and Peacock and even Hulu into this, that they're more, they're all kind of like Seem to be settling around like the 30 to $35. Some are even into, I guess it's maybe like the 25 to 35 cpm range for the P2. Is that roughly about right?
- [21:00]
Marcy Greenberger
I would say we were able to bring them down lower this year. I don't want to get into too many specifics because I only know obviously what our agency pays. And I would say the bulk are under that $30 threshold at this point.
- [21:12]
Tim Peterson
Wow, okay. And like, were there any concessions you needed to give up in order to get like, under that?
- [21:18]
Marcy Greenberger
Certainly. Volume spoke. Spoke volumes, pun intended. You know, obviously the more volume that we were able to bring to the table, the more that we were able to get back from the partners. But to be honest, I think the partners just understood that that was what needed to happen in order to retain and grow volume going forward. I think if there had been one main outlier that remained at those really high rates, they would have seen a huge drop off in their spend. I think volume was the biggest piece. I think there might have been certain things if there were certain tent poles that a partner wanted to invest in. Some may have wanted us to lean more into sports or certain properties. We tried to make sure that that complexion was in line with what the partners were looking for, But I think generally it was just volume.
- [22:05]
Tim Peterson
Got it. And for the volume, like, was, what were the conversations like with clients? Like, did you have to do much to convince clients to be committing in the upfront? Because I know like last year there were some advertisers who pulled upfront budgets or reduced from what they had spent in the past. And there's also been the conversation around, you know, should these commitments and spending becoming at the agency level or the end client level?
- [22:31]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah. So to that degree, I think where we saw that there could be a meaningful benefit, the clients were comfortable committing in the upfront. And I think because also over time we're seeing increased flexibility, whether that is in the ability to add dollars throughout the year without having to pay a scatter premium or the ability to cancel both higher percentage of your dollars as well as on a more rolling basis or closer to your live date. So I think it worked in two ways, depending on the client. Honestly, some might have committed more upfront because they saw more of a pricing advantage and less risk if they have to get relief later in the year. Others played a more conservative approach by saying it's a softer market, there is more flexibility to come in later, so I can commit less, if not nothing going in. And know that there will still be inventory available for me at a later date without having to pay that premium. So I think we saw. And that's true for Linear, too. I would say we saw improvements in flexibility across the board. That just gives clients a much greater level of comfort either to commit more or to hold back and be more conservative.
- [23:38]
Tim Peterson
Got it. And I guess, like, part of where, especially from the sell side, they may be more willing to say, okay, look, if you want to spend more later, we can do that at your upfront price. It seems like that would tie in with this supply demand dynamic where there's just so much inventory on the market right now that the sellers probably feel like, yeah, we're going to have impressions to sell come January or come May.
- [24:03]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah, absolutely. And I think also to your point about, I do think there were more deals that were maybe done at an agency level versus at an advertiser level. And so that enables clients to come in and out more fluidly so long as you're meeting agency commitments. But that is one of the ways that we, I think, enable greater flexibility, but it doesn't tie individual advertisers to a specific commitment.
- [24:24]
Tim Peterson
Got it. What are the pros and cons of doing it at the agency level versus the client level? Because I could imagine, like, there would be a world in which one of those models would win out.
- [24:36]
Marcy Greenberger
Well, I think it's, you know, doing it at an agency level, you have to sort of take a risk in assuming that the client dollars will be there. Right. We don't want to commit. We don't want to commit dollars on a client's behalf and then sort of, they feel forced into spending there down the road. So ultimately we have to make a low risk or a higher risk, I guess, bet. But with an educated understanding of where we think the clients will be. So it still starts from a bottoms up approach. We understand who are the partners that they see value with that are going to be most relevant for their brand. What do we think we have a sense of budgets for? Otherwise, when you leave it to the advertisers, obviously they're then in control of the spending and taking their own risks. I guess from that perspective, the good news is that where we have done agency deals in the past, we've, I think, made the right. We've done the right research in advance, we've made the right educated guesses and landed where we needed to be while still doing what's strategically right for each client.
- [25:32]
Tim Peterson
Okay. Yeah, because I feel like if I put myself in the Shoes of a client. I'm kind of thinking, yeah, more than happy for, um, to take on the risk. Like, I'll probably buy this stuff eventually, but if I don't have to be the one on the hook for it, if my name doesn't have to be on the lease, so to say, like, that's great for me, but is like, what are the reasons for some clients to want to be doing it? Client specific deals as opposed to agency level.
- [25:58]
Marcy Greenberger
You know, depending on a client's volume, there could be additional incentives for them. Even when we have advertisers commit specifically, there's still generally a framework at the agency level of the pricing and the added value that clients get. But there are some clients who maybe have a disproportionately higher spend than other clients and maybe may be able to carve out a little bit more value for themselves if they commit an really attached to their name. And that could be an even further discount on pricing. It could be unlocking more added value or other benefits based on their spend. So that could be a reason.
- [26:31]
Tim Peterson
Got it. Okay. And then you mentioned sports earlier. It felt like sports is always kind of an upfront unto itself. But this year, with so much more streaming sports inventory being out there and so much of the upfront happening before all the venue lawsuits and kind of preemption happened. But was the sports marketplace meaningfully different in this upfront?
- [26:56]
Marcy Greenberger
I don't know if the sports marketplace was meaningfully different, but what was meaningfully different is I think the benefit that clients got from it this year because networks were very, I'd say, bullish or pointed in saying the upfront is now closed at a certain period of time and really starting the scatter marketplace very quickly because there was so much continued demand in that space. So I think clients who did lock in their inventory in the upfront are going to see more of an advantage maybe this year because the scatter marketplace is going to be a little bit stronger and because, you know, normally in the past, I think networks have allowed a few extra upfront dollars to kind of dribble in as you go through the summer. And this year they were pretty firm. Like, no, July 31st was our date. And anything that comes in afterwards, you're going to pay a premium for.
- [27:42]
Tim Peterson
Oh, wow, July 31st. Did that surprise you that they set the date then?
- [27:46]
Marcy Greenberger
Well, that I. That's just one example of a date. I think, I think it was a little bit staggered from there. And I should also clarify. I think that's mostly from a Football standpoint, just given how quickly the season starts after that, you know, other sports like NBA, NHL, baseball, I would say were not quite as aggressive. But from an NFL and college football standpoint, those scatter marketplaces pretty much started in August.
- [28:10]
Tim Peterson
Okay, got it. And I mean, we're more than a month into the season then like, has the NFL scatter marketplace, like, has that all borne out so far?
- [28:19]
Marcy Greenberger
It has. I mean, there's a couple partners that have announced that they're sold out in certain weeks or, you know, over 90% sold. So there's definitely a scarcity there and that's, that's warranting increases. I think again, there's. That's where you can, you know, understanding what other, what a network's other needs are, you might be able to work around that. We've seen some success there where we are leveraging other dollars to bring to the table to deliver on a partner's needs. But otherwise, for the most part, there has been a true scatter market.
- [28:48]
Tim Peterson
Wow. Okay. Which is surprising because, I mean, it wasn't too long ago when the scatter market was pretty anemic.
- [28:56]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah. And I think it will be for, I think from an entertainment standpoint, I think that's what a lot of people are banking on still, that it will be a softer market. And other sports, I think it's really dependent on what happens with viewership. I think we'll still see. I think there's still a lot of interest, client interest in things like NBA and NHL. And while ratings aren't as strong as they are with NFL, I think they're at least more stable than entertainment. So we'll continue to be a little bit more of an economic supply demand equation there.
- [29:25]
Tim Peterson
Right. There's still live sports at the end of the day because even, you know, women's sports, for example, has had a huge year and obviously WNBA playoffs are going on and you know, I know I've been tuning into those. So there's seems to be a lot more opportunity with some of the non NFL sports or non football sports.
- [29:46]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah, there's. The ratings are up, but I was just at a conference earlier this week and there was a lot of mention and reminder of how the NCAA women's Championship outrated the men's championship this year. I think we're seeing the WNBA playoff ratings grow substantially. We also know that the WNBA and the National Women's Soccer League both just scored significant increases in their rights deals with the network. So for anyone that's going to be new to those sports, I Can see them, you know, the price starting to climb up in order to offset what those rights deals were. I think it's going to really benefit those advertisers that were early movers in those marketplaces.
- [30:24]
Tim Peterson
Right, yeah. Because I mean, also one of the challenges with sports is, you know, a lot of times as a sponsor or as an advertiser, you have to come in as, you know, more of a sponsor than just picking up inventory on the fly or even through the upfront. Right.
- [30:39]
Marcy Greenberger
You know what, it depends. I would say, you know, if you want to truly have a meaningful presence, you generally have to do some sort of sponsorship. But we have a lot of advertisers that, that come in for it's, you know, it's probably not like spots here and there, but just a traditional, you know, 30, 15 second schedule.
- [30:56]
Tim Peterson
Okay, got it. So sounds like, you know, sports as to be expected, kind of, you know, wins the upfront each year. From the sell side perspective, who are the other like winners in the upfront? Like was there, were there any companies like, you know, Amazon or Netflix or Disney or we could run down the list. But like anyone who, you know, a lot of the money really gravitated towards.
- [31:17]
Marcy Greenberger
This year, you know, I think just by default, anybody who is newer to the marketplace and showing more growth and also reset their pricing substantially probably did see a disproportionate uptick, I think, you.
- [31:34]
Tim Peterson
Know, so Amazon and Disney, I think are the two there.
- [31:37]
Marcy Greenberger
That probably sounds right. So I think, I think you'll see those, I think within some of the larger multichannel companies, I'll call them, they probably saw substantial growth in digital, but really offset by a lot of declines in linear still. So I don't know that they're seeing an absolute growth there necessarily, I think, although at a smaller scale, the multicultural networks, also from a linear and digital standpoint, I don't know if they're seeing growth so much as they're probably seeing less attrition from a linear standpoint than some of the English language linear and general market linear networks might be. So those continue to be strong and we saw that play out in the rates of change and things like that as well.
- [32:18]
Tim Peterson
Right, Yeah, I mean, we also saw that play out in terms of the write downs that Paramount and Warner took on their cable TV businesses, which are general entertainment cable TV networks. Whereas I don't remember seeing anything from Televisa doing the same for examples. Yeah, and so obviously we're talking for good reason a lot about streaming and tv. What about like the digital video side of the market, if you will, like YouTube's position in the upfront is always interesting because they're always kind of a thing unto themselves, for better and for worse. Did anything change in terms of like where YouTube fits with the market this year?
- [33:02]
Marcy Greenberger
You know, not really. I don't think they're really the only what I'll call online video or short form player that really has a big role in the upfront. I would say most other short form content is done either on, you know, like an agency rate card basis without a commitment or done on an ad hoc, you know, advertiser by advertiser basis. So YouTube is really the main one that I think plays in that upfront marketplace. I think similarly, I would say the buyer seller relationship played out pretty similarly there as it did in the other. I know that there's question by a lot of advertisers about because increasingly YouTube inventory is being viewed on a large screen. Does that belong in a CTV budget? Does it belong in another video budget? And everyone, I think is approaching it a little bit differently. But they also play a unique role because they have more than just that now. They have the Sunday ticket product and I think I anticipate they'll probably try to play compete for more rights going forward. So interesting to see what happens there.
- [34:10]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. Because there was someone at another agency I was just talking to who was saying that YouTube kind of went the other way in the market this year where YouTube's prices came up a bit. And actually I think they were saying is even like in the 30, 40 cpm range for like some of the like premium inventory or whatever. YouTube calls that like top tier of inventory. Yeah, this person had some, some strong feelings about YouTube coming out of this up front, which I guess is how things kind of go. You mentioned CTV budgets or kind of the CTV bucket. Is that still a thing? Like how are budgets kind of being apportioned or allocated at this point when it comes to TV writ large? Everything from linear to digital video?
- [34:56]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah, I would say most of our clients are thinking about it holistically now, at least from a starting point. And when I say holistically, I'm still thinking mostly linear TV and ctv. So not, not as much of that short form mobile viewed video content. But I think they start there and then, you know, we have a lot of different tools that can help us understand what's the right combination to maximize unique reach against your audience. You know, there's also an understanding of where there's certain inventory that might be important, but it does start there. And then eventually I think we see them as separate budgets once we go to market because of the way that you can both measure and activate. And I think when, you know, there's a lot of partners who want you to think about their properties holistically. But when it comes to ctv, for example, and a lot of that could be bought programmatically, there's a little bit more value, I think, in seeing that as its own ecosystem because you can then manage it, manage frequency across different partners and be able to optimize in that way versus just thinking about it partner by partner from a multichannel standpoint. So in an ideal world, we'll get there across screens and then it can truly be agnostic. But I think at some point it has to move from an overall video strategy to then when you activate, it does kind of separate a little bit.
- [36:14]
Tim Peterson
Okay, got it. When you said across screens, my mind, and this is how, this is the state of my mind these days, my mind immediately went to cross screen measurement. Like anytime I hear cross and screen together, I start thinking about measurement, which I guess it's hard to talk about the up front without talking about measurement. It's also just hard to talk about TV and streaming right now without talking about measurement because we have the paramount Nielsen standoff that's, you know, still going on. I know the deal expired, but something's going to have to, you know, come of that. And then video amp Axios reported, you know, they're potentially going to sell or do some sort of joint venture with arrival. The measurement side of things like were there any big changes when it comes to currencies? Are, you know, deals primarily still on Nielsen or was there more movement to non Nielsen measurements as the currency for upfront deals?
- [37:07]
Marcy Greenberger
Nielsen is still definitely the primary currency and where I'd say the lion's share is guaranteed against, I think as more clients move to high value audiences as opposed to demos, where that's where we're seeing people leverage some of the new currencies a little bit more. I will say this year there was a lot more talk going into the upfront about Nielsen's new big data product and how that might factor in. It turned out it wasn't, you know, from a partner readiness, an agency readiness and a Nielsen readiness, I don't think it was ready for primetime. So it didn't really end up factoring into deals. But I think it will be something that we start to explore more in earnest as we prep for the next year's Upfront.
- [37:45]
Tim Peterson
Okay. And I remember, like that being something of a criticism from a few folks I talked to back in the spring of just Nielsen was going to be doing this big push around the Nielsen plus Big Data, but that there wasn't, forgive the pun, enough data on how proven Nielsen plus Big Data was for anyone to have enough confidence to use it as a currency. Is that kind of where things still sit or is that changing?
- [38:12]
Marcy Greenberger
I think that was part of it. And just also because the timing of the rollout of the full big Data set, I think there were increments of when it was rolled out, as well as the fact that a lot of the systems, at least on the network side, aren't set up to be able to show the two currencies side by side. And a big part of the negotiation is going to be understanding what the translation is between the two as you move into a new currency. And without the ability to really see that, we could pull the data on our end. But it's incredibly manual and very time consuming to have to do that assessment. So I think not having it in this year's upfront is going to buy us more time to truly evaluate and understand the methodologically, if it's sound as well as what that translation is and how we effectively move from one currency to another.
- [39:00]
Tim Peterson
Right. And then I imagine part of the evaluation is also just the costs involved, because adding support for more currencies means you then I know the buy side pays less so for the currencies than the sell side does. That's why Paramount and Nielsen are on the standoff. But there's still costs involved from the buy side perspective as well. Again, we're seeing that play out in the Paramount, Nielsen side of things. But to what extent do you have a grasp on how measurement costs are going to change with multiple currencies being more of a de facto part of the market?
- [39:38]
Marcy Greenberger
I mean, the reality is, I think, and there's definitely a different group in my agency that manages a lot of that, but I don't think advertisers are in a position to an agencies to pay more. So there has to be some offsetting of that, whether, you know, if a new currency is coming and replacing an old one, presumably the old currency costs should go down. You know, I do think we pay generally based on, you know, volume of spend we have in the marketplace. So if that spend shifts from one currency to another, presumably the cost would shift as well. I also think for some of the newer currencies, to your point, a lot of the burden does fall on the seller. I think there are, you know, tools that agencies can tap into from a planning standpoint that cost money. But when it comes to just the actual ratings or currency, I think a lot of that cost falls with the seller. I don't know if that will change again if overall use of those currencies increases over time.
- [40:31]
Tim Peterson
Got something to definitely keep an eye on. On that note, Marcy, before I let you go, anything big that you're keeping an eye on, Q4 just started, but now that we're in Q4, in terms of how the market is going to develop, further future developments, maybe, you know.
- [40:53]
Marcy Greenberger
I think again, I think sports is going to continue to be a robust marketplace as Q4 progresses. I mean, the football seasons are already showing really strong numbers, especially in NFL, continuing to see growth year over year in a linear marketplace that everyone thought died 10 years ago. So I think, you know, we'll continue to see that be really strong. I think entertainment is going to continue to be where there's a little bit less demand as well as supply, and so I think that will probably continue to be softer. And the streaming, I think streaming is still going to be where a lot of the attention is both from. As supply continues to grow, I think a lot of partners are starting. Platforms are starting to continue to evolve from an ad innovation standpoint, from a targeting and measurement standpoint, as well as, I think from a consolidation standpoint, not necessarily from one buying another, but from, you know, platforms and partners that used to sell three distinct platforms, bringing that. Aggregating that inventory all together in one, which is both beneficial from an advertiser standpoint and from a consumer standpoint. So I think we'll see probably more of that and just more of an emphasis from the partners on programming for streaming. And I've started to see more of the. The content leads at the partners now. Be responsible. You know, you're maybe not just responsible for primetime anymore. You're responsible for primetime and streaming because that is often considered primetime content. So just continued emphasis on the streaming side of the business.
- [42:27]
Tim Peterson
Awesome. Marcy, I'm really glad we had you on because I have a much better grasp on, like, the legacy of this year's upfront and what kind of that indicates about the state of the market than I did before we had this conversation. So thanks so much for coming on the show.
- [42:40]
Marcy Greenberger
Yeah, of course. It was great. Thank you for having me.
- [42:48]
Tim Peterson
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Digiday podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening. Get more from Digiday with our daily newsletter sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.comnewsletters to sign up.