Television Is The New Television: A First Look At The 2016 Upfronts

So it looks like data was last year’s buzzword.This year, it’s all about television as the TV networks seem to be fully embracing their television-ness in their upfronts this year. That’s particularly relevant given how much the digital networks embraced their own nascent television-ness in the New-Fronts.Television is the new television.There’s was talk about audience parting too, and some pumped up buying platforms, which we’ll get to later, but first let’s look at what all this TV-ness means.For quite some time, TV execs have been stewing quietly as their digital brethren crowed about the number of views they had— billions each day— and how they were even more popular with Millennials than Bernie Sanders.The last straw seemed to come during the NewFronts when YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki gloated about how YouTube was beating television in terms of viewers. That’s when TV hit back.Both NBC and Fox made sure to mock the math behind digital video view numbers, with Fox pointing out that if their World Series broadcast were to use YouTube metrics it would have 6.8 billion views (that’s about twice as many people as there are on the planet.)There were snide comments about UGC and cat videos and the superior advertising environment of a Shondaland TV show.And the thing is, they’re right.As we pointed out the other day, we’ve long been surprised that no one has ever called YoutTube and (especially) Facebook out on the speciousness of their metrics. Or pointed out that a three second view is not really a view.There’s also context: while both may be video, there is a world of difference between professionally produced TV shows and most web video. Which is not to say that web video isn’t sometimes a better choice for certain brands and audiences, but the trend of treating all video “holistically” seems to be a bit misguided.One source of this “holistic” confusion is around ad-supported digital properties like Hulu and Crackle, which while delivered digitally, are still, at their essence, TV. To the point where they are most viewing happens on an actual TV set. Planning those properties with the likes of AMC and ABC makes sense.Audience Parting Grows UpBoth NBC and Fox introduced upgrades to their ad products that let buyers take advantage of programmatic buying using an actual DSP (demand side platform.) That gives brands (or their ad agencies, anyway) better control over the process. And while the final product still isn’t true addressable (e.g. different ads delivered to different target audiences during the same show) it’s a step in the right direction and does indeed take advantage of the data the networks have collected.So that’s the early update from the upfronts: TV is still a powerful medium and still the art form of choice. Data is important in that it can give advertisers more bang for their bucks and the networks are working on it, though they’ve got a while before they catch up to their digital cousins.ABC and CBS still have not had their upfronts yet, so we’ll be keeping you up to date on those and providing a full recap on Friday.Stay tuned.