Upfront Week recap, Charter-Cox merger, Microsoft’s DSP shutdown + Horizon Media’s David Campanelli on the upfront market ahead

Summary

The Digiday Podcast - Episode Summary

Title: Upfront Week Recap, Charter-Cox Merger, Microsoft’s DSP Shutdown + Horizon Media’s David Campanelli on the Upfront Market Ahead
Host: Tim Peterson
Guest: David Campanelli, President of Global Investment at Horizon Media
Release Date: May 20, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Digiday Podcast, host Tim Peterson, alongside guest Sam Bradley, delves into the latest happenings in the media and marketing landscape. The discussion focuses on the recent Upfront Week, the significant Charter-Cox merger, Microsoft's decision to shut down its Demand Side Platform (DSP), and insights from David Campanelli of Horizon Media on the future of the upfront market.

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Upfront Week Recap

Highlights and Lowlights

The episode kicks off with reflections on Upfront Week, a pivotal event where media companies present their offerings to advertisers. Tim Peterson shares his first-hand experience attending the event in New York, emphasizing the shift from traditional, high-energy presentations to more nuanced and prolonged negotiations.

Notable Highlights:

• Netflix's Presentation: David Campanelli highlights Netflix's strategic entrance into Upfront Week with notable personalities like Jude Law and Jason Bateman, signaling their robust commitment to the advertising space. “I thought that was kind of cool. I'm a massive fan of FX Hulu’s The Bear, so the three actors coming out was a nice one.” [53:27]

• Musical Performances: While some performances, such as Snoop Dogg and Steve Aoki, were deemed unnecessary by Campanelli, Tim appreciated Lady Gaga's closing act as one of the best live performances he's ever witnessed. “Lady Gaga closes out Upfront Week with one of the best live performances I've ever seen.” [55:46]

Lowlights:

• Aggressive Musical Acts: Campanelli expressed his discomfort with high-energy performances like Steve Aoki's during lengthy presentations. “Musical performances at 11 am in the morning are not overly necessary...” [55:20]

• Logistical Issues: The tight scheduling of presentations, especially with events like Amazon's Monday night session, left little time for attendees to grab refreshments. “The cookies and gummy bears at Amazon didn't quite cut it for dinner that night.” [55:51]

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Charter-Cox Merger

Overview and Implications

The merger between Charter and Cox, valued at approximately $22 billion, is a significant move in the U.S. pay TV landscape. Tim Peterson explains that combining Charter’s 31.4 million customers with Cox’s 6.3 million enhances their market footprint, providing greater leverage with major networks like Disney and NBC.

Key Points:

• Market Consolidation: The merger aims to stabilize declining pay TV subscriptions by bolstering combined internet and wireless services. “This brings them together to give a bit more leverage when it comes to Disney, NBC, Warner...” [09:38]

• Impact on Pricing: With enhanced leverage, networks like ESPN may demand higher fees per subscriber, potentially leading to increased costs for pay TV providers and consumers alike. “Advertisers would like to keep them bonus impressions because their idea is... why should we have to pay for them now?” [07:49]

• Competitive Dynamics: The merger raises questions about possible reactions from major players like Comcast, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, potentially spurring further consolidation in the industry. “Does Comcast feel a need to react to this? Do Verizon or T Mobile or AT&T feel any sort of need to react to this?” [14:16]

Challenges:

• Subscriber Decline: Charter has been losing internet subscribers, with a reported loss of 60,000 in Q1 2025, highlighting the competitive pressure from wireless services. “Charter lost 60,000 Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2025.” [12:19]

• Regulatory Hurdles: The merger faces a stringent approval process amid a politically aggressive stance on mergers and acquisitions, potentially delaying the deal until next year. “There's still a lot that is going to need to happen before it actually gets approval and closes.” [14:20]

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Microsoft’s DSP Shutdown

Background and Consequences

Microsoft’s decision to discontinue its DSP, formerly known as Xander, marks a significant shift in the ad tech landscape. This move is expected to result in substantial layoffs and signifies Microsoft's retreat from being a major player in the ad business.

Insights:

• DSPs Market Consolidation: With Microsoft's exit, the dominant DSPs are now Trade Desk, Google’s DV360, Amazon’s DSP, and Yahoo, effectively creating a duopoly that could reduce competition and increase pricing power. “It's really Trade Desk and DV360 as the kind of the DSP duopoly.” [17:26]

• Impact on CTV Advertising: The shutdown affects Connected TV (CTV) advertising, where Microsoft's DSP was poised to make significant inroads, especially in securing deals like Netflix’s ad inventory. “Trade Desk, Google’s DV360, Amazon’s DSP and Yahoo as well have been making a lot of inroads when it comes to CTV.” [18:25]

• Negotiation Dynamics: The reduction in DSP choices gives buyers more leverage, potentially leading to better terms and lower costs in the marketplace. “The more choice they have, the more agency they have in the market, better suppose their voice comes through in any negotiations.” [19:42]

Market Reaction:

• Antitrust Concerns: The episode touches on the ongoing antitrust pressures facing major DSPs like Google’s DV360, which could influence future market dynamics and regulatory actions. “There's been a lot of pressure on DV360 with Google with the antitrust lawsuit...” [18:25]

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Upfront Market Insights with David Campanelli

Evolving Upfront Practices

David Campanelli discusses how the upfront market has transformed from a concentrated event to a year-round negotiation process. The traditional end-of-May rush has evolved into continuous dialogues starting as early as CES in January.

Key Takeaways:

• Continuous Negotiations: “Upfront is not a limited conversation in the end of May or early June, it really is just about 52 weeks a year.” [22:22]

• Increased Complexity: The modern upfront market involves intricate deals across multiple platforms, including linear TV, streaming, and programmatic advertising. “It's just much more complicated than it used to be.” [23:39]

• Flexibility in Deals: There's a growing emphasis on flexibility in contractual terms, particularly in cancellation policies. This shift aims to accommodate advertisers' needs in a volatile economic environment. “We're pushing some of that flexibility second and third or more firm in the earlier quarters.” [29:27]

Measurement and Currency Shifts:

• Nielsen+ Big Data: The industry is transitioning from traditional panel-based measurements to Nielsen’s Big Data as the primary metric for transactions. This change introduces discrepancies in historical data comparisons. “It's expected to be the primary currency in this upfront and the first truly new currency to become the primary currency in the upfront since Nielsen's original legacy panel based measurement system.” [05:27]

• Impact on CPMs: Campanelli explains how changes in measurement affect Cost Per Mille (CPM) rates, with some networks experiencing increased costs due to newly counted out-of-home audiences. “Advertisers would like to keep them bonus impressions... whereas from the network side... we would like to get paid for the impressions we're giving you.” [07:49]

• Alternative Measurement Tools: While Nielsen remains dominant, alternatives like Videoamp, comScore, and iSpot are gaining traction, particularly for advanced audience metrics and out-of-home measurements. “Nielsen will still be the primary. Videoamp has made inroads, particularly around advanced audiences.” [41:10]

Sports Advertising:

• Unified Marketplace: Sports advertising is no longer siloed but integrated into the broader upfront discussions, enhancing its strategic importance. “It's part of the overall discussion... we know that this sports isn't moving and we're not canceling it or not canceling much of it.” [53:08]

• Pricing Trends: Sports remains a high-demand area with strong CPM rates due to its unparalleled reach. However, streaming sports may see normalized CPMs as platforms scale. “Streaming should pass this year, I would think.” [51:25]

Future Outlook:

• Streaming Dominance: David anticipates streaming advertising to surpass linear TV in upfront commitments, driven by the increasing consumption and advertiser shift towards digital platforms. “Streaming should pass this year, I would think.” [50:58]

• Measurement Challenges: The integration of dynamic ad insertion (DAI) poses challenges for consistent measurement, particularly in live sports events where Nielsen ratings are harder to apply. “Nielsen doesn't count that towards the gross rating point.” [37:00]

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Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive overview of the current media and advertising landscape, highlighting significant industry shifts such as the Charter-Cox merger and Microsoft's exit from the DSP market. Insights from David Campanelli shed light on the evolving nature of upfront negotiations, the critical role of measurement metrics, and the rising dominance of streaming in advertising budgets. As the industry navigates these changes, flexibility and adaptability emerge as key themes for both media providers and advertisers.

Notable Quotes:

• “We're talking 52 weeks a year. Have we been negotiating rates? No, not necessarily, but we've certainly been talking all year.” – David Campanelli [22:22]
• “If my unit cost was $100,000 and you measured it one way yesterday and a different way today, my unit cost is still $100,000 and my CPM changes.” – David Campanelli [45:57]
• “Nielsen will still be the primary. Videoamp has made inroads, particularly around advanced audiences.” – David Campanelli [41:10]

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the podcast episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened. The integration of direct quotes with timestamps offers additional depth and context to the topics covered.

Transcript

[Tim Peterson]

Hello and welcome to the Digiday Podcast, a show about the business of media and marketing. I am Tim Peterson, executive editor of Video and Audio Digit Media, and my co host, Kimiko McCoy is not with us this week because she is taking a well deserved break, but she will be back next week. In her stead we have Sam Bradley, one of our marketing reporters. How's it going, Sam?

[Sam Bradley]

It's going all right. Thanks, Tim. Yeah. All right, thank you.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, excited to have you on because this is going to be very much an upfront packed episode. So we have our guest for this week for the featured segment is David Campominali, who is the president of Global investment at Horizon Media. Dave and I talk all things upfront. We recorded this on the Friday after all the upfront presentations in New York last week, which was my first time being in New York for upfront week and getting to see everything live and in person. So we talk about, we do a little bit of a lightning round on upfront week highlights and lowlights, but then also just really set the table on the upfront market. That kind of, it's, you know, conventional wisdom is it kicks off this week. Dave has a different perspective on it, which I thought was really valuable and it's just really great conversation. But Sam wanted to have you on because you. I feel like I've been living in upfront land for definitely last week, but even the better part of the past month or so with all my pre upfront reporting. You've been also covering the upfront market, but from the remove of being on the other side of the Atlantic.

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah, where it's safe.

[Tim Peterson]

It's safe. And so for that, like, because you didn't have to be shuffling through all these presentations and through it, very aggressive Steve Aoki performance ahead of that Amazon upfront presentation. Was there anything that stood out to you from any of the upfront week presentations last week?

[Sam Bradley]

I'll be honest, like not a vast amount. I mean, what I was looking at was how folks were responding and anticipating upfronts in the light of what's going on in terms of the US economy and frankly the global economy at the moment. That's what I was looking at. And it's all anybody really wants to tell me about, to be honest. The presentations, I get the impression, at least for those who've been there serially, perhaps have seen them before, but I haven't got celebrity fatigue yet. I don't know if you have, but maybe if you're in the real exec suites, you know, once you've seen Steve Aoki once, you know, you've seen him 10 times that they're more thinking about how these buys make sense when their brands are adapting to what may be quite straightened circumstances, obviously depending on which category they're in. If you're an automotive, a pretty critical time. If you're in a different category, you may not be feeling quite as squeezed. But a lot of folks are and a lot of folks are using it at least as an excuse to take a little bit longer to make a decision to think something through it a little for a longer beat. The broadcasters and publishers won't be particularly pleased with that. But most marketers, anybody on that side of the equation will take as long as they can anyway to make that kind of purchasing choice, I think. So that's what really came through for me.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, I think as long as they can is the really important part there because I agree with you. What I'm hearing is the buy side wants to take its time. But there is very much a thought of but how much time are we actually going to have? Because once the marketplace gets going, then you that creates a lot of urgency. Like if you see one of the hold coast come in even potentially as soon as this week and and start snatching up a bunch of sports inventories, that's going to start the clock on everyone else. And you know, NBCU and Disney are going to want to start that clock as soon as possible. So it does feel, and I think Dave makes this point, other agency execs I was talking to last week and it was clear in the presentations that like there's the sports marketplace and then there's kind of everything else. And as much as sports is a tied to upfront deals for companies like Disney, it's also kind of its own beast in a way that is going to make this year to me, a particularly interesting upfront cycle.

[Sam Bradley]

Absolutely. I mean there have been real tangible reasons for marketers to think about sports, not just because it's considered perhaps a little bit of a safe bet in terms of the big audiences that can deliver. But there are new elements, new angles to think about. There's the NBA going to Amazon, for example, and back to NBC. I think you were there for that presentation. The NFL just continues to grow, at least in value. We'll see whether or not it can beat last year's audience for the Super Bowl. I mean, it's going to plateau at some point or maybe not. Maybe it will beat the moon landing at last. I mean, the moon landing also goes on for hours and hours and hours without a whole lot happening. And some people feel that way about the Super Bowl. So yeah, that continues to rise and increase. So I think the sports market is really right. It's separated out in a big way this year.

[Tim Peterson]

And you hit on an interesting point too. And this comes up in the conversation with Dave later in the episode, but just the measurement side of it, because Nielsen's pushing the entire industry to its new Nielsen+ big data measurement as the currency. It's expected to be the primary currency in this upfront and the first truly new currency to become the primary currency in the upfront since Nielsen's original legacy panel based measurement system. But with that, that means all measurements are going to be new. All historical bases aren't entirely thrown out. But you don't have the apples to apples baseline that you used to have when everything was based on the panel based system. Now everyone agrees better to move to this big data system. It's going to be more representative, but the numbers are going to be different.

[Sam Bradley]

Does that contribute to any of any more tentativeness among marketers, do you think? Does that make them perhaps approach things a little bit more caution or is it not really? Is it adding to that at all? I don't know.

[Tim Peterson]

Not caution. My sense of it is it adds to the negotiation because they especially when it comes to things like out of home measurement. And Dave makes this point in the conversation. Nielsen's counting out of home now. It has been for a bit at this point, but more and more. And so now advertisers are effectively like being forced to pay in their minds extra for things that they got all along. They were always getting the reach of people watching games in bars. But now those audiences are being counted to a greater degree than they were historically. And so the networks are going to want to be credited for those. Whereas before those were kind of like just bonus impressions, if you will. Advertisers would like to keep them bonus impressions because their idea is like, wait a second, we were getting this for free all these years, why should we have to pay for them now? Whereas from the network and the streaming service side it's well, we were giving you these for free all along because we couldn't really count how it was. Now that we can, like, we would like to get paid for the impressions we're giving you. So both seem fairly valid reasons or rationales.

[Sam Bradley]

Got it. Okay, that's interesting.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, so, but it'll make for, it'll make for an interesting upfront on the measurement side. Thank God. Because I've gotten really bored of the upfront when it comes to measurement because all I talk about alternative currencies and then nothing really bubbles up in terms of that. It's just, you know, you talk to folks in August, September, it's, oh, no, Nielsen's the primary currency. We're using the others for measurement, but not as the basis for transactions. But yeah, I mean, on the sports front, you're also going to have the SBN streaming service, which was announced last week, is going to be part of Disney's pitch this year. Fox is going to have Fox one. It's standalone streaming service that's going to launch in time for NFL. There's the latest HBO Max rebrand. So you had a bunch of new old streaming services in the market this time around?

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah, I mean, it might draw some subscribers back if it makes them think of the good old days of 2023. Right?

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. Or at least it'll help when you have people like Gene Smart, the star of Hacks, a Warner Brothers discovery and HBO show, who in her Emmy speech last year had a hard time, like, so many of us getting straight on, like, is it Max? Is it hbo? Max is HBO Go. What are we calling this thing now? I'm sure at some point it's going to be just hbo, but Warner likes to take its time with that.

[Sam Bradley]

It certainly does. So we were also looking at the Charter Cox megadeal. I believe it's been described it's almost a $22 billion acquisition. But here's the thing. As a British who lives in a very different broadband than pay TV market, perhaps you can explain to me why marketers and media folks might be paying attention to this deal.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. So for one thing, it's Charter and Cox are two of the bigger pay TV providers here in the States. So Comcast is the biggest, but Charter's right there with them. Cox is on the smaller side. So Charter has 31.4 million customers. That's inclusive of pay TV as well as air Internet. And Charter also has like a wireless business, too. Cox's is a lot smaller at 6.3 million. So this brings them together to, like, give a bit of a bigger footprint. And that'll be important on the pay TV side because obviously, no surprise to anyone, pay TV audience has been dwindling. So to the point that you can shore that up through acquisition. That'll help the new. They're going to be calling it Cox Communications, but the combined company, whenever this deal goes through, have a bit more leverage when it comes to Disney, NBC, Warner, all the TV networks that, because how this stuff works is Charter carries ESPN and then sells it as part of a bundle to customers like myself. As part of that, Charter pays espn. I think it's like six or seven dollars per subscriber. Disney is always going to want more money per subscriber, especially when they're, you know, going to try to bundle ESPN with all of its other TV networks, all of the various ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPN News, ESPN Classic. I think ESPN Classic is still around. And so Disney has the leverage, especially now, because as we were just talking about, everyone watches sports or sports is what most attracts people, especially to pay tv. And so Disney can say, like, look, you got to pay us more if you want espn, otherwise we're not going to let you have espn. And then good luck getting people to sign up for your pay TV service, especially if there's going to be a standalone ESPN streaming service coming out later this year, which it is. So Charter and Cox coming together is just kind of that strength in numbers idea.

[Sam Bradley]

Got it. Well, that means I think there's a really interesting parallel there to sky in the uk, which I think is probably the closest type of business to these sorts of things. And it offers both broadband and pay TV and its own exclusivity deal to carry a lot of the HBO programming like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon expires next year. So some questions are being asked at the moment about the appeal of that service to Brits who pay a relatively premium price to get that kind of thing and to get Sky Sports. So there's a very similar conundrum playing out in the market over here, I think, over the next 18 months.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, because Charter and Cox also have Internet businesses. And for the past decade, as their pay TV businesses, the subscriber bases have been declining. They've been building up their Internet businesses, and that's helped to offset that. The margins, I believe, are also better for them because they don't have these affiliate payments to be making to Disney, NBC, etc. But one thing that's been happening there is wireless services. This is, according to the Wall Street Journal's report on this merger, that wireless services have undercut the Internet providers or charters and Cox's Internet businesses. According to the Wall street journal, Charter lost 60,000 Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. That's not great because what especially Charter have been doing is creating these streaming bundles, basically taking what they did on the traditional TV side of things. And doing it with Internet. Whereas if, where, if you get Internet and TV through Charter, you get access to like a Disney plus as part of that deal. But if they're losing not only pay TV subscribers, but also Internet subscribers, but that affects their position to be the new aggregators, just as they were the old aggregators.

[Sam Bradley]

Got it. It's kind of the feedback loop you don't want to be in, is it?

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. And so then it raises the question of, because Comcast is the big player in this space in the us does Comcast feel a need to react to this? Do Verizon or T Mobile or AT and T feel any sort of need to react to this? Does this spur more deals? And then always the question these days, what's the likelihood of this deal going through? Because we've seen the Trump administration get pretty aggressive in policing mergers and acquisitions at the moment if they don't like the politics of the companies involved.

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah, it's definitely a stricter environment at the moment, isn't it?

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. So it's going to be, we hate to always say, like, we'll see with these things, but that has to be the answer because as much as this deal has been announced, there's still a lot that is going to need to happen before it actually gets approval and closes. So I think they're expecting not until next year at the earliest for that.

[Sam Bradley]

Got it.

[Tim Peterson]

But speaking of things closing. So our very own senior ad tech reporter, Ronan Shields had the story last week that Microsoft is shutting down its demand side platform, once known as Xander, which felt like one of the stories alongside Charter Cox, that kind of broke through my upfront bubble in the past week.

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah, I think it was definitely one of the biggest stories last week. In general, it's pretty huge news, to be honest. I mean, there'll be significant layoffs associated with it. Microsoft's not getting out of the ad business wholesale by any means. Still has pretty major ad properties in its own right. But I think that's.

[Tim Peterson]

Although Microsoft always says that anytime it, like when it had the Aquantive write down, it said the same. And there was like the yam deal between Yahoo, AOL and MSN that like, I don't know, never felt like it really moved the needle much for any of them.

[Sam Bradley]

True. But LinkedIn's been gathering some pace lately, I suppose, but. Yeah. So Xander Invest, for example, was one of the main ways that folks previously bought ad inventory on Netflix. They had an exclusive deal until about last year when Netflix expanded the number of, I suppose, pipes. One could use to access it. You know, you use DB360 and the trade Desk and Magnite, I believe. So that kind of obviously damaged Xander on Microsoft's side. And there's kind of echoes here, I suppose, perhaps with Oracle last year, another major tech giant in the US deciding to sort of isolate and then cut off a relatively low margin, at least from their position ad tech business, and sort of abandon it over time. And I think in both cases, it perhaps didn't come as a huge surprise to folks who've been watching the space closely. But. Yeah, you've been a reporter longer than I have.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. No, I mean, to me, it felt like, at least based on the conversations I had with people in the industry, the Netflix deal was the only thing that really made Microsoft's DSP relevant for folks. And as soon as that wasn't working out, and as soon as soon as Netflix announced it was opening up to other DSPs like Trade Desk and Google's DV360, that was when Microsoft's DSP lost any momentum that it would have had at that point. So, yeah, it just felt like this was just going to be inevitable because it feels like when it comes to the big DSPs, it's Trade Desk, it's Google DV360, it's Amazon's DSP and then like Yahoo's DSP. I don't know if I would put it quite. Maybe I would put it in like that same tier, but like, those are kind of the four.

[Sam Bradley]

Sure. And yeah, I mean, Microsoft DSP was perhaps competing with an additional tier of providers, you know, independent companies like Fiant that are also, you know, competing for their own share of the market too. Even as it consolidates, it's got a while to go before it gets completely calcified, I think.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, like the group of DSPs that are very much in the mix but aren't the primary DSPs, because this is a conversation Kimiko Ronan and I were having with folks during the DJ Programmatic Marketing Summit earlier this month in Palm Springs about all the DSPs and how it was really Trade Desk, DV360 and Amazon that were like primary DSPs. And even that felt more. Amazon needs to be in the mix because Amazon has such a huge footprint and has the data, but that it's really trade desk and DV360 as the kind of the DSP duopoly.

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah, yeah, I think that tracks. And that's only going to continue when you've got companies like Microsoft pulling out.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. But it's, I mean, obviously there's been a lot of pressure on DV360 with Google with the antitrust lawsuit, and also just, you know, folks wanting to have more competition in the DSP space. Similarly with Trade Desk, there was also just a lot of agitation among the agency executives during the Programmatic Marketing Summit about Trade Desk fees and wanting to have competition. So as much as Microsoft shutting down its DSP felt inevitable, it does feel like the buyers would have preferred Microsoft to be able to, like, keep its DSP around and keep it competitive, if only to give them more leverage when it comes to the other DSPs. And so question now is whether a vyant, a Yahoo dsp, any of the others, can kind of seize the ground that Microsoft is seeding here with its DSPS market share.

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah, I think that's completely right. I mean, buyers, marketers alike, the more choice they have, the more agency they have in the market, better suppose their voice comes through in any negotiations.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. So that's going to be an interesting one, especially like when it comes to the CTV space, because that was again, where it felt like Microsoft's DSP was going to have the most resonant when it got that Netflix deal. And now it won't have that. But Trade Desk, Google's DV360, Amazon's DSP and Yahoo as well have been making a lot of inroads when it comes to ctv. I think I'll have a piece on kind of the CTV DSP state of play in next week's Future of TV Briefing because it was something that was coming up in a bunch of the meetings that I had during Upfronts week. I don't think we got into that in this conversation with Dave Campanelli from Horizon Media, but we did talk a lot about the TV and streaming ad market overall. So I think it's going to be. I really enjoyed the conversation. I always enjoy talking with Dave. I was glad we were able to. He was able to come on and help me make sense of all things up front. And also, you know, happy for you to come on, Sam, to similarly help me figure out. Okay. What all happened last week because my brain's a little foggy at the moment. Comment.

[Sam Bradley]

I'm happy to be invited back. Just delighted about that, to be honest. That's the highlight of my week.

[Tim Peterson]

Okay. It's only Monday, so.

[Sam Bradley]

Yeah. It's all downhill from here.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.

[David Campominali]

All right.

[Tim Peterson]

Well, Z, appreciate you coming on. Always enjoy talking with you.

[Sam Bradley]

Thanks for having me.

[Tim Peterson]

Dave. Welcome to the podcast.

[David Campominali]

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

[Tim Peterson]

Thanks for having us. We're doing this at the Horizon Media offices in New York, so it's nice to be able to do it in person.

[David Campominali]

It's very nice to do it in person. Nice to do it on a kind of a quiet day in the office. A lot of room for us to find a place to do this. Glad you guys were able to come here.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, no, absolutely. I imagine also, like, maybe a little even quieter than normal with the rain probably driving anyone who would have any inclination of coming coming into the office.

[David Campominali]

Yeah, we're Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in office, and we have a really kind of robust feel those days. And then Monday, Friday, we're home. So it's usually quiet on Fridays, but especially rainy Fridays, for sure.

[Tim Peterson]

And probably good to timestamp this conversation because we're talking upfront, so we're talking the Friday at the end of upfront's week, the Friday before. I guess the idea is next Monday or the Monday after this episode comes out is when the upfront market formally opens up. How true is that?

[David Campominali]

I would say, especially now, that's a bit of a fallacy. Back in the day, it was much more no conversations you'd have upfront week, and then it was always like, oh, is it going to happen before Memorial Day? Is it going to happen after Memorial Day? We all kind of wished it would be after Memorial Day so we could have a nice Memorial Day weekend. But the reality is now, and for quite a few years now, I would say it's kind of cliche to say it, but we're talking 52 weeks a year. Upfront is not a limited conversation in the end of May or early June, it really is just about 52 weeks a year. Have we been negotiating rates? No, not necessarily, but we certainly have been talking all year. But really, CES January kicks it off. Had our pre upfront meetings, had the information sharing back and forth, what our needs are, what our clients needs are, what networks, publishers, media companies are looking for. So a lot of that ground work has been laid. So what comes up next is really when you start to get a little bit more into the pricing discussions, when the budgets become more real and the pricing discussions start. So that's kind of, if you want to call that the official opening of the negotiations. Yes. Potential, potentially. And that should be this week, next week, maybe week after. We'll see.

[Tim Peterson]

And how long do you expect that to drag into June, into July, into August?

[David Campominali]

Yeah. Again, unlike in the past, where it was just like everyone's at the starting gate and it started and then it was like a mad scramble and everyone had their late nights and all of that stuff and then it was closed. It's a very different marketplace now. One, things are so much more complicated. Used to be, okay, I'm buying these networks and is it going to be a plus five or a plus two or minus five or minus two, whatever the rate of change would be. And that was the discussion in dollar volume, obviously. Now every media entity has so many more properties to sell. Different, obviously price points for all of that. You're buying things like one platform where it's on NBC, where it's across properties, Programmatic is involved, streaming is involved. It's just a very data targeting and audience. It's just much more complicated than it used to be. So the idea of like, hey, we're going to start 9am Tuesday with Disney and then we'll be finished by Wednesday at midnight, it just doesn't happen that way anymore. So that by its nature makes it drag longer and things are just less public now. I guess I would say there's less of these declarations of we're done and everyone lining up, oh, how did I do versus what they're announcing, Whatever. It's more individual, it's more bespoke, which I think is better, certainly better for the buy side when there's not a frenzy of trying to get deals done. So kind of slow and steady is much better for again, the demand side.

[Tim Peterson]

Right? Yeah, because what was it the 2021, 22 cycle where it felt like everyone got whiplash at how quickly the market moved, where Disney and nbcu, especially that year, and it felt like everyone else wrapped up even before June was over.

[David Campominali]

If I remember right. The upfront's blur, so I have a hard time remembering different years. But yeah, I mean, certainly there are some years where it feels like it's quicker, but again, we've been talking since January, so it can kind of feel quick. A lot of it has to do with buy side and sell side expectations too. And I think probably the summer of 21, which is obviously coming out of the pandemic. I think everyone on both sides came to the table with more of a moderate expectation given what everybody had been through the past year. And that made for quicker pricing, deal making. But there's other years where there's a much wider spread and then that stalls things out.

[Tim Peterson]

Well, and there was also the 2022-2023 year the following year where it Was similar in that the market moved pretty quick. But then there was, and we should say for anyone who's not familiar with the upfront, there's like two ends to the upfront. There's the period where you all are kind of making the commitments, putting like numbers down on paper but nothing's getting signed. And then there's the order period, which happens in like August, even into September. And if I'm not mistaken, that was the year because there was a lot of recession talk at the time where the numbers dropped pretty significantly more than usual between commitment and order.

[David Campominali]

Yeah, that was the year there was a lot of fall off going to order. So, yeah, as you said, agencies get authorization from their clients to go to market, negotiate on their behalf, commit dollars to a hold with the selling partners. That's in this May, June period. And then towards the end of summer into September, agencies were presenting to clients what we did, what the results of the upfront were, and then getting the order approval. Technically, advertisers are not on the hook for anything until that order approval comes in. But there's a working assumption every year that there's not going to be a lot of changes versus what we placed in the upfront. That year was a year where things started falling off a cliff from an economic standpoint. And there were a lot of drop offs. Yeah. So that can happen. Which is also, you know, that's a big difference upfront today versus upfront in the past. There used to be a pretty hard date. Different agencies, different timing. But around May 1, where it was like, hey, all of our clients, you got to get your budgets in for the upfront. If you don't approve it, you're going to miss the upfront window. That's kind of gone away too. We're working. Everybody needs to be more flexible. Clients, budgets are more flexible. We need to, as an agency be more flexible and accommodating. And the sales side needs to be more flexible and accommodating. So when we go into the upfront, we have a good idea of budgets, we have a working idea of budgets. But there is always some flexibility working in and out of that kind of through the summer until the order period.

[Tim Peterson]

Right. And historically that flexibility has scaled quarter to quarter. There's like zero flexibility in Q4. A lot more flexibility when it comes to Q3.

[David Campominali]

Yeah. So flexibility, one of the overused words in our business here. But there's the flexibility in just how we do business and how accommodating we need to be to the changing demands of our client's business and what that does to their media budgets. And I was kind of referring to that. Then there's the contractual flexibility that gets built into these upfront deals. And typically when we're buying the upfront, we're placing 4 fourth quarter of the current year through third quarter of the next year. That fourth quarter is fixed, not cancelable. But again, you're typically ordering it in September, so you're only a couple weeks out. And then standard is 25% cancellable in first, 50% in second and third. That's the kind of very basic standard. But we've obviously moved added a lot of flexibility in terms of that over the years too.

[Tim Peterson]

Right. And it also varies where like the traditional TV networks, they're firmer, they offer relatively less flexibility when it comes to cancellation options. Even when it comes to streaming services. Because now they're considering it. Well, our streaming services are carrying a lot of the same stuff that we're showing on tv. A lot of times there is even linear pass through for things like sports. So we're going to have linear cancellation terms as opposed to in digital. The idea is if it's a guaranteed deal, IAB has these terms, has had these terms for more than a decade of advertisers should be able to cancel 100% no later than 14 days before it would take effect. Some of the streaming services, like the streaming only services, do adhere to that. I've been told Amazon and Netflix, for example, honor IAB terms. The TV networks don't, including for their streaming.

[David Campominali]

It's a mixed bag. So most started out with IAB terms or something similar. And over the years there's been a push and pull of them wanting to move their streaming services more towards the linear traditional options, which are obviously less flexible. But I would say there's probably mixed success to some extent, or looking at it the other way from the buy side, we've pushed hard to keep as much flexibility as possible. So it's definitely somewhere in between. Every deal is different, every partner's different, every client's different. So there's not, I would say a complete standard on that. But overall we're closer to IAB terms than we are traditional TV terms, but then also traditional TV terms. I gave the percentages, but it used to be 90 day notice and those percentages and they were pretty hard percentages. Now it's usually 30ish day notice and again, a lot of creativity in terms of our advertisers know fourth and first what they want to do. So we push some of that flexibility second and third or more firm in the earlier quarters. So it's been a major negotiating point over the years, particularly coming out of COVID And we have a lot more flexibility built into our upfronts than we used to because of the percent of streaming we're buying because of the additional flexibilities that come in the traditional upfront. But also most advertisers obviously will vary dramatically by client. But so much of what their total media mix now is digital biddable, 100% flexible with even less than two days notice in biddable formats that when you look at your entire portfolio or entire media mix, I should say of flexibility, advertisers have significant flexibility so fixed up front just because it's becoming a smaller and smaller part of the overall media mix. In linear TV at least, advertisers do have a lot of flexibility throughout the year to kind of dial up, dial down. And that's the one piece that's been relatively fixed and within that sports being the most. Least flexible is the best way to put it. But certainly in linear tv, the most desired day part. So it's kind of. That's often the building block that we're working off of and we know that this sports isn't moving and we're not canceling it or not canceling much of it. And then you kind of build on increasing flexibility on top of that, right?

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, because that's what Amazon and Netflix offer in terms of cancellation options. I've been hearing a lot about this week and been wondering how much that could inform the market and create more pressure on the TV networks to offer similar level of flexibility. Because now Amazon and Netflix, they have sports, they have a lot of inventory. They showed off numbers this week, what was it? Amazon claimed 130 million monthly active users for its ad supported tier. Netflix. It was like 94 million. But then they did some weird math to try to equate it with others and they then claimed it's really 170 million people can reach ad supported on Netflix.

[David Campominali]

Two things. One, one of my takeaways from this week of presentations were those numbers start to become so meaningless to me.

[Tim Peterson]

There was like a 300 million number that Amazon threw out and I was like there's only 320 million pages people in the.

[David Campominali]

It's always not fully clear. It's global, not global. And my new favorite is the minutes viewed billions of this and millions of this and trillions of this. I'm just like, say what you want about Nielsen, there's a consistency and understanding that a 8 rating is a good rating for primetime NFL. And that kind of consistency and context just is gone. So it makes it more difficult. Made me think of that when you're saying that the original question though was, oh, so, yeah. So the streaming side, the on demand streaming side of Netflix and an Amazon, those players coming into the market having scale or Netflix growing up to have a scale now, and Amazon coming right out of the gates with scale and premium content, et cetera, absolutely put both pricing and term pressure on the traditional media companies. Amazon in particular last year coming in with turning on, whatever the number is, 134 million monthly users, whatever it is, that was a lot of inventory for them to sell. It was a lot of competition in the marketplace, which suppressed pricing and gave us ammunition to push for stronger flexibility that something like Amazon was offering their sports, though they sell in a much more traditional way. So the Thursday Night Football isn't going to have the same IAB terms as their kind of ongoing streaming. So that operates. And when we look at sports too, as an agency and for our advertisers, we don't make really any distinction between streaming and linear. There's Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, you know, MBA on Amazon, NBA on NBC, Peacock, whatever. It's the same live experience. Yes, there's some DAI enabled bit and you could do some addressable stuff, but generally speaking, you're buying that for the scale of the audience. And whether it's coming through a Roku box Internet pipe or it's going through cable boxes to get to people's houses, doesn't really make a difference. We kind of treat that as a similar experience. And the sellers do too, to a large extent.

[Tim Peterson]

And you mentioned dai dynamic ad insertion, which is the idea that someone streaming NBA on Peacock on Amazon, Amazon has the capability, NBC Universal has the capability to be able to say, okay, same ad spot like, same placement that's going to be shown to everyone. But you see an ad for a car company, I see an ad for a serial brand like that, it can be carved up by advertiser. To this point, if I'm not mistaken, I believe even NBC Universal for the Olympics last year, they opened that up to programmatic and dynamic ad insertion when it came to Peacock, But I believe that was still a national load. So the idea of a car advertiser could just change which model or which creative is shown to people, but it's still the same advertiser in that slot. And what I was told this week is a Big hang up with dynamic ad insertion for streaming for sports is it affects how that's counted. Nielsen doesn't count that towards the gross rating point.

[David Campominali]

That sounds right. I don't know the specifics on the Nielsen side of it, but the other issue too is it's just the nature of a live event versus on demand. Most streaming as we know it of entertainment content is on demand. So there's just an ad sitting on a server waiting to be served. And as soon as they know my household and as soon as I opt into this shell, boom, the ad's coming. So you never miss anything. The live environment. 8:32 hits and this 30 second spot's going to air. You need to have and there's 15 million people watching Thursday Night Football. You got to have 15 million ads ready to go in that second. And if you miss it, it's gone. Right.

[Tim Peterson]

That's a lot of make goods, right.

[David Campominali]

For the sellers point of view, they're missing impression. They didn't serve it or they serve in a house ad or whatever it is. Or then you get complicated where one advertiser is the main advertiser and they get 75% and the other 25% gets split off depending. It just gets really, really complicated. And maximizing every single impression in a perishable moment is very, very difficult. And by the way, the reason you buy the Thursday Night Football or any sports especially is for large reach. It's not for micro targeting. Right. So you have the capability that you didn't have in the cable universe. Set top boxes did not have. Some do. But generally speaking, cable boxes don't have the technology to be able to insert different ads to different households in the live environment on a network that they're carrying.

[Tim Peterson]

But.

[David Campominali]

And you do have that in the digital world. But again, is it. Just because the technology is there doesn't mean that it serves the right purpose. So we'll see advances in that and there will be times where advertisers and sellers want to take advantage of that. But by and large, again, we're buying Thursday Night Football because we want to reach 15 million people or 12, whatever the number is at one time. And that is a powerful impact of that. And that's why we're buying NFL.

[Tim Peterson]

If we're throwing around terms like dai, I feel like we're in the deep end of this conversation just a little bit. So while we're in the deep end, let's talk a bit about measurement. Measurement, currency. There's been a lot of conversation about that when it comes to the upfront for what is it? We're going on four years now. It feels like 40, but I think it's only been about four, give or take. Nielsen is basically forcing everyone's hand to move to a new industry, new currency this year because they're moving everyone to big data. Right, like the panels that the legacy panel based measurement is gone with this upfront.

[David Campominali]

Yes, there's a service where the panel is still available, but it's not for transaction. So yeah, they're moving to their panel plus big data, which they should be. It is why we've over the last several years had a lot of conversations in the marketplace about moving to big data. A big data service, whether it be Nielsen Big Data or videoamp or Ispot or what are other options out there? Because it's just a more robust measurement source. More robust measuring 30 or 40 million homes instead of 45,000 homes.

[Tim Peterson]

And out of home.

[David Campominali]

And out of home. Well, again, there's pros and cons to all of these. Nielsen now has a national footprint for out of home, which has impacted sports ratings over the past year especially. I think Videoamp's still working on solutions for out of home and it's a big part of the sports viewership piece. It's an important one. So my belief is always that competition is good and if there's competition in the marketplace, it makes everyone better and hopefully for us, a little more affordable. But it makes everyone better and there's less complacency. Nielsen has been stepping up to the plate, it seems like, and they're launching the big data. Are they forcing it? Yeah, probably they are forcing it a bit, but it is also where we should be going. We need to be moving beyond just panel. So the big Nielsen Big Data or Big Data plus panel, I should say it'll roll in and be part of the upfront. So we'll video amp as well.

[Tim Peterson]

To what extent do you expect Videoamp or comScore or iSpot to be a meaningful share of the currency conversation? Basically you can measure them, you can have like report back to clients what their measurements are in tandem with Nielsen. But Nielsen has been the metric on which pricing, like money changes hands. That's the basis for it. Is that still going to be the primary basis this year?

[David Campominali]

Yeah, Nielsen will still be the primary. Video amp has made inroads, particularly around advanced audiences. And some of the optimization tools that are out there to optimize against advanced audiences is where they've had kind of their biggest impact. We continue to have conversations with both. And I think it's important again to bring both to the table and support both where possible. Because I think Nielsen's in a much better place today than it was in the past, where they were clearly the only real service. And I think 10 years ago got complacent about it and they're in a much better place now. I think part of that is driven by the competition in the marketplace. So we want to continue to foster that and we don't ever want to be completely dedicated to one service at the expense of all the others. But we're as selective as we can be and we're not. You know, the hard part about making changes in this industry is it's a right word, communal industry. It's a communal business. Right. Like we can't do it on our own. We're dealing with sellers. And if sellers are using video amp, then you kind of have to engage with that, like what happened with Paramount last year and the Nielsen dispute. And if they're using Nielsen, we have to lean on that at least for primary way that we're transacting. So it's not just on our own. If we could just make a decision, we might do that, but that's not how it works. We all have to kind of decide this stuff together to some extent. So again, we're trying to support all in some way shape or form and foster that competition. But clearly Nielsen will still be the primary choice for the industry this year. And you know, I don't want to say the foreseeable future, but to the.

[Tim Peterson]

Point the future can be foreseen at all.

[David Campominali]

Yes. Which is very hard to do these days.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. The out of home measurement piece, how do you feel? My sense is the buy side has some pretty strong feelings when it comes to out of home measurement and the idea that like ads shown to people in bars are counted at given the same weight as ads shown to people watching at home.

[David Campominali]

Home, yeah. It's important to count everyone viewing. And our philosophy has always been for all of these changes, we measure a lot of our clients business on the result of the ad being shown. So not just counting the number of viewers who saw it, but what was the impact? Did people call? Did people go to the website? Did product move off the shelves? Did people visit the stores? Was there a brand lift, whatever the metric is. And if we ran a spot in again Sunday Night Football, before they flipped this out of home switch and after they flipped the out of home switch and added 10% to their audience, the impact to our advertisers is the same. No more people actually watched it.

[Tim Peterson]

And now you're being charged for it or they're being charged well.

[David Campominali]

So that's been the negotiation. We've been very firm on the. We're changing currency here. We're changing. It's like changing a demo. We're just counting it differently. So if my unit cost was $100,000 and you measured it one way yesterday and measuring it a different way today, my unit cost is still $100,000 and my CPM changes. And then we go from there. So that becomes part of the negotiation. And that's another thing, honestly, that will slow down this upfront because the Nielsen Big Data has areas of lift like that. That will be that discussion that I just described. But there are also networks that show a drop with Nielsen Big Data and that goes the other way. So in a cable network where if you take that stance, our CPM goes down again, it's artificially going down. My cost is actually the same. There will be situations where the CPM goes up because the ratings have gone down. And obviously we're going to be consistent in those discussions. We think that's the first way to deal with it, though, is your unit cost. Is your unit cost and how we're measuring it doesn't change the value of that unit. It helps them deliver in totality and they can build into their estimates, but it doesn't really change the value of that unit.

[Tim Peterson]

It's that messiness that I, as someone who just reports on this stuff, really enjoy. I imagine for you, probably less fun to have to deal with all that.

[David Campominali]

Again. I was saying before how much more complicated it is today than it used to be. It is a lot more complicated and challenging and sometimes that drives you crazy and sometimes it's enriching to kind of work through that stuff and figure things out. So there's positive side to it, I guess, too. It definitely keeps things interesting. And also you're talking about stuff other than just price. And that adds complexity to the negotiation too, which, again, challenging, but also kind of a good thing.

[Tim Peterson]

What do you expect the conversation around price to be, especially the streaming side? Like last year you mentioned Amazon came into the market, brought a lot of supply, that brought streaming pricing down. Are you expecting it to go down any further than it sounds like for the premium streaming services? They're all in this $20 to $25 CPM range from like a base CPM on a P2. Basically, anyone from 2 years old and older who's watching it's like 20 to $25.

[David Campominali]

Yeah. The dynamic in the streaming space that I haven't heard talked about too much is when a new service launched, like Peacock, HBO Max, I can say HBO maxing be right now and not have to correct myself to Max, HBO Max, Peacock, Hulu years ago, but Hulu is much more mature. Disney plus and Netflix, when it's streaming, the scale is tiny and the inventory is very, very scarce. So the advertisers come in first. Certainly there's value and benefits to it, but it starts at a very high cpm. So there's a need as they grow and an expectation as they grow that if they come out at A$50cpm to start, it's not staying there, they're not growing the CPM from there. The CPM needs to come down and normalize as they gain scale and need to be competitive. And when you're in 5 million subscribers, have 5 million subscribers, you can sit back and say, yeah, it's going to be $50. Don't buy it because we're going to sell out different world as you grow and you need scale when you start.

[Tim Peterson]

Throwing around 300 million as a number, right?

[David Campominali]

Yeah, exactly. An HBO Max or a Peacock. Those prices have come down over the years significantly. But that's not as much a marketplace dynamic that's unique to them in their state of their maturity. So I do think last year was a year where we saw a bunch of those decreases partially because of marketplace, but partially also because they just scales growing and maturity is growing and the price has to normalize down to that level that you're talking about. So they're competitive. So I think that was part of what those numbers look like. You can kind of, as we bucket it into the correction pricing, the needed correction pricing, and then the kind of marketplace pricing, which was also in the rollback territory. It was negative pricing year over year, pricing rollbacks year over year, but not as severe as some of them. So there's kind of like two buckets of that. So I think more will be in that second bucket of what's happening, what's the real supply and demand in the marketplace, which I still think will be. There will not be enough demand that pursues all of the supply that they have because obviously streaming consumption continues to increase and you have someone like Netflix growing quite a bit and Amazon from last year, et cetera. So I think it'll still be a buyer's market in the streaming marketplace. So it will be negative rate of change, but probably not as severe as some of the ones numbers from last year.

[Tim Peterson]

Okay. Negative rate of change for streaming specifically.

[David Campominali]

Yeah, that's what we're.

[Tim Peterson]

What about the market overall inclusive of tv?

[David Campominali]

Yeah, I mean sports is obviously the strength and we expect sports to be stronger than the other day parts in terms of demand and as high as the ratings are in NFL and they do keep adding windows, there's still a scarcity to it. There will be a lot of NBA. There's a lot more windows in NBA. So we'll see how that plays out. In terms of pricing, you also have the sellers who paid a lot of money for these rights have to recoup that to some extent. So there's that dynamic we look at in those three buckets. Streaming sports and then essentially linear entertainment. And that's obviously an area where ratings continue to decline. Advertisers continue to shift out of that to streaming and other media types. So there's always a little bit of a. If dollars are down 10% or ratings are down 10%, it comes in flat. Ish. It depends. So we'll see how that hashes out. But in total we see it similar to last year which was in totality a negative marketplace.

[Tim Peterson]

Will this be the year that streaming gets the majority share of the pie when it comes to dollars committed versus linear?

[David Campominali]

Enter that linear entertainment bucket? Probably, I think within our portfolio almost for sure. Again we look at sports as its own bucket and that cuts across both streaming and linear. Like I said before Amazon Thursday night or Netflix Christmas Day. No different than the linear broadcast. But there's those two bucks of streaming and linear entertainment. Yes, streaming should pass this year, I would think.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. Sports. To what extent is that or is that not its own marketplace in the upfront? Because it was what, 2018 when Disney did the reorg where like it brought ESPN sales under like the broader Disney ad sales umbrella and it started selling sports in tandem with the rest of its entertainment properties. It wasn't like it's siloed thing, but then you have others like Amazon has a dedicated sports team. It does do things like if you're buying sports and entertainment from Amazon, there are discounts that are allotted for that. But you could still just be buying sports from Amazon if you wanted to. To what extent is there a separate sports marketplace in the upfront?

[David Campominali]

It's really not separate anymore. It's really part of the overall discussion. Yeah, it used to be sports even was like its own upfront, like much later in the summer in like August or something, I think. But no, it's just part of the portfolio discussion, both because it's sought after by advertisers, but also sellers want to use it for leverage. And if you want to get in for the super bowl, they're going to try and leverage that across their whole portfolio. That's another marketplace that used to not happen until the fall and now it's really moved up to the upfront super bowl specifically. And when you're NBC this year or this next year and have so much sports, so much high profile sports, particularly in first quarter, you're going to want to get that sold as far ahead of time as possible and bring those conversations to the, to the upfront. So it's really just part of the overall. Now you still have advertisers who are very specific to sports and maybe aren't tapping into everything else, but the agency to seller negotiation is all inclusive of sports.

[Tim Peterson]

Now before we wrap, this being the Friday at the end of upfront week, I figured let's do a little upfront week lightning round. Did you have any one highlight from any of the presentations this week or any of the meetings, conversations you may have had throughout the week?

[David Campominali]

Highlight?

[Tim Peterson]

Let's see, there were these sliders that Netflix had after its upfront. Those were a bit of a highlight for me.

[David Campominali]

I don't know highlight, but a couple of cool moments. I thought Netflix opening with Jude Law and Jason Bateman was a little nice surprise and clearly kind of bringing out the big guns to kind of announce to me. Felt like they kind of announced their arrival in the upfront scene and what their presentation was about. So I thought that was kind of cool. I'm a massive Fear of the Bear on FX Hulu, so the three actors from the Bear coming out was a nice one. Those were a couple of personal ones, I would say.

[Tim Peterson]

Got it. Okay. Did you have any lowlights? I imagine the brand executive who got beaned in the head by Tom Brady at the Fox up front that may have been. Although I actually did hear that they were actually a really good sport about that. They just wanted the football afterwards, but they thought it was a cool story to have. So maybe for them it's a highlight. But were there any lowlights for you?

[David Campominali]

I don't want to pick on anyone with a low light. I would say musical performances and this may not be a popular opinion, musical performances at 11am in the morning are not overly necessary, especially at the end of almost two hour presentation. So I always the Snoop Dogg concert didn't do for us. That feels better for a late night concert party that it does for. And I'm not a big, you know, DJ rave guy. It was aggressive. Aggressive as people are trying to sit down. As in Steve Aoki's, you know, loudly blaring music. Great dj. I suppose it's not my thing, but while we're sitting down, it probably wasn't necessary.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. And especially like then tough when Lady Gaga closes out up front week with like, I mean, just one of the best live performances I've ever. I've never seen her perform live before. Was astounded by that one. I think my lowlight was the idea that there's gonna be a show called Dancing with Sharks coming into our lives soon thanks to Warner Brothers Discovery. Also like, yeah, NBCUniversal having a two plus hour presentation. And as far as I was aware, there was no food, there was no water drinks, coffee, anything like that.

[David Campominali]

That's the new complication this year with Amazon going Monday night that everyone's like, when are we eating? Because you go from NBC, there's some time before Fox, but then Fox right to Amazon, it's like, when are we eating? The cookies and gummy bears at Amazon didn't quite cut it for dinner that night. So I got to figure some spacing out a little bit there for more food. But that was a little bit of a low light too, I guess.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, the popcorn at Amazon was what I struggled with. It felt like it was in a Christmas tiny from maybe five years ago and then got served. But were there any surprises for you coming out of this upfront week?

[David Campominali]

I don't know if there's any big surprises. The way that these have evolved over the years. They're really more a moment of kind of everyone collecting in one place at one time, having meetings, having discussions. Particularly for us and clients. It's a great week for experience. The actual information exchanged on stage is not ever particularly groundbreaking or surprising and a lot of it leaks beforehand or honestly reading the recaps afterwards where there's more in the press release is a little bit like ESPN didn't say all that much about their streaming service than what you read afterwards. So no, it was nothing. Hugely surprising, I don't think.

[Tim Peterson]

Does upfront week need to stay. I was talking to. There was an agency I was talking to this week and they were just like, we don't need to have upfront. It's nice to have clients in town to be able to have these meetings. We don't need these presentations.

[David Campominali]

I for years kind of felt that way. But on both this and ces and possible I've come around. Do we all need to go to Vegas the first week of the year when we're not even having anything to do with CES anymore? But it is the most effective way to pack 47 meetings into two and a half days. And we always say it's, I'm meeting with people in New York. I could just do it in New York. But I don't because we're busy and you're doing something. So you need to just carve out the time, fly to Vegas and have those three days. So I think the upfront serves that same purpose. We get really great facetime with clients, spend a lot of time with them in a partly business but also partly social setting, which is important. And also it's good for sales to connect with clients as well, which doesn't always happen with us there. So I think it is important. I think it's important and meaningful to kind of not to sound cheesy, celebrate the industry and celebrate what we're doing. And I think that's what the presentations were. They're still professionally produced shows, they're an entertainment show. And yes, NBC was too long and they probably should have gotten the hook for Arnold Schwarzenegger a little couple minutes before.

[Tim Peterson]

It was kind of delightful.

[David Campominali]

He was fun.

[Tim Peterson]

And then Jamie Lee Curtis coming out and having that full funnel moment, too.

[David Campominali]

It was funny when they clearly sent her out to try and get him off stage and then she just went along with it for an extra couple minutes. It was funny, but no, it feels meaningful. I'm not going to say anything about anybody, but I went to a few new front presentations a week before and a lot of that was missing. It was just a sales presentation with a lot of people there, and I'm like, that's not what this is about. I don't need to see case studies during an upfront present or a new front presentation.

[Tim Peterson]

Send me your pitch deck.

[David Campominali]

Yeah, exactly. We'll talk about it offline. So I do think it's important. I do think it's still a nice moment for the industry.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, it's nice for me to be able to have a reason come out and hang out with you in person. So, Dave, really appreciate you doing this.

[David Campominali]

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much.

[Tim Peterson]

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Digiday 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.

[David Campominali]

SA.