New-Tech Firm The Trade Desk Aims to Influence Old-School TV Upfront

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Most of the nation’s biggest TV companies are planning to gather under one roof next week and discuss something that has little to do with traditional boob-tube economics but is likely to play a critical role in them in weeks to come.

When Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal and Walt Disney speak Tuesday morning at an event convened by The Trade Desk, they will give a tacit nod to the growing importance of so-called “programmatic” advertising to their many TV networks.

In the not-too-distant past, programmatic sales were an add-on to mainstay TV commercials — and the networks were wary of ceding control to a technology that gave advertisers the ability to essentially use a software algorithm to insert an ad during a particular household’s streaming session or FAST watch, all according to the type of customer seen as most likely to be interested.

Now, things seem to have changed. “I do think we are in this moment, we have reached this inflection point around how TV advertising is bought and sold,” says Tim Sims, The Trade Desk’s chief revenue officer, in an interview.