TV Faces Tumult in Upfronts, With Advertisers Making New Push for ‘Rollbacks’
variety.comBrian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Audiences may not be the only thing about TV that continues to shrink. Advertisers are expected to once again press for “rollbacks,” or declines in the rates they pay for reaching streaming and TV viewers, in early “upfront” talks with TV networks, according to five media buying executives and other people familiar with these annual discussions in which U.S.
media companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory ahead of their next cycle of programming. And while the buyers have a vested interest in cooling any potential hot spots in the upfront market, TV -sales executives this year aren’t pushing back on the assertion.
There will be a squeeze, aided in part by a glut of new inventory coming into the market thanks to the addition of the new ad-supported Prime Video tier from Amazon.
Agreements that include reductions in these rates, also known as CPMs and a measure of the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers, have generally been extremely rare.
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