Advertisers Caught Off Guard By Online Options May Hold Back At Upfronts

The TV upfront starts May 15 and the betting is advertisers will hold back a little more of their budgets so they can take advantage of non-traditional opportunities. Cable is taking more of the money along with a bigger share of the audience but the real movement is in digital.
Jason Kanefsky, a VP and account director at Havas‘s MPG media-buying firm, told the Journal the new options that emerged in the past few months caused some regret to people who committed too much in advance: “Investing all of your dollars in a short period of time without understanding what is coming up on the horizon is a bad strategy. Not every good idea is cooked in May.”
Some of the money is already earmarked for web spending. The percentages aren’t high but it could be enough to drag down the $9 billion-plus TV market down a few percent. That doesn’t mean the networks are losing across the board — some of the digital spending is flowing to network sites.

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