A year and a half ago, the TV industry was talking about the end of the upfront, that annual season of pitches made by networks to ad buyers for year-ahead business.<\/p>\n

The new pandemic had startled brands, causing many to press the pause button on ad spending – particularly upfront ad buys.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward, however, and Michael Falco doesn’t think the upfronts are dying. In this video interview with Beet.TV, the chief revenue officer at Fox Corporation says they have learned new tricks – and Fox has seen an “influx” of buyers back to upfront sales over the last year.<\/p>\n

Upfronts reborn?<\/h2>\n

Falco offers two reasons why:<\/p>\n

1. Evolution, not revolution<\/h3>\n

“There’s still the need for a futures market,” he says. “In reality, what the last year and a half taught us was not that we needed to get away from the upfront, but that the upfront needed to evolve.”<\/p>\n

2. Upfronts for streaming<\/h3>\n

“This notion that the upfront is just a linear television event is completely, completely wrong,” Falco argues. “Case in point for Tubi – we nearly tripled our revenue year-over-year in the upfront for TV, and we almost doubled our clients year to year.”<\/p>\n

Pandemic panic<\/h2>\n

Falco isn’t ignorant of the effect the pandemic did have on upfront ad sales.<\/p>\n

He says Fox had to figure out how to present its programming and ad products at a time when most potential customers would have been gathering in New York to hear its pitch.<\/p>\n

But ad buyers, he says, fell into three camps:<\/p>\n

\n
1. Those which had to bail on upfront commitments.<\/li>\n
2. Those which had products useful during a pandemic, which continued.<\/li>\n
3. Those which flexibly stepped back with a view to later going after targeted media.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

   Tubi lights the way<\/h2>\n

   Fox acquired Tubi, an ad-supported streaming TV service, for $440 million just as the pandemic panic was kicking off in early 2020.<\/p>\n

   Having Tubi in the stable has enabled Fox to make the kind of offering that ad buyers – during the pandemic or otherwise – were gravitating toward, namely choice, flexibility and audience targeting.<\/p>\n

   Tubi made more than $100 in ad revenue in the last quarter, more than $400 million over the year, according to its latest filing.<\/p>\n

   Data-driven TV<\/h2>\n

   Falco says data-driven TV ad targeting is key. Fox has wrapped together its offerings under banners called “One Fox” and “Fox Next<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

   “It’s going to allow us to move into that more audience-based selling, which I think is something that we’ve been looking forward to for quite some time,” Falco adds.<\/p>\n

   “Now that we have Tubi in the fold, it’s really going to give us the wherewithal to do that.”<\/p>\n

   You are watching \u201cA Marketplace Transformed: The TV Ad Industry Powered by Automation,\u201d a Beet.TV leadership series presented by\u00a0Matrix<\/a>. For more videos, please visit\u00a0this page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

   A year and a half ago, the TV industry was talking about the end of the upfront, that annual season of pitches made by networks to ad buyers for year-ahead business. The new pandemic had startled brands, causing many to press the pause button on ad spending – particularly upfront ad buys. Fast-forward, however, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":76124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[8802],"tags":[8737,8917],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75909"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}