2024 Upfronts, Day 3 Reflection: Convergent TV Media Companies Are Maximizing the Value of Branded IP — and That’s a Good Thing

From “Game of Thrones” to “Happy Gilmore,” and all across the superhero multiverse, Convergent TV media companies showed off new iterations of existing intellectual property throughout this year’s Upfronts.?

This isn’t to say there were no new ideas — because there were plenty on display at every presentation this week. Quite the contrary: the reason there is space for all these new ideas is precisely because the media companies are maximizing the value of their most popular creative ideas.

After all, it’s no secret that the TV industry has been going through a period of rapid change. In times like these, it’s important for the companies that produce our favorite shows, news, sports, and special events to have reliable hits that provide a strong foundation of predictable revenue from which to build new hits.

At every Upfront we saw, a highly diverse group of established and emerging storytellers took to the stage to share their highly anticipated new projects. And it’s precisely because media companies have bankable hits from proven talent and franchises that they’ve been able to take on the risk that comes with giving any first-time creator a platform.?

And many of these prequels, sequels, reboots, and adaptations are really, really exciting (I personally can’t wait for The Bear S3, the Harry Potter-inspired baking competition, and the Legally Blonde prequel).

Here’s what else stood out to us from the third and final day of the 2024 Upfronts.

WBD Flexes Its Branded Integration Muscles with “The WBD Effect”

Warner Bros. Discovery used its Upfront presentation to solidify its identity as a fully integrated, cross-platform entity, where advertisers can create impact across screens and genres ranging from news and sports to unscripted and scripted TV.

This new way of thinking was on full display during a presentation on the company’s ability to integrate brands into its content across film and TV, a benefit it referred to as “The WBD Effect.” During this segment of the event, WBD showed off how it helped State Farm engage audiences across a pair of very different cultural moments: First as a sponsor on the court during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend on TV, and then with a branded placement on the briefcase containing the prize money for Food Network’s Tournament of Champions.

We also learned that the Barbie movie had more than 50 different co-marketing partners, which WBD worked to drive impact across the film’s theatrical release, its airings on Max, and beyond. Or, as Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer Jon Steinlauf memorably put it during the presentation, “from screen to stream.”

In an era of increasing TV convergence, this ability to engage consumers across mediums will only become more important.

Netflix’s Ad Tier Is Growing — and It’s Adding More Live Sports and Tech as Fuel to the Fire

Three big pieces of news came out of Netflix during Day 3 of this year’s Upfronts:

1. The platform now has 40 million monthly users on its ad-supported plan globally, up from 23 million just four months ago.
2. Netflix will air the NFL’s Christmas Day games each of the coming three years.
3. Netflix also plans to roll out its own proprietary adtech platform by next year.

Clearly, Netflix’s advertising audience is growing quickly, giving marketers more of the scale they’ve been craving from them.?

And with its new investment in the country’s most popular sports league, Netflix spotlighted its ambition to continue growing its audience and create more of the highly engaging live sports programming that is consistently responsible for some of Convergent TV’s most effective ads. The NFL deal comes at a time when the company is already gearing up for a boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson this summer, as well as its new role as the weekly home of the WWE’s Monday Night Raw beginning in 2025.

Finally, the unsurprising announcement of a new adtech platform signals that the Silicon Valley-born Netflix intends to help advertisers get the absolute most out of their money by marrying the massive reach of premium live sports content with the targeting and outcomes optimization made possible by programmatic technology.

Netflix’s Vice President of Advertising Sales, Peter Naylor , put it best, “The story of ads on Netflix this year is pretty simple: it’s about growth and momentum.”

Sounds like a pretty good flywheel to me.

YouTube Continues Its Push to Make Premium Content More Accessible to Advertisers with YouTube Select Creative Takeovers

Amassing a large audience has never been a challenge for YouTube, which ranks as one of the top streaming platforms by hours watched per Nielsen.

Where the brand has sought to deliver more value to advertisers is in connecting them with the most popular, most premium, TV-quality content on the platform. In 2020, it introduced its YouTube Select program to give brands easier access to top creators and programming. During Day 3 of this year’s Upfronts, it furthered this initiative by expanding and officially launching a new advertising option called “YouTube Select Creator Takeovers,” which empowers advertisers to execute a full brand takeover of channels that sit inside the platform’s most-watched 1%. The program was initially piloted on Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast, New Heights.

The presentation, which included performances from Billie Eilish, singer-songwriter Benson Boone, and the K-pop group Stray Kids, sought to solidify YouTube’s argument that the quality of its content is on par with that of traditional TV. In his opening address, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan reiterated his opinion that YouTube creators should be eligible for Emmys.

As he said, “Creators are drawing audiences on the [TV] screen because they’re the new Hollywood.”

Speaking of premium, TV-quality content, the platform also announced YouTube TV will add additional games from the red-hot WNBA to its offering. YouTubeTV will now broadcast locally televised Friday night games on ION for viewers that live in the home and away team’s local markets.

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After all the excitement of Upfronts week, we’re looking forward to a fruitful negotiating season.