Ep 18: Upfronts, Streaming & Why TV Advertising Is Starting to Look Like Cable Again

What are the TV Upfronts, and why do they still matter in the streaming era?

In this episode, Kelly and Sean break down how television advertising, streaming platforms, and digital media buying continue to evolve in 2026. From traditional TV Upfronts to modern NewFronts, they explain why streaming services are increasingly adopting strategies that resemble the cable television model many thought had disappeared.

The conversation covers the economics behind streaming advertising, why advertisers still reserve inventory months in advance, how connected TV (CTV) changed media buying, and why consumers may now be paying for “cable with extra steps.”

Kelly and Sean also discuss:

•  The difference between Upfronts and NewFronts 
•  Why streaming platforms are leaning harder into advertising 
•  How ad-supported subscriptions are reshaping viewer behavior 
•  The growth of connected TV (CTV) advertising 
•  Why programmatic and digital media buying continue to evolve 
•  The changing economics of streaming platforms 
•  Why consumers are returning to ad-supported viewing options 
•  The future of television advertising and media strategy 

If you work in advertising, media, streaming, digital strategy, or marketing analytics, this episode offers a practical breakdown of where the industry is heading next.

Key Topics Covered

•  TV Upfronts explained 
•  How streaming advertising works 
•  Connected TV (CTV) growth 
•  Why streaming is starting to resemble cable 
•  Programmatic TV advertising 
•  Ad-supported subscription models 
•  Digital media buying trends 
•  Streaming platform economics 
•  Consumer viewing behavior 
•  The future of television advertising 

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to press@guideline.ai.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

You're listening to Media Monitor, where we break down what's happening in the media and the advertising industry and tell you what it actually means. Sean, good to see you. How's it going?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Again. Good to see you again. It's going well. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I, you know, I uh my voice is finally coming back.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

We that's a plus.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

We were at a conference where I guess I just chatted too much, lost my voice, but I think it's almost there. And you know what I one of the things I enjoyed the most was that time with you, Sean, just that FaceTime. One-on-one.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Six six and a half minutes when I was also trying to run to a presentation and you were running between client meetings. It's a very small window.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

We we did have a couple funny things where, and I don't remember how it came up, but we talked about pump-up songs.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

We did. Well, I think it came up because you were like, hey, are you gonna pump yourself up before the presentation?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

That's exactly how it came up.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, it depends on the presentation, depends on my mood. I've got playlists on playlists.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

And I learned something that we found another overlap in the Venn diagram of us.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

It's slowly, slowly becoming a true Venn diagram, not just two disparate circles.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yes. MM, MM.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

M M. M M. Which ironically, wearing not my shirt MM for people watching. For people listening, I am I'm legitimately wearing an MM polo, but no, the the rapper.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

The rapper. Best best pump up songs. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've just been on the treadmill, just like getting it done.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah. If if I need to be angry, that's my go-to. Like if I'm if I'm in more of like a panel debate, it's my go-to. If I'm trying to get the crowd excited around insights and analytics, I lean more into like EDM. And then depending on the crowd, it'll oscillate from there. So it depends. It depends on on the mood that I'm trying to convey to. And I I try to channel that music in my my presentation.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I think that's fair. Well, I I always love learning a little more and spending a little time. And I also it gave us an opportunity to talk about the pod a little bit and what we should cover. And we both agreed that it was time to talk about upfronts, new fronts. They just wrapped up. So we figured it would make sense to first define them because I think there are probably some listeners out there that know what the upfronts are, some that do not. So I figured we could start there and then we could talk about what's going on this year, what some trends and themes are, and then maybe we'll talk about some stuff that I learned about at the upfronts that fall outside of our overlap in the Venn diagram towards the end.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yes. And and to be fair, I did try to include it in the Venn diagram, but it's it's not for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah. And uh just a little teaser. We're gonna talk Summerhouse at the end of the video, folks. Yes. For those interested.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Firmly two discrete circles on that one.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Well, so let's start with upfronts, Sean. You've been in the Biz a long time, you're super familiar. Give our listeners a definition of what the heck are the upfronts.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah. So despite being in the biz a long time, the upfronts predate me by probably a solid, I don't know, uh, 60 years, 70 years. It is a fairly uniquely phenomenon. We're not going to cover it in today's pod. Australia has some vague semblance of they kind of do this like showcase thing in September. It's not a one-for-one. And then the Canadians have something similar, but maybe not as pomp and as big in terms of you know all of that. So like upfront's fairly a unique American thing. Uh, but they started back in the 1990s. They became sort of popular in the 1960s. And the idea was is because production costs were always a huge part of kind of front-loading shows. You had to go out, you record a show, you kind of had to upfront all of the money and then try to make it back through advertising throughout the course of the year. The business model changed. And broadcasters at the time, ABC, NBC, would kind of show the lineup of TV shows coming uh typically in the fall, uh, which was actually tied to new car launches. So, like a lot of the upfront and the broadcast season was tied to when automakers would launch cars, uh, because that's how big as an industry and advertising was in the 50s and 60s. It was auto, auto, auto. So they kind of built the entire broadcast calendar, combo of both automakers and also just when people watched a lot of TV. Historically, globally, summer, southern and northern hemisphere, slightly different time of the year, but summer as a season typically has much lower consumption. So the idea was to kind of like front load it in the fall. But because of that, they would try to secure advertising up front of all of the actual kind of TV shows that would run in the fall. So this would kind of launch sometime in the spring. There would be these conversations, you would see the lineup, uh, maybe like, hey, I dream of genies coming back for a second season. Do you want to, do you want to buy some advertising now? Because in the TV world, right, there's always a fixed amount of advertising. There are only so many 30, 15 second spots that will run in a course of an hour. It's a it's a guaranteed block, as opposed to, and we'll allude to this and get to it later, like YouTube in theory has theoretically an infinite amount of ad supply. Facebook, Instagram have, in theory, an infinite amount. So it was like secure your spot while it lasts, come buy the inventory now. And that's what it was born out of in the the 1960s. And it hasn't, in some ways, it's evolved a lot. In some ways, it hasn't evolved much since you know 1962, 63 when ABC popularized it.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah, I think you know, that's something that for those who are not as close to it, it's obvious when you think about it, but sometimes you kind of just have to take a moment and say, wait, so in linear TV, fixed finite spaces in digital, the viewership is kind of, you know, this sliding scale, depending on how many people are coming, it's more targeted. Like you said, it's in theory infinite, but you know, it's more um, you know, you have to predict how many eyeballs you're gonna get. Whereas um and and there's a lot of variables in there. So totally different avenues. This has been around for a long time. It's also really interesting to mention the autos piece, because if we think back to last week's episode where autos is dropping below that 10% of that space, yeah. This is a big shift. So knowing that that's how the you know this the upfronts kind of started, focused on autos, it's definitely worth calling out here. So that makes sense. So we just we're closing in on the upfronts. Sean, before we go into some of the the data around it, there's also another thing that happens new fronts.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Now new fronts.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Can you define that for us?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Yeah, so I would kind of argue the new fronts was largely kind of the digital world's response to the upfronts. I would argue, for the purpose of folks who aren't familiar with either, for all intents and purposes, they are very similar, right? Some of the way that you do reserve ad buying, some of the way the pomp and circumstances in terms of like pitching the shows is different, but fundamentally at its core, it's about presenting what is up and coming. New fronts typically would lean more into things like technological advancements or like new identity solutions on top of content, whereas like the upfront's core broadcasters is really content, right? And sprinkled in on top of that, a little bit of the tech and like the wow and the you know, here's our new identity spine, whatever it is, right? There's so it's kind of like inverted in terms of arguments, but at its core, it's kind of the same thing. It's you know, early in the season, we know that everyone, uh particularly within the agencies, have these budgets. Come spend with us. These are the cool things you get, these are the cool shows you can be a part of, etc. So, for all intents and purposes for folks that aren't familiar with either, we can kind of treat the new fronts to be very similar, but really kind of from a digital first perspective. For today's conversation, I think is probably the easiest way to frame that up. Um, and so they that you know, part of it is that, uh, and we'll get to this from like a stats perspective, is is a lot of the digital companies, uh, YouTube in particular has this really big upfront, Amazon uh, you know, has a big upfront, kind of saw the amount of money that was being pre-allocated way up front from a budget perspective and realized that it was a huge chunk of change and that there was very much uh business incentive to try to secure that as well. And so in many ways, it has been kind of a business decision to try to get in early and and almost from a like share shift competitive stealing perspective, watch the new fronts as this kind of like to combat some of that upfront dynamic that had existed for the better part of you know, 60 years.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, and it it's it's definitely growing. See kind of that influencer culture coming into it. It it's an event. People are going, they're producing their new things. So I'm curious to see how this, you know, evolves over time because it's something that if you weren't in the space, you wouldn't hear about it. But I feel like now you're hearing about it. You're you're seeing the people that you follow on social media popping up at these events, viewing new things. So um it's kind of ingraining in the broader culture more as new fronts evolve. So let's talk trends. What are we seeing in 2026? How are things looking um across these upfronts and new fronts?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah. So, you know, I'll take it from like an ad spend perspective. And one of the interesting dynamics is, you know, you go back to 2016 on our data and you look at the entire media mix, which I know is not totally uh analogous to upfront, but let's for right now kind of classify all of these like upfront deals plus reserved buys. So I kind of don't want the advertising right now. I want it three months from now, but I'll pay you for it so that you could secure it so I don't lose it, kind of thing. If we call those as like upfront light, we're basically talking about 40% of the ad spend market that we have line of sight into was some sort of upfront reserved ad buy back in 2017. So 60% was was what might be called a spot buy or a scatter buy, something that's like, I need it right now. Let me go out and find the ad inventory that I need in the next like two weeks kind of thing. You fast forward to what we are projecting for this year, and that that number for the upfronts drops down to 24%. Uh so just basically one in one in four dollars will flow through to some upfront and reserved ad buy. Now, I want to highlight that over that time, when we look at, say, the advent of streaming within this space, a lot of this is not being driven by an abandonment of the upfront strategy to actually over the last couple of years, what we've observed in our data is that if you drill into that bigger number and look just at kind of the TV market. So for right now, for all intent purposes, let's call the TV market being kind of the set top box linear TV, but also streaming all of those things over the top, as some might call it. If you smoosh those two things together uh and call that TV, we're still operating at about 80% is this reserved ad by uh upfront type dynamic in terms of spend. Over time, that has actually moved from let's call it like 74% earlier on to about being 80%. And part of that strategy has been uh really to kind of think about uh from those companies, it's great to kind of secure that that money early so you kind of know and can kind of figure out your balance sheets and also you know where you want to deploy it, place it, all of those things. So that has been kind of a big market in terms of of spend. And so that really that number hasn't changed. What has changed though is that everything is growing around it. So social, search, things like that, that is now operating at kind of much faster growth rates, which is why we're seeing that 24% uh be the number that we're projecting for this year.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Okay, so so that makes sense. So you're saying that 24%, while it's smaller than what it was, it's actually growing, but it's from a declining share. And I exactly everything that we're saying is that's just gonna continue to decline. I mean, I don't unless new sports emerge that we don't know of yet, because that's really the driver right now. And for sure. And sports are also moving to to streaming. So it's it looks like you know, not the brightest future for the upfront buys.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, right. I think I think what's interesting is this is more of just completely spitballing here, but it's fascinating over time how the streaming model is ever closer inching to like the cable model, both in terms of like the expense. Hey, they've now noticed that you should just take some TV shows, not all of them, but instead of giving you all 12 at a single dose, we're gonna give you one a week and it's gonna come out every Wednesday at seven. And you're like, this is literally appointment viewing from like a musty TV back in the 90s. Like, this is the strategy that has been around forever. Turns out that like TV knew a thing or two about consumption. Not saying that that won't be the future of consumption from an upfront perspective, but I am, let's call it maybe modestly optimistic that the future of content consumption will look and feel uh a little like it does today or even the the days of yesteryear.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Just because like they knew what they were doing.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

They all just knew. They knew what they were doing, they made money hand over fist when it came to like the cable error. So like they were very profitable businesses. They knew how to mix this like you know, demand FOMO with streaming, with all these things. And we are starting to see that model slowly creep by. Now, the big question is like, will it will will there ever be something similar on like a TikTok, right? That probably less so, right? Uh but I I am modestly hopeful for the future. And I wouldn't be surprised if the upfronts lasted another 50 years.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

I could see, yes. I subscribe to this. I mean, it's it's kind of like every time I go through my closet and I think of getting rid of things, and I just, you know, I'm at the age now where I know that the style's gonna come back around. So I hang on to a few articles because I'd hate to toss them only for them to, you know, be relevant again.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

For sure. And usually it's the vintage one that's the more uh in-demand one than the the knockoff that comes 30 years after the fact.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Exactly. Not calling you vintage, just to be clear. Not you're not that old.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

You you can call me vintage, I think it's beginning to be appropriate.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

I would say like my elementary school slash middle school clothes, solidly vintage. Like very a lot of a lot of neon.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Neon.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Early 90s, mid-90s, you know. The kids loved it.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Well, you know what how I try to s to stay young is by watching Summer House.

unknown 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

You know, I have to say, Sean, I know it's not an overlap in our Venn diagram, but not even close.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

There's not even a bridge that could connect this divide.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

I don't think it's just for the kids, but it it is for the kids. It's it's a whole range. And I have to bring it up because at the upfronts, they leaked, uh, or not leaked, but they aired a clip of the reunion. And if for those who aren't as close to it, big scandal, I would argue as big as Scandaval, if you're familiar with that from Vanderpump. And basically they said, you know, West is, and I'll give a little bit of context here. West had a girlfriend in in, you know, earlier this year. Uh and it's that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

It's just crazy, just crazy.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

But you know, I'm just gonna play along. It it brought the it brought the upfronts into the mainstream.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, top of mind.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

The other wild thing is I read that they are going to air the reunion in a theater in New York. Bananas in New York City.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Bananas.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Like in a movie theater, as if it's like a premiere. Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, that's how you get that buzz. Movie theaters. What's old as new?

SPEAKER_01 16:05

So so if you want to talk, Sierra, Amanda, West, or Kyle, or even Lindsay. If you want to talk Lindsay, let me know. You know, you know where to find it if you want to talk. Probably not Sean, probably a little more Kidley.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

But uh Yeah, I think we did it, Sean. I feel like we have educated our listeners, and um it's a wrap on my end.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah, I think I think that's a good place to stop, especially since you're getting a phone call.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Somebody already wants to talk about something.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Someone heard that and was like, it's not even out yet. I'm calling from the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, it's been real. Till next time.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

All right, have a good one.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

See you then. Bye. That's Media Monitor. Follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts every Wednesday for a new episode. And as always, thanks for listening.