Marketers Boost Upfront Spending: Digiday+ Research Insights

Marketers use various metrics to measure ad campaign success on streaming platforms, with the most common being:

• Impressions: This metric indicates the total number of times an ad is displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or not.
• Engagement/Watch Time: This refers to how long viewers watch the ad or interact with it, which can be a strong indicator of interest.
• Brand Lift: For campaigns aimed at raising awareness or consideration, brand lift measures the positive impact of an ad on a viewer's perception and intent.
• Message Association: This measures how well viewers can associate the ad with the correct brand or message.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): For conversion-driven campaigns, CPA calculates the cost to acquire one customer.
• Incremental IPs Reached: When testing new platforms, this metric helps understand the audience size that is not being reached within the current mix.

Digiday+ Research has found that:

• 51% of brand, retailer, and agency professionals plan to allocate marketing spend to the upfront market, which is an increase from 37% in 2023 and 29% in 2022.
• 48% of these professionals expect their upfront spend to be greater in 2024 than in 2023.
• The majority of upfront spending will be on streaming platforms rather than TV networks, with 58% indicating they will spend more on streaming.

Trends in programmatic advertising investments, as observed by Digiday+ Research, include:

• High Adoption: A significant majority of brand and retailer professionals (77%) and agency professionals (80%) report using programmatic site display ads.
• Increased Investment: There is an upward trend in investment, with 38% of brand and retailer pros and 42% of agency pros increasing their programmatic spending budget compared to the previous year.
• Divergent Spending Patterns: While more brands are spending a large portion of their marketing budgets on programmatic ads (24% in Q1 2024, up from 17% in Q3 2023), a higher percentage of agency clients are not spending at all on programmatic (18% in Q1 2024, up from 2% in Q3 2023).

The concern for scarcity of streaming ad inventory has lessened because:

• Abundant Supply: There is a significant supply of ad inventory in streaming, reducing the urgency to secure audience reach during the upfront event.
• Sports Exception: The exception to this is sports content, where there may still be a sense of urgency to secure ad spots.

Nielsen is the dominant measurement provider for currency during the upfront event.

• 58% of brand, retailer, and agency professionals support Nielsen as a currency this year.
• 52% have indicated that Nielsen will be their primary currency during the upfront.