Big Tech earnings, AI ads, Roku’s FrndlyTV acquisition + what’s in & out in this year’s upfront

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Digiday Podcast – “Big Tech earnings, AI ads, Roku’s FriendlyTV acquisition + what’s in & out in this year’s upfront”

Release Date: May 6, 2025
Host: Digiday (Kamiko McCoy & Tim Peterson)
Guest: Michael Bergi, Senior Media Buying Editor at Digiday

---

Introduction

In this episode of The Digiday Podcast, hosts Kamiko McCoy and Tim Peterson delve into a comprehensive analysis of the latest developments in the media and marketing landscape. They explore the recent earnings reports from major tech giants, the integration of ads within AI platforms, Roku’s strategic acquisition of FriendlyTV, and key trends anticipated in this year’s upfronts. The episode also features insights from Michael Bergi, providing an expert preview of the upcoming TV and streaming upfront market.

---

1. Big Tech Earnings: Navigating Q1 2025

The podcast kicks off with a discussion on the Q1 2025 earnings reported by major tech companies including Alphabet (Google), Meta, Amazon, and Snap. While ad revenues saw increases across the board—for instance, Alphabet reported a staggering $66.9 billion and Snap posted $1.2 billion in ad revenue for Q1, both marking a 9% growth—the outlook for Q2 presents challenges.

Tim Peterson highlights, "Ad revenue in the first quarter of 2025 was up across the board, some to a greater degree than others." (02:30)

However, concerns loom over potential tariff implementations and economic uncertainties that could dampen ad spending in the upcoming quarter.

Kamiko McCoy adds, "Given the economic conditions and potential tariffs, it will be interesting to see how Q2 shapes up." (04:52)

The episode underscores the cautious optimism among these tech giants but flags the need for vigilance as economic factors evolve.

---

2. Advertising in AI: A New Frontier

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the burgeoning trend of integrating advertisements within AI chatbots. Companies like Meta and Google are spearheading this movement by embedding ads into their AI platforms.

Tim Peterson notes, "Meta announced its new AI app plans to include ads, and Google is syndicating AdSense ads into third-party AI chatbots." (06:50)

This strategy serves a dual purpose: gathering more user data and positioning these companies ahead of competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT. The evolution of search engines into chatbot interfaces, exemplified by Google’s AI mode, suggests a shift where advertisements become integral to these interactions.

Kamiko McCoy muses, "Ads in AI seem like a play to gather more information but also a shot at platforms like ChatGPT." (07:35)

The hosts discuss the implications of this trend, emphasizing that advertising ubiquity is expanding as AI becomes a primary medium for information retrieval.

---

3. Roku’s Acquisition of FriendlyTV: Strategic Expansion

Roku’s recent acquisition of FriendlyTV for $185 million marks a strategic move to bolster its position in the streaming pay-TV market. FriendlyTV offers a lineup of approximately 50 channels, including notable names like HGTV, but lacks high-demand channels like ESPN.

Tim Peterson explains, "Roku is leveraging this acquisition to enhance its bundling capabilities, making it easier for users to subscribe to multiple streaming services through FriendlyTV integrated into the Roku platform." (12:03)

This move not only diversifies Roku's subscription offerings but also positions the company to compete more robustly against established streaming services by providing bundled subscriptions, thereby increasing user retention and ad inventory opportunities.

Kamiko McCoy questions the competitive edge, "What benefits does Roku gain beyond competing with YouTube and Hulu?” (15:04)

The acquisition is seen as a stepping stone for Roku to potentially negotiate for sports rights and expand its advertising reach within premium programming.

---

4. Trends in This Year’s Upfronts: Insights from Michael Bergi

The episode transitions to an in-depth conversation with Michael Bergi, who provides a preview of the upfront market trends anticipated for this year. The upfronts, scheduled for the week of May 12th in New York City, are crucial for advertisers and media sellers to negotiate commitments for the upcoming year.

Key Trends:

• Flexibility in Commitments

  Michael Bergi observes, "Advertisers are seeking more flexibility in their commitments, allowing them to adjust or cancel ad spends with shorter notice periods." (22:56)

  This trend reflects a desire for adaptability in uncertain economic times, challenging the traditional long-term commitments characteristic of upfront deals.

• Rise of Programmatic Buying

  Programmatic advertising is increasingly becoming a staple in the upfront market, enabling more automated and efficient ad buys.

  Michael Bergi states, "Programmatic is a bigger part of the marketplace now, allowing smaller advertisers to access television inventory more easily." (48:40)

  This shift democratizes access to media buying but also introduces new dynamics in negotiation and inventory management.

• Legacy Advertisers Maintain Dominance

  While programmatic methods rise, legacy advertisers with longstanding relationships and large budgets continue to hold significant sway in upfront negotiations.

  Christina Manlos highlights, "Large legacy advertisers like P&G benefit from lower pricing due to their historical commitments and robust relationships with media sellers." (32:53)

• Alternative Measurement Currencies Struggle

  Despite ongoing discussions, Nielsen remains the dominant measurement currency, overshadowing emerging alternatives.

  Michael Bergi comments, "Alternative measurement currencies are struggling to gain traction, with Nielsen still being the go-to standard." (47:42)

• Principle-Based Buying: A Double-Edged Sword

  Principal media offers agencies the advantage of securing favorable pricing through bulk purchases but at the cost of transparency.

  Michael Bergi warns, "Principle-based buying lacks transparency, turning agencies more into resellers rather than true advocates for their clients." (37:35)

Challenges Ahead:

• Buyer’s Market Dynamics

  The upfront market is expected to tilt towards a buyer’s market, where advertisers have more negotiating power due to economic uncertainties and increased inventory supply.

  Tim Peterson explains, "With more inventory available and economic uncertainties, sellers might have to offer greater flexibility and concessions." (18:27)

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Setbacks

  There is a noticeable pullback from DEI-focused advertising, with advertisers and networks struggling to maintain commitments to multicultural audiences amidst economic and political pressures.

  Christina Manlos states, "Advertisers are scaling back DEI budgets, putting networks targeting multicultural audiences in a tough spot." (52:17)

  The hosts express skepticism about the resurgence of DEI commitments in the upcoming upfronts, despite ongoing advocacy for inclusive audience representation.

---

5. Rising Concerns: Children’s Privacy and Regulatory Scrutiny

The podcast also touches on recent regulatory challenges, particularly Roku's children's privacy violation lawsuit in Michigan. This issue underscores the growing scrutiny of connected TV platforms and the importance of safeguarding younger audiences from data privacy breaches.

Tim Peterson mentions, "Roku is defending itself vigorously against the children's privacy lawsuit, highlighting the complexities of managing privacy in connected TV environments." (11:00)

For more detailed insights, listeners are directed to Digiday’s YouTube channel for an in-depth video on children's privacy concerns in CTV.

---

Conclusion

This episode of The Digiday Podcast offers a thorough examination of the current state and future directions of the media and marketing industries. From the robust earnings of tech giants and the innovative integration of ads into AI platforms to Roku’s strategic acquisitions and evolving upfront market dynamics, the discussion provides valuable insights for brands, agencies, and publishers navigating the digital age. The expert analysis from Michael Bergi further enriches the conversation, highlighting both opportunities and challenges ahead.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Time: 02:30
  Tim Peterson: “Ad revenue in the first quarter of 2025 was up across the board, some to a greater degree than others.”

• Time: 04:52
  Kamiko McCoy: “Given the economic conditions and potential tariffs, it will be interesting to see how Q2 shapes up.”

• Time: 22:56
  Michael Bergi: “Advertisers are seeking more flexibility in their commitments, allowing them to adjust or cancel ad spends with shorter notice periods.”

• Time: 48:40
  Michael Bergi: “Programmatic is a bigger part of the marketplace now, allowing smaller advertisers to access television inventory more easily.”

• Time: 52:17
  Christina Manlos: “Advertisers are scaling back DEI budgets, putting networks targeting multicultural audiences in a tough spot.”

---

For more insights and daily updates, subscribe to Digiday’s newsletter at digiday.com/newsletters.

Transcript

[Michael Bergi]

Foreign.

[Tim Peterson]

Hello.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Digiday Podcast, a show about the business of media and marketing. I'm Kamiko McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.

[Tim Peterson]

And I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio at Digiday Media.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Tim, how are you?

[Christina Manlos]

I'm tired.

[Tim Peterson]

I'm already tired. And, you know, by the time this episode comes out, we'll be more tired into day two. Thank you. I appreciate that. No, I was in. I had to drive up to LA yesterday morning for a dinner that YouTube put on with some creators, talking CTV and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

[Christina Manlos]

So it was.

[Tim Peterson]

It was good, good food, good conversation. But then this morning, needed to drive back to San Diego to try to beat traffic. So I'm feeling it a bit. But I got the drive to Palm Springs coming up. I'll have done that at this point and we'll be hanging out at the Programmatic Marketing Summit in Palm Springs.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Very excited. Do you think we're going to have overpriced salmon while we're there? I know that's been a recurring theme throughout this podcast.

[Tim Peterson]

I'm sure it'll come up, but maybe some high price. That's. Did you know, foot in the bill on that one? If we do, we'll see. I think usually at DPMs in Palm Springs, it's like a lot of Southwest, so I'm expecting fajitas.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Love that, love that, love that. Who we got later on this episode, we've got one of our own joining us to talk, and that's super exciting.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, it was a fun conversation. So we had Michael Bergi, who's the senior media buying editor at Digiday. He and I have been covering the TV and streaming upfronts market for years. That market is really going to kick off in about a week. When this episode drops with the week of May 12th is when many of the big TV networks and streaming services will be hosting their upfront presentations in New York City. I'll be in town for that. I'm excited. I've never been to upfronts week before, but that's the effectively official kickoff to the real upfront, which is the negotiations between advertisers agencies and TV networks and streaming services. So we brought Michael on to preview what we think will be in and out in this year's upfront market.

[Kamiko McCoy]

But first, we got a couple of juicy scoops, including tech earnings from Q1, how ads are showing up in AI and Roku's acquisition.

[Tim Peterson]

So two weeks ago, Alphabet Parent company at Google reported earnings this past week. You had a lot of the rest of the tech giants reported earnings. So meta reported earnings. Amazon, Snap also reported earnings for those three as well as for Alphabet. Ad revenue in the first quarter of 2025 was up across the board, some to a greater degree than others. There's also like a bit of a sliding scale here where you have Alphabet at the high end, $66.9 billion in ad revenue in Q1, whereas snap $1.2 billion in ad revenue in Q1. But those two saw similar, you know, 9% increases. So Q1 was good for these companies. Q1 though, was more or less pre tariffs. There was tariff fears, hints, hesitarifs if you will, but there wasn't the full blown, oh, tariffs are coming, tariffs are here and more tariffs are on the way, as is going to be the case for Q2. So I think that was a thing that stood out to me. I think when we had the conversation with Sam Bradley and Christina Manlos, you know, Digiday's senior reporter and senior marketing editor respectively, a couple weeks ago, we talked about how with these recession fears and the ad market downturn, one thing we were going to look to was what do these companies say about what to expect for the second quarter? And some of these companies had things to say this week.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting how this all shakes out because I know at least for Amazon, when it comes to tariffs, they're starting to feel the effects because there's been a back and forth about whether or not they're going to display tariff cost for consumers, big back and forth. So I think it'll be interesting to see how, you know, what Q2 looks like. I know there was a lot of like, you know, we saw the writing on the wall in Q1. So depending on how things shake out for two Q2, we'll, we'll see how this all happens. I know that there's some uncertainty in that outlook, one, because of tariffs, two, because of the relationships that these big tech companies have or have been trying to have with Trump in light of antitrust lawsuits and things like that. And also, you know, consumer sentiments around spending haven't been the same given, you know, us with our pocketbooks are also seeing the writing on the wall in terms of spending and whatnot. So there's, there's that to account for as well.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah.

[Tim Peterson]

So on these earnings call, these companies basically are trying to say to investors and investor analysts, like clear jets, yeah, let's, let's not get too excited here. I don't think they want people to get too downcast either. But like Meta CFO Susan Lee, she expressed a lot of caution when it came to their Q2 outlook. Meta even disclosed that it the company has seen ad spending decrease from Asian e commerce companies. So like Shein Temu that like which is probably going to continue to be the case, maybe even ramp up because you know we're recording this on May 2nd. This is the day in which that de minimis exemption where imports, you know, under $800 are exempted from tariffs. No longer those get tariffs tariffs for everyone. So there's Meta's already seen the effects of this with that NSP decrease that can continue. Amazon's forecast was kind of to the low end of what analysts expectations were not a great sign. But maybe the most dire sign was Snap just said nah, we're not forecasting anything like we have no idea how this is going to go. Neither do any of you. So we're not going to say and look like fools in a few months if it goes even worse or then at least maybe we're managing expectations and so if in a few months things aren't so bad, we look even better for not having that comp out there.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Yeah. I actually sat in on P&G's investor call last week and that was one of the sentiments of what a lot of people wanted to know. What does this mean for 2026? And and the spokesperson said to your point, cool your jets. And I think to your point like you know there's, there's this pressure to like be able to map out everything but the, the companies are basically saying like I'm not about to shoot myself in the foot depending on how things play out.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. And speaking of 2026 because I don't think this is going to be something that really affects ad revenue. At least not in Q the second quarter of 2025. Like these next two months but potentially in 2026 is we're starting to see ads pop up in these AI chatbots or at least announcement for plans of one thing that happened this past week. Meta announced its new AI app and that it said that it plans to put ads in said app. Google has been syndicating AdSense ads. So it's like ad network ads into third party AI chatbots. And so you have the duopoly already starting to seed their AI chatbot ad businesses.

[Kamiko McCoy]

I mean this seems like a play to gather more information but also a shot at OpenAI's ChatGPT which has its own standalone app. Others are playing catch up in this base. Meta is just the latest one you've got, Grok, thanks to Twitter X whatever you want to call it, that's also out there in the ether. So lots of players getting into this space. It's busy now.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. And it also seems to confirm, which.

[Tim Peterson]

Is something you and I are going to be Talking to Elena McGurn from Digitas during DPMs about this kind of the future of search, the AI future of search, how these AI chatbots are really the new search engines. We're not breaking any ground by making that claim. Many people have drawn that. But in the same way that search is very much an advertising based revenue stream for Google. Yeah, these AI chatbots seem like advertising is going to be part of the revenue stream. Hasn't been part of the case yet for OpenAI, but I believe there was. There was something I was, you know, I saw recently where OpenAI shared some plans, you know, talking about like shopping, monetization. Well, there's that like the kind of the affiliate link thing which is a form of advertising, but also that for the free tier of ChatGPT they have like some monetization roadmap. Now there could be affiliate links, could be part of that. But generally if you think free product and monetization, your mind goes to ads. So that may be on the roadmap for them. What's also going to be interesting is Google has started rolling out AI mode for people in the US which is basically taking traditional Google search and just turning it into a chatbot interface. So instead of having the blue links, you know, the typical search results page, it just looks like a chatbot interface and you're just getting the AI generated answers. Google, if this is the future of search, if Google goes full AI mode one day, you would think Google's going to have to find a way to put ads in there. And so I think what we're seeing with Google syndicating AdSense ads into these third party AI chatbots, probably a test for Google to figure out how that would work for them without, you know, with the stakes being somewhat low because these are other companies, AI chatbots, these aren't Google's. Google doesn't have to worry about the actual experience, but it can learn from that. Meta's already said it's going to be doing this. So I would imagine Google's. As Google rolls out AI mode, I'm thinking ads are going to be part of that pretty quickly.

[Kamiko McCoy]

So do you suspect these will show up in Gemini.

[Tim Peterson]

As we've talked about before, everything is an ad. I think ads, ads are just going to show up all over the place. I worry what mid journey ads are going to look like, but wouldn't be surprised for ads to be there as well. I think it's as we've seen with everything else, any place someone is spending their time, any place content is being served, is an opportunity to serve an ad.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Absolutely. Not that you guys asked, but Chuck E. Cheese is also releasing their own media network. That's way outside the point. But to the point of everything being an ad, it won't show up in your pizza. It's gonna. Or the animatronics that they don't have anymore. Yeah, but they will have an ad network.

[Tim Peterson]

We can go on a whole tangent about this some other time. But like I just think of the legal teams at Chuck E. Cheese and any potential advertisers thinking about the children's privacy concerns here, which is something that's flared up a week or so ago with Roku. Roku got hit with a children's privacy violation and I believe it was Michigan. That's conversation for another day. But Roku is another one that you know for us to talk about because they had some news this week beyond the children's privacy lawsuit, which Roku is being very vociferous in defending against and saying it did no wrong there. For anyone who's curious about how it could a connected TV platform could have violated children's privacy, check out the Digitae YouTube channel. We have a video about the children's privacy concerns in CTV up on the DJ YouTube channel. I think that was from January of 2024, 2023 if I'm not mistaken. So but Roku this week had earnings, ad revenue is up. But the big news that they made is Roku made an acquisition. They're acquiring a service called Friendly tv. Kamiko, have you ever heard of Friendly tv?

[Kamiko McCoy]

I have not heard of Friendly tv. I've heard of Freevy and there's a handful of others that start with an F. But Friendly is a new one for me.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, Freevee. You can delete that from your memory because Amazon has deleted that branding.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Great.

[Tim Peterson]

You don't have to worry about that anymore. So friendly TV is a streaming paid TV service similar to a YouTube TV, a Fubo Hulu Live TV service, LinkedIn. That's the other F1.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Fubo. Got it.

[Tim Peterson]

Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah, there's many. But Friendly is a smaller one. So Friendly really just it Has a. Its channel line up, I think is like 50 channels. It's like ANA Networks is in there. I think HGTV's in there. But, you know, I don't believe they have, like, espn, for example.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Oh, okay.

[Tim Peterson]

So it's more of a. It's just a smaller streaming pay TV service.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Peterson]

And so in that sense, this is. Can be seen as somewhat of a smaller acquisition for Roku. I mean, there's. Roku is still paying $185 million in cash for friendly TV, 75 million of which is being held back for performance incentives. Roku being like, you want this money, you better get us these subscribers, get us this revenue. But it seems like so in streaming, there's been this great rebundling trend that happened. You know, streaming came along and, you know, broke the traditional TV bundle.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Right.

[Tim Peterson]

But now these streaming services are saying, oh, crap, people aren't as willing to pay for every single streaming service.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Who would have thought?

[Tim Peterson]

Or they're just gonna like, cancel and they're gonna sign up for Max when White Lotus is in season, once White slot is done, if they're not a last person, they're going to cancel their Mac subscription and maybe re up on Apple TV because they want to catch up on severance, that kind of thing. And in fact, you know, TiVo put out a report that in the fourth quarter of 2024, people in North America did cut back on how much they're spending on streaming services by spending nearly $20 per month less than they had the year before. So there's. Those are kind of like the conditions in which streaming services are seeking out bundles. Disney's created a bundle with Warner Brothers Discovery. Others are putting bundles together. Roku acquiring Friendly TV streaming pay TV service is effectively a bundle. And so this would give Roku a way to start bundling subscriptions a bit more. Roku already has a subscription streaming subscription resale program. But this would be a way for Roku to say, Kamika, if you want to watch XYZ streaming services or channels, instead of having to buy all those together, just sign up for Friendly tv. It's built into your Roku platform and we're going to make it easy for you. In fact, we already have your credit card information, so really just hit this button. We'll charge you and just forget about. Don't ever worry about canceling, because we're always going to have something for you to watch.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Don't worry about canceling. What leg up would this give Roku? I would imagine, you know, being able to go up more against the likes of, like, YouTube and Hulu. But what are some of the other perks here for them by doing this?

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah.

[Tim Peterson]

I mean, if. Because it's bundling a bunch of different programming, there's a higher likelihood that people would use it because there's a higher likelihood that they may find something to watch. It's kind of the. What's been Netflix's biggest strength is if you don't know what to watch. Netflix has so much programming.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Peterson]

That you can just fire up Netflix and generally find something to watch or rewatch at least. And so Roku and having a paid TV service, that's kind of the same idea. And it goes back to cable TV in the first place. Like, I know growing up, I didn't know what I wanted to watch. You just turn on cable TV and you go through the channel lineup and eventually you find, like, you know, home Alone's on again or Heat's on again. Whatever it is, I'll just watch this. So that's one opportunity. Two, if Roku can acquire enough of a subscriber base and build enough of a business here, it could give Roku an opportunity to start competing for sports rights, as we've seen Netflix and Amazon be doing. And it may also just give Roku an opportunity to go to a Disney, which owns espn, and say, like, hey, look, you're very reliant on the traditional TV bundle for your revenue, but that's deteriorating. Bring ESPN onto friendly tv, and then that's a way for Roku to indirectly get sports rights without having to pay for those sports. They would have to pay Harry espn, but that could be a bit more economical for Roku. Also, streaming paid TV services typically get a portion of add inventory to sell on a network. So a network like HGTV airs an hour's worth of programming. Generally, there's like 16 minutes worth of ads that air. Then two minutes of ads can be sold by, in this case, friendly tv. And so that gives Roku more ability to go to advertisers and say, hey, buy from us, because we can put you in HGTV or an A and E Networks or whatever it is that's considered premium programming here.

[Kamiko McCoy]

So Roku wants to be a breakout star. We'll see if they actually do it. To your point earlier.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Peterson]

I mean, Roku. Roku participates in the upfront, but it participates a bit differently because the inventory Roku owns at the moment is the Roku channel. And then, like its home screen inventory, the screensaver inventory. It also like, has access to inventory in third party streaming services that it can sell, but that's not its its own inventory in the way that friendly TV would have its own inventory. Now, this acquisition won't have closed, I'm assuming in time for this year's upfront, but it could help Roku's standing when it comes to next year's upfront, which may be all for the better because as we discuss it with Michael Berge, our senior media buying editor, in the featured segment this week, this year's upfront could be a rough one for the.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Sellers, buyer's market, if you will. Why? Why is it going to be harder for seller in a buyer's market? I know you just looked at it, but run me through that.

[Tim Peterson]

Like, as we were talking about with the, you know, tech earnings, there's a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the economy in general. That always has impacts on advertising and how advertisers spend their money. And so if the advertisers are hesitant to spend their money this year in the upfront, and the upfront is when the TV networks and streaming services try to secure as much ad revenue as possible for the following year, the sellers may have to make more concessions they would like to, such as providing greater flexibility, which is one of the things that we talk about with Michael.

[Kamiko McCoy]

So these are all things that we'll get to in the conversation with Michael. So excited to have that. With no further ado, let's get to it. Foreign.

[Christina Manlos]

Welcome back to the show because you are one of our returning guests.

[Tim Peterson]

How's it going?

[Michael Bergi]

It's going all right. Thank you. It's always great to be back here. Just came back from the possible conference, so didn't get a sunburn in Miami because I was indoors most of the day, but it was a good time.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. Has, has the weather been like Kamika, you're in Atlanta in the south, too. Has the weather been already getting warm out there? Because out here in California, we're still, we got Matt Gray going on right now.

[Kamiko McCoy]

So I don't know, never rains in California. I don't know the rest of the lyrics to that song, but no, it has been doing nothing but raining down here in Atlanta. So I am very much looking forward to June when we'll have Canon. I'll be baking and roasting in the sun.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah.

[Christina Manlos]

And then, I mean, so it'll be raining in California next week when. Well, when this episode's out, you and I will be at the Digitized Programmatic Marketing Summit Rain is on the forecast. Scalding, no rain.

[Tim Peterson]

And 68 is the high, so. 68, yeah, yeah.

[Christina Manlos]

So bundle up. But Bergie, bring your parka. So, Michael, you mentioned Possible, which is for anyone who doesn't know, fairly recently this is what the third year possible has been going on.

[Michael Bergi]

Third year, yeah.

[Christina Manlos]

And so largely a programmatic event, but I think pretty well timed to this conversation. So we're going to be talking about this year's TV and streaming upfront market and kind of what we see as the trends and developments are in and out list for this year's upfront, with those presentations happening the week of May's wealth in New York City. But last year, you and I have both been covering the upfronts for years at this point. Last year felt like something of a watershed year for Programmatic becoming an actual part of the upfront as opposed to a sideshow or something that doesn't really participate in the upfront scene. Sort of like the new fronts of buying mechanisms in a way, it's a good way to put it at possible. This week, did the upfront come up at all or was like, did that affect figuring into any of the conversations you were having?

[Michael Bergi]

Well, I think it wasn't directly conversations about the upfront, but because everybody was talking about kind of economic conditions broadly, there was talk about spending and whether spending would be curtailed. And even though possible does kind of stretch beyond programmatic because it tries to be this intersection of kind of media, marketing, tech and culture, the notion of using programmatic means to secure the best value you can when you're going to have to pay attention to every dollar definitely was kind of a sub theme throughout the conference and all the people.

[Christina Manlos]

That we spoke to and the macroeconomic conditions. That feels like it's going to be the big bingo term this year. Although what a euphemism, right? Oh my God. Yeah. And it tees up what I'll call out as our first in versus out this year. So I'm saying in flexibility. I feel like that's a layup. Everyone's already saying flexibility so much. It's also just I got so sick of the term flexibility for the past four upfronts. Ever since 2020, flexibility was the buzzword out fixed commitments, which is related to this with the upfront buyers, brands and agencies don't want to be as stuck in these commitments, even though year long commitments is the whole name of the game. Are you thinking similarly flexibility in fixed commitments out this year?

[Michael Bergi]

Well, I'm just kind of almost laughing in my own head at the idea of everybody wants more flexibility, but they're still going to participate in the upfront, which is all about long term commitment. So it's the industry having its cake and wanting to eat it too, where they 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 to actual, you know, kind of running the ads than ever before. And there just comes a point where you then say, then why bother with upfront commitments? You know, sellers want to know that they're going to, you know, have the books filled. But if there's a possibility that, you know, 30 or maybe even 15 days before kind of that ad runs, an advertiser is going to be given the right or the ability to say no, things have changed, we want to pull out. It just goes against the idea of the upfront. So 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.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, yeah. Because that's how kind of the flexibility conversation manifest for anyone who doesn't isn't eyes deep in this stuff like Michael and I are. When it comes to the upfront, the idea is advertiser, or increasingly an agency, which is, you know, something we'll get to in a second, makes a year long spending commitment with a TV network or streaming service, an NBC Universal, a Disney at Netflix and Amazon, and says, okay, over the next year we're going to spend $100 million with you. We're going to do 25 million in Q4, 25 million in Q1 on down the list. But attached to that there are out clauses or cancellation options. So generally for Q4, you don't get to cancel any of that because it's like, why do you make the commitment if it's for the first quarter in the period? Also Q4, big ad quarter anyways. Generally brands don't want to be canceling in Q4 unless there are macroeconomic conditions, activity and such. And then Q1, Q2, it's generally like there's 75% firmness, give or take, sometimes it's down to 60%. And then Q3 is, when one buyer I talked to recently was just like, Q3 is maximum firmness because that's summer for the broadcast networks. They're out of season, people are traveling, so there's less audience around. So there's. And understanding that that money may not be worth as much from the advertiser side of things anyway. So let's give them more flexibility there. And generally you can't cancel all of that commitment for any given quarter. It's, you can Cancel Generally like 20 to 50% depending on how well you, how good you are at negotiating and either 30 days before the quarter begins or 60 days before the quarter begins. That depends on again how good you are at negotiating. Also just how susceptible your given advertising vertical is to changing. So like historically movie studios, for one, movie advertisers have had the shorter cancellation windows. Just because movies can change when they're coming out, things can affect that. And so this has been a pretty contentious topic I think always in some respects, but especially since 2020, because the flexibility was more needed. But you raise a point that's part of all of this is what's the point of the upfront or the value of the upfront to what extent? Especially in a digital age with so many things being bought programmatically, real time bidding, why be stuck into fixed commitments? And I kind of think of it as shopping at Costco. You shop at Costco and you buy a bunch of toilet paper because you know, God forbid anything happen, you're going to need the toilet paper for the next year so you can really stock up on it.

[Michael Bergi]

It's about as necessary an item as you're going to find. Yes.

[Christina Manlos]

Whereas perishables like produce, you're not going to stock up on a year's worth of bananas because that's probably going to go bad before you use it. But you may buy some bananas if they're cheaper there just to have on part. You're just going to kind of manage that. And so that's how I kind of look at the upfront market for advertisers and agencies is those who a png, a Unilever, a Coca Cola, Pepsi, they probably know, okay, we're going to be advertising on TV and streaming at least to some extent over the next year. So we're going to play in the upfront because we get cheaper rates. If we do that by making just like Costco, you buy in bulk because it's going to be less per roll of toilet paper.

[Michael Bergi]

Exactly.

[Christina Manlos]

But you have to moderate that.

[Kamiko McCoy]

If I actually can actually make this about myself for a moment. One love Costco down Costco girl for life. The hot dogs. Enough, right?

[Tim Peterson]

There you go.

[Kamiko McCoy]

My favorite stories when the CEO was like, do not raise those prices or anyways built my loyalty in. Yeah, we're locked in. One of the things that I'm hearing just from like in the retail media sector, there's similar conversations that are happening. Right. We're also talking about flexibility less than like upfronts and more in JBPS negotiations was not which, you know, retail media networks are kind of setting themselves up as media networks at this point. And on the topic of flexibility, I'd be curious to kind of get your thoughts, Bergey, of like, how far can you stretch flexibility? When I'm talking to marketers, there's like, well, we got to sign these deals to get the cheap rates right and lock ourselves in and make that commitment to the retailers. But how much can I squeeze out of this? It's almost like you're questioning the power dynamics there again, right? As to how much you as a media buyer are able to push for. So what are you hearing from that pov?

[Michael Bergi]

I mean, I think it's going to continue to be pushed and it's being backed by the brands who are saying, well, agency, if you don't get it done for me this way, then we revisit our relationship with you. And there's another agency down the line that says, oh, we'll be able to do that if, if that agency can't. But there comes a point where a media seller can only go so close to the actual, you know, kind of time of the ads being run that they can no longer give that flexibility. Which is why I think we're going to have kind of a contentious marketplace. And what you hear more and more now, you know, from agencies as well as brands, is, you know, spending year round, which is kind of in some esoteric way the equivalent of upfronts, in that you're planning for the long term, but you're almost buying on a more scatter basis, which is more quarter by quarter in order to have those outs that you need, especially in an economically volatile environment like we're kind of starting to see now for sure.

[Christina Manlos]

And that's such a big part of it too, because it's similar to like in retail media where a Walmart, an Amazon, a Kroger, in some ways they're always going to have inventory available. Like, there isn't necessarily a scarcity to the inventory in streaming. It's the same thing where there is like a big supply, demand imbalance. And so it does very much raise the question for a lot of advertisers of, well, do I really need to be in the upfront to get this inventory? Now, if you want the super bowl, if you want to be the lead Sponsor on the next season of Stranger Things. Those are upfront type commitments. You need to be, especially sports, you need to be in the upfront. But if you're just like, I kind of just want to reach folks on Netflix, you don't necessarily have to do an upfront deal with Netflix, I would imagine can be similar with an Amazon, a Kroger, a Walmart, depending on like your merchant relationship, I guess, with the retailer.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Michael Bergi]

And I think that's exactly right. And I think that's exactly why to your point earlier, Tim, programmatic is a bigger part of the marketplace now because you can secure that kind of stuff if you're not looking for those major tenpole moments, whether it's the super bowl or other sports events, which, you know, sidebar here. Sports is creeping more and more into what sellers are trying to bring to the table in order to attract more advertisers. But yeah, that's why Programmatic is a bigger part of this equation.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. And we will be getting to that. But our next in and out is in legacy advertisers. Legacy upfront advertisers. I think they're going to, they've been in the upfront for decades. I think they're going to stay in the upfront this time around, even given the economic conditions out, I think mid sized advertisers. And so we've seen this play out where, you know, if you're a P and G, you've been in the upfront for years. It's kind of like someone who has some level of rent control or like I think I, you know, put it in the future of TV briefing last week. It's like renting a, an apartment in Manhattan in the 80s. If you keep that lease, your rent's going to be going up, but it's going to be going up from a pretty low base versus someone who's just signing a lease in 2025 in that building. And so this is what's happened with direct to consumer brands for one is they started participating in the upfront within the past five to seven years or so and we're talking like big direct to consumer brands as opposed to someone who's still, you know, drop shipping their products themselves. But because a PNG has these lower bases, NBCU, Disney, etc. They're not really making their bread off of getting P and G to pay more year in, year out because P and G has that legacy base that it's working off. Whereas a newer D2C marketer or even the tech companies that have been participating up front, those are the ones who are signing the new leases. Those are the ones where the TV networks are able to say, okay, well here's your price.

[Tim Peterson]

Yes.

[Christina Manlos]

Don't worry about what P and G, this is what we can ask you to pay.

[Michael Bergi]

Yeah, no, I, I do agree with that. The large legacy advertisers, it just behooves them to have the upfront commitments. And I would even go back to something as simple as they, they have the relationships. Even though so much more of this stuff can be kind of transacted through algorithms and kind of ad tech, when it comes to the big sellers, especially in linear television, relationships still have some bearing. And those big advertisers, from the autos to the soft drinks, food and beverage, even things like movie studios, they're going to have that advantage of keeping pricing down because of their legacy status. I think your point about DTC and I reading your future of TV briefing, that's a really, really interesting point because yeah, it does kind of inhibit some of those sellers from bringing in advertisers where you start that rate at a higher level and that's where they can kind of make their nut. If that's not really happening to the same degree, it's going to be hard, especially for linear television, which is already challenged, to kind of reach the kind of revenue numbers it's, you know, finance people are going to expect. Yeah, and owners.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, and there's a piece to it too. You mentioned the Scatter marketplace, which is for anyone again who doesn't live and breathe this stuff like we do. So in tv you can buy TV inventory from the sellers in the upfront marketplace where you just reserve it way ahead of time. But there's also what's called the Scatter marketplace, which in digital I think would just be called the marketplace where you can be buying this stuff kind of day of really. And so there was a agency executive I was talking to within the past week or two, if I'm not mistaken, who was saying that in Q1 the scatter pricing had come to be almost in line with upfront pricing. The idea being like in the upfront, like Costco, you're buying in bulk, so you're getting impressions at a much lower rate than you would if you were buying them on a one off basis. Scatter, you're effectively buying on a one off basis that it was still there was a markup on Scatter, but not such a markup that it is as cost prohibitive for someone. So A mid sized advertiser who's already paying a healthy amount on the CPM and the upfront may look at scatter and be like, well we're paying not that much different but we don't have to make this big commitment as part of it. This actually might make more financial sense for us.

[Michael Bergi]

I think that's of great. It's going to be of great appeal this year. Especially going back to something I said before that you know, agencies are talking about just year round buying that inherently moves more dollars to a scatter marketplace. Especially if to your point scatter pricing gets kind of more on an even keel with the upfronts. Years passed before the pandemic. Since you and I have been covering this for so many years, you know that if it was a soft scatter market going into the upfronts, it probably wasn't going to be a great upfront year either because at least for the.

[Christina Manlos]

Price of the buyer, it's going to be fantastic.

[Michael Bergi]

Oh yeah, no, and I mean for the sellers, those who need to kind of like log the money to make sure they hit their revenue nut, you know. Yeah, it was, that usually made it a buyer's market. So.

[Christina Manlos]

And where, what like this would be the third year that it seems like the upfront is going to be considered a buyer's market.

[Michael Bergi]

Yeah. Still. And you know, having more and more inventory every year with looking at you Kimiko, you know, retail media networks now more, you know, now a part of kind of upfront negotiation possibilities. You're just adding more and more inventory to what can be sold and you know, supply and demand. We know what happens there.

[Kamiko McCoy]

So yeah, yeah, we are seeing that on our end as well. Not to say that, you know, you've been able to effectively measure all of it as it goes into more places off site but you know, it's there.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. And that seems also part of the thing of like if you're one of these mid sized advertisers, you may look be looking at each dollar of is this best spent on TV and streaming or is it best spent on retail media? Especially given again the macroeconomic conditions and the idea of like this pivot to performance that everyone seems to be making.

[Kamiko McCoy]

In some form and also to your point earlier about like what type of strength you have when it comes to the negotiations. Right. If you're a legacy advertiser, retail media's networks are the same thing. You know, Walmart's going to want a PNG on its shelves. There's more negotiation power there. If you're a D2C and you're just now coming, you know, your, your reckoning power is a little bit, it's less certain.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. Which I think tees up our next in which is principle based buying, which. Well, Bergy, you wrote on this pretty recently with your media buy in briefing. Can you, can you talk about what principle based buying is and how it could, why it may be in particularly this upfront?

[Michael Bergi]

Yeah, I mean I've simplified it to, you know, kind of I, I, 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 media network, the seller, wants to make the deal and guarantee that inventory. The downside and, and I think all the critics of principal media point to this especially is that there's complete lack of transparency. The agency does not usually tell the client what it paid for for that inventory and therefore marks up that inventory to its client. And the kind of, the big picture criticism of this is the agent is no longer an agent, they're a reseller. The allegations are that agencies are no longer acting in the interests of their clients. They're acting in the interests of making more money for themselves. The way I think we're going to see more principal media being leveraged in this upfront marketplace. First of all, it's really just the territory of the agency holding companies. There are very few, if any independent agencies, media agencies that are actually using principal media. Because one of the advantages of if you're going to use principal media, you have to have a ton of kind of scale. And holding companies, because they have large clients and usually a large number of clients, they're bringing a lot of heft to the marketplace. That's how they get their pricing. So I think we're going to see the holding companies using principal media more. Those holding companies like to talk about the fact that it's risk mitigation by employing more principal media in securing better value for their clients, even though their clients don't know what value is there. Since it is less, it's a little bit more opaque. You know, the agencies say that risk mitigation is expressed through better pricing because it still might be cheaper than, you know, the agency buying on behalf of the client in traditional means that there's better, a better understanding of what exactly they're buying. Which I think is one of the challenges still of programmatic and that all that together should make clients be happy with the idea of principal media, even if they don't know how much they're being kind of marked up by the agency. Again, going back to the criticisms, that lack of markup, that lack of clarity or transparency, you know, anybody who's not a holding company points that and says, why would any client want that? You know, so but by using that, I think the holding companies might actually get some better pricing. And any media seller that is concerned about not being able to fill the coffers might be tempted to do those kinds of deals.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Can I ask a dumb question?

[Michael Bergi]

Sure.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Why would we consider principal based buying in if it's the industry's boogeyman, the programmatics boogeyman right now?

[Michael Bergi]

I would argue because the holding companies represent such a large part of the, the buying of media on behalf of their clients most of the time, but now directly as buyers and then reselling to the clients. The holding companies love to say in their quarterly port reports that it's still a small portion of the buying they do, but it represents a disproportionately large part of the profits that they're making because they're marking up that, that inventory when they're kind of essentially getting their clients into it and having their clients pay them for it rather than the media seller. It's leverage. It's, it's a big old club with, you know, nails sticking out of it that small independent agencies, you know, come with like a baby baseball bat. It's, you know. Yeah, that's a terrible analogy, by the way. I'm sorry.

[Christina Manlos]

Well, to keep like with the, the Costco analogy, it's kind of like Kimiko, if you went out and did the Costco toilet paper run, came back with, you know, a hundred reams of toilet paper. Your neighbors maybe don't want to go to Costco or can't afford like a full ream of toilet paper from Costco, but they also don't want to pay store prices or drugstore prices for individual rolls of toilet paper. So you say, I'll do the Costco run for all of you and then you just buy it off me. I'll still give you a discount off of what you got at the drugstore. There's also an element of the 2022-2023 upfront cycle. There is a lot of talk around are we heading into recession? Macroeconomic. A lot of the same things were the conversations we're having now and what happened then. So in the upfront, there's like this initial phase to the Upfront. The upfront presentations happen in mid May. And then like from mid May through June, a lot of commitments are made. Advertisers and agencies saying to the TV networks or streamers, okay, here's how much you can put us down for to spend with you over the next year, but give us some time. Let us, you know, go through our budgets, crunch the numbers and all that, and we'll get back to you and sign the contracts in like August, September time frame. Usually they come back August, September for the order period. And the orders come in around in line with the commitments that year. Because the economic conditions deteriorated even more over the summer, there was a big drop off between commitments and orders. And so I think what that has spurred is on the sell side, them being like, cool agencies, you want to be on the hook for this money, that's fine. We just want to make sure the money is going to be there. And for some of the advertisers, it's a question of how much do they want to be the ones assuming the risk or are they willing to tolerate some arbitrage for not having to be the ones on the hook for the whole bag?

[Kamiko McCoy]

What's arbitrage? If Casey didn't hear that, what's arbitrage?

[Christina Manlos]

Arbitrage is basically like the reason, Bergy, you've covered this because there's been multiple ANA reports at this point. So correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong, but it's basically like a markup in the reselling of like, okay, we're going to sell you the inventory, but we're going to work a little bit in there for all the work that we had to do for this.

[Michael Bergi]

Yeah. We may or may not be something for our efforts.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Like this all is very gray. This is all very gray.

[Christina Manlos]

The ad market in general.

[Michael Bergi]

Well, here's the one thing I don't get in all of this is in order for agencies to make principal media work, they need to get such a sweetheart deal from the media sellers. Are the media sellers that desperate that they'll take such a lower rate rather than taking a little bit more risk, but then selling in kind of an upfront or a scatter marketplace where, you know, they don't have to give, give so much room or give up so much on the value of their inventory? And that's the one thing I don't understand. I, you know, I would think a media seller would be like, well, we can go low, but we're not going to go that low. And an agency needs that really, really low price in order to make this work.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, I think it depends on the size seller because I think a Netflix and Amazon, a YouTube, they can tolerate that a lot more because they can assume we're going to make our money anyways. And especially they don't have Amazon has more sports inventory at this point, but they're not paying as much through the nose on sports rights as a Disney, an nbcu, a Fox, and especially a Disney, an NBC, a Fox, a Paramount. These are companies also who are still having to deal with their traditional TV businesses declining. And so they, there would be a bit more urgency there for them to just secure whatever money they can because they're still trying to make this transition when it comes to their revenue models in general.

[Michael Bergi]

I guess that's probably why principal media is probably used more in the linear kind of cable space than it is in the other areas because that's where you have the most desperate sellers, you know, because they, they just need to move that inventory. So yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. All right, so we've gotten through a few ins, couple outs, maybe we lightning round, you know, the rest of this list. So one thing I'm calling out this year, alternative measurement currencies in part because I'm tired of coming out of each upfront with folks just saying, oh, it's a test and learn year. What I have learned is that the testing hasn't amounted to any of these alternative measurement currencies becoming real alternative measurement currencies. There was a coalition for innovative media measurement event and I want to say early April, if I'm not mistaken, where you had folks from Videoamp and from comscore as well as Dentsu, Fox and Group M on this panel. And the Group M executive basically talked about Nielsen plus big data is the alternative currency, which is yes, it is a newer currency than Nielsen's historical panel based system, but it's still Nielsen as the currency of record is their expectation. And the Dentsu executive, the Fox executive did not contradict that. Now there's still room for alternative measurements, but as currencies as the basis on which these deals are made, on which money changes hand, that doesn't seem like it's going to be happening.

[Michael Bergi]

There's just a very large N looming over it. It's the Nielsen logo. My kind of quick way of, you know, kind of summarizing all this is very much shades of it's the year of mobile that we heard about for six years. Maybe, you know, it just did the Alternative measurement. It's, it's going to have its place, but right now it's still a Nielsen game.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, the year of mobile or the death of the cookie, which as we found out this year is not happening.

[Michael Bergi]

Well, well said, well said. So that's a big topic at possible as well by the way, talking about how kind of the general consensus was, okay, we kind of moved on from cookies anyway, does. Why is this such a big deal? So that was the general feedback I was hearing on it.

[Christina Manlos]

Interesting, interesting. So our next in Bergi, you kind of mentioned this earlier programmatic. How do you see programmatic? Like what makes programmatic in this year's upfront potentially?

[Michael Bergi]

Well, I think we've touched on it in a few different ways now. I think part of it is, you know, smaller to mid sized advertisers now have a way in to getting into the television business in ways that historically just were less available to them. You know, companies with smaller budgets, but they can now kind of find a way in through, you know, through the DSPs and to some degree, you know, the SSPs. And I think it's a way to combat principal media to some degree, especially for, you know, the smaller agencies that don't do it. And I think it's probably a way to access a wider variety of content because it allows you to kind of play as much in the, you know, digital video space as it does linear television. Yeah, it's here to stay. I never thought we would reach a point where programmatic was part of it because historically this was very much kind of very relationship driven and negotiation driven. You remember the days when, you know, agencies were, you know, up all night just ordering pizza at 3am to get the deals done three weeks after the upfronts. That's such a laughable thing of the past now. It's so quaint because so much of it can be done through these kind of a different and it's an inappropriate way to say it, but more automated means.

[Christina Manlos]

And I think that ties into what I'm saying is out this year was out last year as well. Inflated streaming CPMs, you know, A. When HBO Max came into the market at and asking for an $80 CPM way back when when Netflix came into the market asking for a $65 CPM. When Amazon came into the market last year and Bergi, you were all over this story. CPMs dropped significantly because the amount of streaming inventory on the market grew so much effectively overnight. It feels like this year is just going to be a continuation of that.

[Michael Bergi]

What Amazon did was equal parts brilliant and brutal. Yeah, you know, they, they came work well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, you know, we all use Amazon and we all kind of go, damn you, Amazon. But to come in and just make your entire subscriber base ad supported and flood the market with inventory, that just dropped pricing. I just don't see it ever recovering. I shouldn't say ever. But for the foreseeable future, I don't see pricing making a huge comeback. Getting back up to like 45 $50 CPMs. And again, we've got more and more inventory that is available and back to supply and demand. If there's a lot more inventory, chances are you're not going to get huge increases. But I'll tell you what, we're going to see more budgets shifting to the streamers and other digital video options. What I don't see are those who say, oh, you know, we're going to factor in things like live shopping and all these other bells and whistles that will have their small place in the way kind of TV gets used and the broader video spectrum gets used. But I think it's still just a matter of trying to find the right eyeballs through the right channels. I'd love to see more innovation by the major streamers on how advertising gets expressed by. But you know, that's a little bit more on the creative side and less the negotiating side.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah, yeah. And so for our final in and our final out, because I think they're related. So final in, streaming live sports. Duh.

[Michael Bergi]

Yep.

[Christina Manlos]

Final out. DNI multicultural audiences. Which is bullshit, let's just say it. This whole DNI pullback, but it's very real. Kimiko's had conversations on this show with folks talking about it. We've talked about it in our news recaps. Advertisers have been pulling back their DNI budgets, which is will put those like TeleVisa, Univision, Scripps, Ioi Ion and others in a tough spot in this market because their audiences are largely multicultural. It'll also be something of a change. Like I remember, I think it was the 2021 upfront hearing how Disney was very much requiring advertisers to an extent to buy multicultural programming. Multicultural audiences as part of their upfront commitments if they wanted certain inventory or certain kind of sweeteners. Disney was very much like trying to get advertisers to walk the walk when it came to the DNI pledges they were all making at the time. This year, it seems like all the sellers are going to be doing a similar kind of tethering, but with their live sports inventory of. Okay, if you want our live sports inventory, then you're going to have to buy this other inventory that we don't know that anyone's going to necessarily want to buy this year.

[Michael Bergi]

Yeah, but it gets you to those kind of the gross rating points that you need by just kind of using that non sports stuff as almost filler. As to the DE and I thing, I had a chat with the founder of Mirror Digital that basically tries to get brands and agencies to understand diverse audiences in the broader context of just audiences, period. And her point was, if you completely ignore all the other people that make up audiences and focus just on kind of quote unquote, general market, you're leaving something close to 30% of the US population behind if you just look at it kind of through census demographics. Her point was, I don't want to make this about dni. I want to make this about inclusive audiences that represent all of the United States or all of which, whichever country you're buying. And this kind of knee jerk reaction to, you know, this knee jerk reaction to pull away from DE and I policies, it, you know, she's, she feels like she's a salmon trying to swim upstream, you know, and that's really disappointing. Back to your point, Tim, before about, you know, kind of Disney and what they were trying to do. I remember Group M literally declared, you know, we're going to set aside X percent of our budgets to ensure it goes to multicultural media. And of course now, you know, I think WPP just scrub the word DEI from their website. So just to see this rollback is so unfortunate and really frustrating and I'm very proud of the fact that I think digiday still sticks on this topic and I see a lot of others just kind of moving away from it. And it was a topic at possible too, where people kind of bemoan the fact that feels like, you know, DE and I efforts and policies are just kind of withering away under this administrative scrutiny that we're seeing.

[Christina Manlos]

Yeah. And so for as solid as I feel like our lists of ins and outs are for this year's upfront, that's the one that I have the most hope will change as we get into the upfront market. And you, I and others are doing reporting that will be proved wrong on this front and that D and I multicultural audience, underrepresented audiences really will be in, in this upfront. I'm just not gonna be placing money on that.

[Tim Peterson]

But.

[Michael Bergi]

Well, you know, it's goes back to what was it, you know, a volatile marketplace. It doesn't help. But I, I certainly hope so like you do.

[Kamiko McCoy]

Yeah, I think. And I'll add one more thing here. In the conversations that I've been having, there is a recognition from advertisers and media buyers that that audience needs to be represented. But the fear. Nobody wants to say the dirty word out loud. The dirty D word, diversity. And there's this push to your point, Bergey, for inclusion, inclusivity. So, you know, it'll be determined to see if that word shows up with the same commitment backing it as we head into the season.

[Michael Bergi]

Right.

[Christina Manlos]

And I mean, as much as that feels like BS being like we're not going to talk about diversity, we're going to say inclusion instead, I think there is some validity to that in the TV and streaming market from a measurement perspective. Like, I think it was Televisa Univision lobby to complain against Nielsen for not properly representing Hispanic audiences. And there was even something where there's like one, I think Variety did this story. There's like one household somewhere in the South. I don't know if it was Georgia or elsewhere that like, because of the makeup of that one household, it throws off the entire skew of Televisa Univision's audience footprint according to Nielsen's panel, because that's a Nielsen household and they don't get Televisa Univision for some reason and it throws everything off. So, okay, if we're not going to talk about DE and I can at least talk about underrepresentation and have money better reflect the actual representation of audiences. But I will get off my soapbox for now.

[Michael Bergi]

It's a good soapbox to be on.

[Christina Manlos]

Bergy, thanks so much for joining us.

[Michael Bergi]

Oh, thanks for having me. And let me know when I can come back and talk with you guys again. It's a lot of fun.

[Christina Manlos]

Absolutely. Thanks for listening to this episode of the JJ Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and 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. SA.