Who Else Wants to Get Their Hands on the Upfront $? - Steve Yanovsky - MediaBizBloggers

In a recent article in Broadcasting and Cable there was a discussion about Microsoft and their efforts to quotget a slice of the television upfront marketquot Microsoft Apparently they think that the Xbox service is their way in But they only have 20 million distributed worldwide with around 70 in the US When you do the math 14 million is far from the critical mass advertisers and their agencies look forBut it is definitely a sign of things to come That 14 million will continue to grow And when focused on a key demo young men they are in a position to offer an attractive CPM to advertisers who target this elusive demoSo now we have four media that all want in on the Upfront We had the network television Upfront of 2009 Unprecedented in how slow it was to crystallize CPM increases or deceases falling well below network expectations A mating dance that took months not weeks to evolveSimultaneously all the major players in the cable television arena participated in the 3909 Upfront Bringing their new and returning series to market was less traumatic for them than the broadcast networks Advertisers were still cautious when making long term commitments due to the fear in the marketplace but this upfront was less extended and disturbingThe newest Upfront season has occurred in digital video Recognizing that agencies were planning and spending ad dollars for the following 24 Quarters ad networks and some publishers presented their inventory to digital agencies in a manner similar to the television selling model That is get them to make commitments for premium inventory and provide attractive pricing After all this is where the eyeballs are going Initially this strategy met with modest successAt the recent digiDay conference there was quite a bit of discussion on the topic of the digital Upfront Many of the senior agency media exec39s indicated that they had no interest in participating in an Upfront They feel that with the volume of available inventory and the ability to make real time buys a 24 Quarter commitment is unnecessary Others however take an approach that echoes the television market That is they want to lock up premium positioning and feel that the best way to accomplish this objective is to make a long term commitmentSo with Microsoft joining the fray and likely others will follow it will be interesting to see if any Upfronts continue or will it all turn to a scatter market Or will premium inventory always drive long term commitmentsSteve Yanovsky a marketing and marcom consultant with Customer Focused Solutions can be reached at stevestevenyanovskycom Read all Steveamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Steve Yanovsky MediaBizBloggersFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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Who Else Wants to Get Their Hands on the Upfront $? - Steve Yanovsky - MediaBizBloggers

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