Alan Wolk's column explores what addressable upfronts might look like in future, including excerpts from a conversation he had with our CEO and founder, Jeff Green.
Green notes, “Advertisers will buy ads in advance, but they will look more like the forward contracts of financial and commodities markets than they do the current upfronts. We will see advertisers demand more control, and larger percentages of their upfront spend will be available programmatically and on CTV. CTV will enable targeting and relevance in an on-demand environment that the current upfronts cannot support.”
Wolk tends to agree. He notes that we are in an age where there are so many great programs available, with more and more people turning to what he calls “serial bingeing”—bingeing on series one after another rather than staying abreast of linear TV.
He adds that this means it will become more and more common for people to watch shows outside that seven-day window, or even a 30-day window. And so he believes that a scenario similar to the one that Green describes will emerge, where ad sales do indeed look more like “the forward contracts of financial and commodities markets” and sophisticated systems will take those contracts and use them to dynamically insert ads based on various markers that advertisers have paid for. This, as Green notes, gives advertisers more control over who sees their ads.
Wolk doesn't think that the shift to CTV will kill the upfronts, but he agrees that the buying and selling will look different in the years to come.