BIA Lowers Station 2Q Ad Revenue Forecast

BIA Lowers Station 2Q Ad Revenue Forecast

Its projection drops 5% to $18.5 billion, saying political, OTT and digital advertising will slightly balance the negative effect of the pandemic on local advertising.

The report shows another reason for the need for station ownership and management to make local-direct a primary target for new more profitable and controllable revenue. A great benefit to consumers for local-direct advertising are the shoppers who now can pick up orders "curb-side" from preferred local businesses. Plus...local-direct ad dollars provide higher net margin profitability to the station! Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

By Mark K. Miller | May 21, 2020 | 6:23 a.m. ET.

BIA Advisory Services has lowered its early second quarter 2020 forecast for U.S. local TV advertising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its new revenue estimate is $18.5 billion, broken down to $17 billion for over-the-air revenue and $1.5 billion for digital revenue, compared to the $19.4 billion forecast earlier this year. Overall, the numbers still reflect the election year and a slight increase over 2019.

In addition to accessing the quarterly estimates in BIA’s Investing In Television Q1 Market Report and MEDIA Access Pro, BIA has published a new area in BIA ADVantage offering access to individual Local TV Market Profiles and Station Overviews.

“Local television stations, like all media, will see significant decreases in advertising from many business verticals like travel, leisure and retail,” said Mark Fratrik, SVP and chief economist at BIA Advisory Services. “Political advertising will buffer those decreases in many markets that have competitive senatorial and gubernatorial races and in presidential battleground states. Plus, continued growth in OTT and digital will help to soften the impact of the pandemic on advertising revenue.”

When examining the local advertising marketplace for television stations, areas the least affected by COVID include political advertising, over-the-top and digital advertising. BIA estimates that $7.1 billion will be spent on local political ads through 4Q this year. Of that, over-the-air will get 45.8% share of the political ad spend. Additionally, as political advertisers grow their spend in OTT, local TV owners will also benefit.

The forecast also reflects $10.44 billion in retransmission consent agreements between local television stations and cable/satellite companies/virtual MVPDs expected in 2020. BIA predicts that on a market-by-market basis, retransmission fees will continue to rise, based primarily on rate increases in each market.

Speaking to the forecast, Fratrik says: “Since we completed this forecast in early April, over 25 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance and there is continuing economic concerns as the country moves to open back up. We expect political advertising will increase very quickly, and we anticipate certain verticals will rebound more quickly than others. It is going to be a dynamic marketplace this year, and we will continually monitor the nationwide and local economies to update our forecast based on new information.”

Univision, Other Mid-size, Small Broadcast TV Networks Score Seasonal Viewing Gains

• by Wayne Friedman , 4 hours ago

Against the backdrop of three of four major over-the-air TV networks witnessing declines in viewership this past season -- and general long-term declines in broadcast TV -- a number of mid-size and small, locally based digital networks have seen hikes in viewing.

Spanish-language network Univision grew 6% to 1.46 million average prime-time viewers as well as its young-skewing sister network UniMas, up 40% to 523,000. 

Viewing data is from the Nielsen-measured live program-plus-seven days of time-shifted viewing metric and live program-plus same-day of time-shifted viewing for the most recent weeks of the Sept. 23, 2019 through May 10, 2020 viewing period.

A number of smaller, locally based digital networks -- channels built on local TV stations' digital signals -- also had higher viewing results. Weigel Broadcasting’s MeTV was up 5% to 740,000 prime-time viewers, while Katz Broadcasting’s Grit network (Katz is a subsidiary owned by E.W. Scripps) was 14% higher to 387,000. Katz’s Bounce TV added 15% to 302,000 and Katz’s Court TV Mystery was up 20% to 185,000.

Several mid-size broadcast networks had more mixed or lower results. This includes Ion Television, down 2% to 1.28 million; NBCU’s Telemundo, off 8% to 1.1 million; and The CW, slipping 22% to 1.04 million.

Only one of the four major TV networks -- Fox -- posted gains this past season, due to its airing of the Super Bowl, higher-rated NFL “Thursday Night Football” games, and as a result of high viewing from its reality singing competition show “The Masked Singer,” up 17% to 6.4 million average prime-time viewers.

CBS, which continues to lead all broadcast TV networks in prime-time viewing, was down 14% from a year ago to 7.7 million viewers, while NBC lost 9% to 6.6 million and ABC slipped 3% to 5.5 million

Local Advanced TV Advertising Moving Forward During Trying Times

• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, May 15, 2020

While overall marketing budgets have been hard-hit by the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, local media buyers seem confident that continued advanced television exploration will be part of their evolving plans in the months ahead.

In a pandemic-oriented survey of 200 agency media buyers specializing in local and regional advertising conducted last month by Comcast Advertising, 80% said they intend to conduct do some programmatic buying, and fully 91% said they plan to put some of their video budgets toward advanced TV channels such as video on demand, over-the-top, addressable or advanced linear. (Respondents came from among users of Comcast FreeWheel’s Strata buying platform.)

In comparison, last October, 79% of local buyers surveyed expressed interest in using ATV.

“The events of the past few months have posed a challenge to many agency buyers — especially those who buy for local and regional businesses,” says Maria Weaver, chief marketing officer, Comcast Advertising. But the survey showed that these buyers “aren’t standing still,” she adds. “In many cases, they’re finding ways to be more efficient with their dollars through the use of data, targeting and automation.” 

While 60% said it’s too early to tell how the pandemic will affect 2021 plans, 25% said they expect to explore new channels, 20% will look into new ways of using data, and 16% expect to change their approaches to targeting.

I also asked two experts to weigh in on the local scenario, and ATV in particular.

BIA Advisory Services, which just completed its first post-COVID-19 forecast adjustment, now estimates that the total local advertising market for 2020 will be $144.3 billion — down 10.6% from its original estimate of $161.3B in November 2019, reports BIA Managing Director Rick Ducey.

The forecast, which uses a methodology focused on connected TV, now projects $1 billion in local OTT spending, down from $1.1 billion originally estimated (above).

“This reflects downward pressure on market CPM pricing that the whole ad market is managing through, but we see promising take-up of CTV during the latter part of Q2 and into Q3,” Ducey explains. “We also expect CTV’s updraft to continue, and I expect that our next forecast update will reflect higher estimated spending growth in OTT.”

“There’s no question that the local market has been shifting toward ATV advertising, and COVID-19 has accelerated this shift. We hear from agencies that some of this will settle back into linear TV over time. But a good dose will remain with ATV, and ATV spend will grow at a faster rate than linear TV going forward.

“The positive effect on ATV spending is driven by several long-term and short-term factors, including high growth in CTV viewing, more data-driven audience targeting and activation, more flexible buying, better attribution, an attractive premium video environment, great uptake of ATV tech and use by consumers, greater ability to manage frequency capping, and the ease of programmatic trading. Still, traditional TV wins on reach, and on  some content — especially when the live sports and new productions are in normal mode.

“Buyers see the clear advantages of premium video ad environments. But they also want the options of forward reserve and RTB for activating buys based on the advantages they see in automation and data-driven audience targeting for driving optimizations and KPI performance," Ducey notes. "Broadcast TV is making progress, but must move faster to maintain competitiveness going forward. ATSC 3.0 — aka NextGenTV — can be a game changer here. Being able to measure, attribute and optimize cross-platform campaigns will be huge.”

One continuing obstacle to local ATV advertising’s progress, Ducey adds, is the control struggle within agencies.

“Since ATV is a hybrid, who gets the ATV budget — the traditional TV team or the digital team? Agencies and marketers are figuring this out, but as long as these silos exist, the opportunities will be limited both for clients and media.”

Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst for TV[R]EV, is preparing an “Eyes on Local TV” report. It’s focused on how broadcasters are using their own OTT platforms and third-party platforms like Pluto and Tubi to extend their reach by using data to target viewers on those apps who would be missed in their linear broadcasts, he reports.

Importantly, broadcasters can now deliver unduplicated reach to avoid repeatedly hitting viewers who are on both linear and OTT with the same ads, he notes.

A key takeaway of the research: “The appeal of this setup for local broadcasters is that it allows them to sell the inventory themselves and not rely on third-party vendors,” Wolk says. “That allows them to keep their existing organization relatively intact, while expanding their offering to their customers.”

With normalcy out the window during the pandemic, Wolk is putting off budget predictions, and focusing on practical strategy.

“We tell clients we feel that the next year or two will be what’s being called ‘the Hammer and the Dance,’ meaning that different regions of the U.S. will open up and then shut down rapidly, and that will happen asynchronously,” he says.

“What we hear from advertisers is that they want to be ready for those shifts. So in addition to looking at the scatter market, they are looking at anyone who can deliver addressable advertising, because it can be targeted geographically, and you can also send different creative executions to different regions. As a result, OTT/CTV, which is all addressable, is garnering interest, as are the linear addressable ad-insertion platforms that Project OAR and Nielsen are creating,” Wolk says,

“We think this is true for local in particular, because brands are looking at local with fresh eyes thanks to the increase in ratings for local news, especially among younger viewers. It will be up to the broadcasters to prove that they understand this new ecosystem — some do and some don’t — and that they can help advertisers reach viewers who may have cut the cord for economic reasons and/or are just unreachable on linear TV.”

With $10B In Scatter Up For Grabs, 'Prepare For A Scrum'

• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, 29 minutes ago

Television buying dynamics, which were already starting to shift more rapidly, have been thoroughly disrupted by the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

“So much of the TV business is dependent on the upfront and live sports. And because of the uncertainty, much less money will be committed upfront in the 2020 cycle,” Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, noted in an interview this week with Advanced TV Insider.

In fact, based on input from clients, agencies and analysts, Morgan estimates that true upfront commitments will shrink by half this year, and that an extra $10 billion will move into the scatter market in the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021.

Much of that will flood into advanced television, with all segments of that industry chasing those dollars. “Prepare for a scrum,” he declares.

CTV will be one major beneficiary. “This will be a big moment for CTV — there’s no doubt that CTV spending will rise significantly,” says Morgan.

That jibes with new projections for the broader OTT video market from Digital TV Research, which estimates that, thanks to the pandemic’s effects, global ad-supported video-on-demand will hit $53.5 billion by 2025 — up 120% from 2019’s $24.3 billion.

But the fattened scatter market will also benefit data-driven national linear TV — Simulmedia’s bailiwick — says Morgan (who reports that the company is already seeing triple-digit growth year-to-date, despite the pandemic).  

Morgan obviously has major skin in the game, with a dozen years in the audience-driven linear business. But his take is that demand for CTV will at some point exceed inventory supply.

While consumers’ streaming consumption has soared, the most-watched services are still ad-free, and only about 3% to 5% of advertising viewed on TV screens is via streaming, he points out.

Based on eMarketer data from earlier this year (pre-pandemic), “we projected that there would be 625 billion CTV ad impressions in the U.S. in 2020 — which is a lot of impressions, in the digital realm,” he adds. “But our estimate for national linear TV was 13 trillion impressions.”

Still, he’s quick to say that no one knows exactly how all of this will play out in the months ahead.

“What we do know, in addition to money being withheld from the upfront and pumping up the scatter market, is that agencies are expert at traditional TV buying, but not so much at advanced TV buying,” he says. “There are a limited number of people who have operational experience in both linear and ATV.”

In addition, given the economic pressures now in play, clients, who are already doing more of their own buying, will want to maximize their spending flexibility.

“So you’re going to have a lot of people — without a lot of experience, and maybe without a roadmap — making a lot of decisions about moving budget money, within much shorter windows than usual,” Morgan sums up.

“As a result, I’m afraid that the next five quarters may be a bit of a mess.”

What's your take on the ATV outlook in the year ahead? What about addressable? Look forward to your feedback... 

Creative in this post signifies the importance of CREATIVE! Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

Not Wearing Pants? No Problem When You Go For An Oil Change At Take 5

• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, Today

Take 5 Oil Change, with about 500 locations nationwide, is out with a new ad campaign today created with San Francisco-based ad agency Erich & Kallman.

The company offers a drive-thru service that lets drivers stay inside their car or truck while they get their oil changed—a service that’s the focus of the campaign and one that is well-aligned with the realities of the “new normal.”

Instead of the ubiquitous “we’re in this together” COVID-19 messaging, the campaign takes a more upbeat and humorous approach.

The animated effort highlights some new habits (at least for some) acquired from working at home, like not wearing pants or maybe not showering as often compared to pre-pandemic.
Sample the work here, here and here.

In just a few weeks E&K turned around three 30-second TV spots, short-form videos, three radio spots and nearly 100 outdoor ad boards.

The campaign will run through July 5 across 54 U.S. markets.

Commentary

Retail Sales Plummeted 16.4% In April

• by Thom Forbes , Featured Columnist @tforbes, 9 hours ago

Retail and food services sales dropped 16.4% in April from the prior month, the steepest monthly decline since the U.S. Census Bureau began tracking the data in 1992.

“Some of the declines in individual categories were staggering. Restaurants and bars lost half their business over two months. At furniture and home furnishings stores, sales were off by two-thirds. At clothing stores, the two-month decline was 89%. Increased sales from online retailers didn’t come close to offsetting the downturn elsewhere,” Ben Casselman and Sapna Maheshwari report  for The New York Times.

“The drop was far worse than economists had expected, and it was significantly steeper than the revised 8.3% sales decline in March. This April’s retail sales are down 21.6% compared to April 2019,” CNN’s Anneken Tappe and Nathaniel Meyersohn write.

“U.S. stocks traded lower following the dire news. The seasonally adjusted total dollar amount spent on goods dropped back to a level not seen since 2013. As people continue to stay at home across much of the country, they're spending more on food than before but little on other things. And with mass layoffs leaving millions of Americans out of work, discretionary spending has been crunched,” they add.

“Losses were widespread over the month. Virtually every major category of retail purchases tracked by the Census Bureau suffered double-digit losses between March and April -- the exceptions being building materials and gardening equipment, which saw only a 3.5% decline, and nonstore retailers, which include e-commerce purchases and grew by 8.4%,” Andrew Soergel writes  for U.S. News & World Report.

“‘The lockdowns are accelerating the shift to online sales that was already in place for the past several years,’ a team of researchers at Wells Fargo Securities wrote in a research note on Friday, noting that nonstore sales last month accounted for nearly 20% of all spending. Over the year, nonstore retail purchases are up nearly 22%,” Soergel adds.

“It’s like a hurricane came and leveled the entire economy, and now we’re trying to get it back up and running,” Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist for the consultancy Maria Fiorini Ramirez, tells  the AP’s Josh Boak and Anne D’Innocenzio.

“Shapiro said he thinks retail sales should rebound somewhat as states and localities reopen their economies. But he said overall sales would remain depressed ‘because there is going to be a big chunk of the lost jobs that don’t come back,’” Boak and D’Innocenzio add.

The silver lining, apparently, is that the situation last month was about as bad as it can get.
“April was the cruelest month,” Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, tells The Wall Street Journal’s Harriet Torry.

“Retail spending likely bottomed out in the first week of May, he said, with spending picking up due to Mother’s Day and gradual state reopenings,” Torry writes. “‘It’s going to be less worse with each month,’ said Mr. Johnson, ‘as people slowly come out of the foxhole and enter the mainstream of American consumerism.’”

Jim Cramer, the host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, “said the government’s distinction between essential and nonessential businesses has unfairly weighed on some consumer-facing companies,” CNBC’s Lizzy Gurdus reports.

“What can I say? There is just a really horrible distinction between essential and nonessential. … We were talking with Planet Fitness last night. When they made liquor essential and gyms nonessential, it wiped out a lot of gyms. And so what’s going to happen is there’ll only [be] one strong gym,” according to Kramer.

“Consumer spending is the fuel that powers the world’s largest economy, to the tune of 70% of growth. For years, economists have warned the dynamic wasn’t sustainable. Now, those predictions may be coming home to roost as COVID-19 crisis decimates employment and spending, while elongating the anticipated timetable for a recovery,” writes Javier E. David for Yahoo News.
“We already know from the dreadful employment figures that services spending was hammered hard again in April,” Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote Friday in a research note cited by David.

“Given the bigger hit to consumption than we had anticipated, we now forecast consumption to fall by close to 50% annualized in the second quarter. For now we still anticipate a 40% annualized decline in GDP growth, but the balance of risks to that already below-consensus call now lie to the downside,” Pearce continued.

That’s certainly not going to help JC Penney, which filed for bankruptcy on Friday.
“Still, the move doesn’t get any closer to answering the core question: Can anything make 21st century omni-shoppers long for a plain-vanilla department store?” Marketing Daily’s Sarah Mahoney asks

Political Ad $ Actually Revised Upward Due To Pandemic, Lack Of Live Event Campaigning Cited

• by Wayne Friedman , May 15, 2020

Due to higher-than-expected primary spending -- partly driven by the absence of live event campaigning -- political advertising is now expected to total an even bigger record of $6.7 billion this year, according to one estimate.

Advertising Analytics is raising its estimate by 12% because of primary spending, higher fund-raising, and what it says is the “lack of face to face campaigning” -- due to COVID-19 disruption.
So far, political advertising spend for this 2020 political season has totaled $2.19 billion -- more than $1 billion more than the amount spent at this point in 2016 and 2018 -- two big political election years.

The ad research group now expects spending by broadcast networks and stations to get to $3.56 billion; digital media, $1.82 billion; cable TV, $1.16 billion, and radio to $170 million.

Even without the big spending of Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg earlier this year, spending has totaled $1.58 billion -- nearly two times more than the highest-spending political seasons.

Advertising Analytics projects that $443 million has been “reserved” so far for the fall 2020 period -- typically when political advertising begins to sharply rise.

In terms of digital spending, $605 million has been bought so far on Facebook and Google from some 13,000 advertisers-- $400 million spent in direct-response ads,  $145 million in persuasion ads
The Trump Presidential campaign has spent $48 million on direct-response ads -- 94% of its total spending. The Biden Presidential campaign spent $16 million on direct-response messaging -- 86% of total spending.

Local-direct clients are growing up in appointment shopping...ie curbside pickup...Is their creative helping put that message out on your station? Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

Commentary

The Impending Rise Of Appointment Shopping

• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, May 13, 2020

The world has been disrupted — and only now are we starting to fully comprehend the scale of that disruption.  Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about things like remote work, but what about the state of retail?  The retail experience is about to get a full makeover, which opens up some new and interesting opportunities for the general shopper.

Most states have begun the process of reopening, but they are doing so with stringent restrictions on retail and restaurants.  The biggest ones refer to capping the number of people in-store at any given time.  Retailers are encouraging people to buy online and pick up their orders curbside.  I think this model could open the door for a more personalized shopping experience in the coming months and years ahead.

Over the last few years we witnessed the retail experience change as the result of innovators like Apple and Tesla creating clean, stark retail environments that were all about a hands-on, customizable experience without requiring large volumes of inventory.  I can see retailers like Banana Republic and Gap taking the same stance in the near future.

This past weekend I went out to buy a new bike, and the local bike store was only taking appointments — no walk-ins.  I then went to check out car dealers. I noticed there were actually a lot of people at the dealers, but they were also all there by appointment.  The buying experience is quickly becoming a planned experience, with stores personalizing these appointments for the person who scheduled.

Appointment shopping allows four massive benefits to retailers.  First and foremost, it allows them to reopen and reengage with their customers.

Second, if someone schedules an appointment, that’s a strong signal of intent to purchase. You know the time spent with them is likely to result in a sale — usually in a larger sale per customer.
Third, you don’t need as much inventory onsite, so you can (unfortunately) pare back your staffing requirements, which cuts down on overhead and increases your margin.

Lastly, and most disruptive, you don’t need as large a retail footprint.  I live in the East Bay town of Walnut Creek, California and we have a nice downtown area with lots of large stores.  Each of these could dramatically reduce their footprint, increasing the volume of options in that downtown area while creating more of an appointment-oriented culture.

This model of appointment shopping is interesting because it creates artificial demand.  Artificially stimulating demand can be a boon for retailers.  You may have walk-by traffic that looks in the window and goes home to do their online shopping, while others will do their online browsing, then head to the store by appointment for sizing and final purchases.  It also offers a chance for people to see more diversity of retailers without those retailers being hamstrung by huge investments in real estate.

Appointment shopping has always been available in larger department stores — typically only to larger-size purchasers or to an affluent audience.  The leveling-out of the shopping experience could make this model available to everyone while increasing the overall accessibility of some stores in that local retail environment.

Why should stores pay many thousands of dollars a month in rent when they only need 50% of the space for appointment shoppers?  The commercial space owner can easily segment out the space and reduce the footprint for each tenant, while generating additional income in the long run.  You can even make some spaces available for pop-up shops or local craftspeople who could never afford the larger spaces in the past, but now could gain access to people in this new model.

One of the threads I’ve seen emerge from COVID19 is the rebirth of the community atmosphere that was dominant in traditional America.  This feels very much in line with that trend: local retailers interwoven with larger, national brands because of the lower costs to maintain a smaller commercial footprint.

Maybe this is just the shot in the arm the retail world needs to compete with a totally digital-centric retail experience?

Commentary

Why Do So Many TV Sports Advertisers Lack A Plan B?

• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, May 14, 2020

We’ve seen a pullback in TV ad spend across a number of consumer categories. Some are quite understandable, such as travel, restaurants and movies. Some are a bit surprising, like automotive. But one is absolutely perplexing: soft drinks.

MediaPost reported that TV ad spend in April by automakers was down 71%. Similarly, according to another report, soda advertisers spent 78% less on national TV ads between March 16 and April 26.
Why cut back so much? For sure, companies faced sales challenges in this terrible crisis, but those cuts were only in the tens of millions of dollars in categories where annual sales in the U.S. are measured as portions of trillions of dollars and single point share gains in billions.
As reported in both stories, the primary reason for the cuts was the loss of live sports programming on TV, where companies had planned to run their ads.

What gives? It’s not as if people aren’t buying lots of soft drinks these days, like the hundreds of millions of Americans sheltering in place at home. Milk consumption alone is up 40% year over year.

In fact, this is probably the best time in history for a soft drink company to take market share through advertising. Daily, hundreds of millions of consumers in the U.S. are buying beverages in grocery stores, from delivery services and online shopping sources — and faced with much more brand choice than normal, since most of the restaurants, theaters and stadiums where they can’t go now had exclusive deals with just one or two brands.

Yes, losing live sports puts marketers in a quandary, but many of them have put alternatives in place. When one financial securities firm lost its NCAA March Madness and NBA buys, its agency immediately redeployed the marketers’ ad spend in data-driven linear TV ad buys targeted to the same sports viewers in other programming across dozens of national TV networks.

Company strategists knew the lack of sports content wasn’t keeping sports viewers away from TV. Their data showed those target sports viewers were watching more TV than ever, just different types of programming.

Advertisers should fall in love with their customers and their problems, not just some of the content that they like to watch.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of sports on TV. It’s great to watch and a super strong place to advertise. But, when it comes to sustaining and growing your business, you have to have contingency plans. Plus, sports advertising is really expensive. Brands that advertise on sports programming should have back-up plans, if for no reason other than price negotiation.

Maybe all those spending cuts weren't really about lack of sports programming, but about saving money? We know the drill. Media director gives money back to corporate; looks good to boss. 
We also know that too much of the corporate marketing world works this way, which is why most large U.S. consumer brands have a growth problem. They stopped investing in growing their brand to grow their sales.

What I know for certain is that people will drinks lots of soft drinks later this year, next year and the next. Those who are able to effectively grow their brands’ mental availability among target customers in this time (thank you, marketing expert Byron Sharp) will grow their sales and own more of those consumers. Those who don’t, won’t.

What do you think?

Now local stations management must focus on local-direct revenue to help counteract the loss of revenue! Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

Commentary

Which Networks Benefit From A Drop In Upfront Dollars?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, May 14, 2020

With expected upfront ad volume to possibly drop a massive 33%, according to a new survey, attention turns to who will looking to pick through the carnage.

  National TV revenue could drop to around $13 billion from a more typical $20 billion upfront marketplace, collectively pulled in from broadcast and cable networks and national syndication programs.

So if there is some $7 billion up for grabs, where is it going? Perhaps a demand side platform (DSP), midsize and fringe cable networks, and/or premium streaming platforms.
In its earnings phone call last week, Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, in an overall picture of the marketplace, said: “We are winning incremental spend that would have historically been committed in the upfronts ... CTV [connected TV viewing] is getting what linear is losing from the expectedly weak upfronts.”

Spending has been upended by the pandemic.In its earnings phone call last week, Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, in an overall picture of the marketplace, said: “We are winning incremental spend that would have historically been committed in the upfronts ... CTV [connected TV viewing] is getting what linear is losing from the expectedly weak upfronts.”

“We saw a sharp deceleration in spend during the second half of March ...  a negative mid-teens year-over-year decline [in the last week],” says Blake Grayson, CFO of Trade Desk. “In early April, the year-over-year decline in spend continued to increase.”

Trade Desk touts itself as the largest aggregator of CTV ad impressions, and going forward, it is, of course, optimistic.

The equation isn’t that simple. The shift to connected TV sales -- in the past and future -- could come to benefit legacy TV media companies through third-party demand-side platforms, like The Trade Desk. Think Disney’s longtime streamer Hulu or Comcast’s forthcoming Peacock, big premium ad-supported video platforms.

Other speculate possible gainers from a lower upfront could be legacy cable networks -- especially those that depend more heavily on the scatter markets. Additionally, it could help cable networks that work on many calendar year upfront deals for marketers.

Many digital-first marketers with a history in near real-time digital media deals yielding key business outcome metrics could place more “just in time” scatter buying on legacy TV, especially with rising return on media investment data metrics from those networks.

Overall traditional TV networks sales executives see the marketplace as totally fragmented -- perhaps a bifurcated one where upfront deals are made for fall 2020 and others start in January 2021.
Mark Marshall, president of advertising partnerships and clients for NBCUniversal, tells TV Watch: “We're in contact with our client and agency partners on a daily basis, and flexibility is definitely a focus. But flexibility means something different to each, so we're working to find a path toward it on an individualized basis.

Flexibility is a good idea. But growing competitors will have that flexible, as well.

Commentary

Pandemic Permanently Alters Gen Z

• by Aaron Paquette , Columnist, May 14, 2020

Tragedies and hardships indelibly shape every generation coming of age. Those born in the Roaring 20s faced the twin shocks of The Great Depression and World War II. Boomers, Vietnam. Gen X, the Challenger explosion. Millennials, 9/11. And now COVID-19 serves as the seminal event that will forever change Gen Z’s outlook on life, health, money and the world around them.

True, older generations are experiencing the highest fatality rates from COVID-19. And almost every generation is feeling a pinch in their pocketbook with lost jobs, reduced hours, lower pay and dwindling retirement accounts.

Still, older generations also benefit from years, if not decades, of normal life, a strong economy and all of society’s rites of passage. By contrast, COVID-19 suddenly threw Gen Z out of school, canceled their proms and graduations, suspended their internships, and took away their service-sector jobs. Overnight, those about to enter the workforce went from experiencing the lowest unemployment rate in modern history to the highest rate on record.

For many adults, quarantine is “life on pause.” For Gen Z, however, it’s “life cancelled.” And just as my grandparents were forever shaped by The Great Depression and carried a “Depression mentality” throughout their lives, Gen Z will forever be marked by caution about their health, finances, and the trust they place in politicians and institutions.

Conversely, living through a pandemic will also inspire Gen Z to “double down” on their boldness in dealing with existential issues like climate change, income inequality and social justice. Seeing national government hamstrung in its response to the pandemic might encourage Gen Z to work toward solutions on the state or local level, or through nonprofits and online communities. Just as The Greatest Generation rose up to fight and win World War II, Gen Z might coalesce to help lead the nation and world toward a healthier, more secure, more united future.
What are the implications for brands targeting Gen Z?

*They’ll be teens for a long time. For many, the coronavirus will delay their education, first job, and leaving their parents’ house. Until the pandemic ends and the economy recovers, potentially years from now, they’ll be stuck as perpetual teens, living at home, depending on parental and governmental support, and cobbling together work and education as they can. So brands should be mindful that a 20-year-old Gen Z consumer might be more like a 15-year-old from three decades ago, and still require parental buy-in on major decisions.

*They’re not leaving the house. Not only will Gen Z be living at home for a long time, they might be living there 24/7. If bars, restaurants, nightclubs, malls, concert halls, beaches and airplanes are all considered unsafe and/or unaffordable, Gen Z might never venture out. So out-of-home and experiential marketing will lose most of their potency, and brands will need to find clever ways to reach teens and young adults via digital channels, at home, and with services that can be consumed virtually (like streaming concerts).

*Their stress levels have skyrocketed.  They were already terrified about getting into (and paying for) college, finding a job, saving the world from climate change, and staying in the country if they were Dreamers, or their families were undocumented. Now, COVID-19 has given Gen Z one more existential worry. For many, it might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Once the pandemic recedes, many experts fear an ensuing mental health crisis, striking the young particularly hard. Brands will not only need to soothe wounded psyches, but also help provide mental health resources, forge connections and find solutions to this generation's educational and employment dilemmas. Together, Gen Z and the brands that serve them can find a way forward from this pandemic.

COMMENTARY

Emotional Decency In Post-Crisis Marketing

• by Michael Boumendil ,  reprinted May 6, 2020

After the pandemic passes, customers won’t see the world in the same way.  They will have looked mortality in the eye. They will have faced deep fear and persistent anxiety. They may have lost a job -- or a loved one.

People will have recalibrated what means most, what is reassuring and what, by contrast, is mere life clutter.

Marketers will have to reevaluate how they talk to (and with) these more vulnerable, more watchful, more self-examining humans. Even now, the constant parade of promotional offers has begun to feel tawdry.  Who needs a discount on a fast-fashion dress? Who needs their 99th hair accessory or bobble-head doll? 

Exaggerated claims will trigger repugnance. Will this nice can of beans make the mother a perfect parent surrounded by an adoring family? No. Will it provide an easy kid-pleaser that will get you through till another daunting meal? Yes. And that’s not a small victory. 

Brands will need to ask themselves, what is my legitimate emotional territory?  What, in today’s world, represents brand decency?

Human-to-human contact. Human-to-human contact will also be more highly prized after social distancing. Do consumers want their bank to create a beautiful ad that causes their eyes to well up with tears? No. We’ve had plenty of tears.  The real question will be, "Will the bank treat me with respect and dignity, though I may have missed some payments and need a loan?” and, “Can I talk to a human?” 

Reject emotional manipulation. These more sensitive consumers will reject emotional manipulation. The emotional manipulation implied by celebrity endorsements may ring false, too. These more introspective audiences will know your brand is not Beyonce, Johnny Depp or LeBron James. It’s an implied exaggeration that may feel inauthentic.

Brands may also want to replace fake images of perfect (retouched) models, homes, vacation destinations, and meals.  These cosmetic changes exact a price on people’s self-images and confidence levels -- a high price to pay.

More complex view of their country. While brands have used patriotism and political stances as feel-good advertising, post Covid-19, consumers globally will have a more complex view of government.  In the U.S., people have seen companies scrambling to find ways to help. But they’ll also have a clearer idea about the lack of coordination between local and national governments, messed-up supply chains where some are destroying gallons of milk and bushels of eggs, while others are desperate for food. And they’ll know the U.S. healthcare system is full of holes.  Even governments need to create more trust with more nuance and vulnerability in their branding. 

So many brands claim to be the best in the world. Today, they need to demonstrate they aren’t above us but are among us, the people of the world.  Brands should be supportive, even vulnerable.   

In the end, emotional decency is just human decency. And we’ll all need a mighty slug of that.

COMMENTARY

Tips To Avoid Work-From-Home Burnout

• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, 4 hours ago

Some of us are going on nine weeks of working from home.  That by itself may be no big deal — but it is when coupled with the state of the world today.  In fact, this much time spent working from home is creating burnout, which can be very difficult.

The challenge is not so much the work-from-home concept, but the fact that the lines between work and personal are blurring even more than in the past.   Most of the time in our previous lives, commuting acted as a bookend that delineated our time focused on working in the office and being at home, focused on family.  

Even those of us who typically would jump back online in the evening to check in and wrap up some work would have that break in the day to give a little distance and separation from the office.  

Now your office exists in every room of your house and is accompanied by piano lessons, homeschooling and more in the background.  Headphones can drown out some of the world, but not all of it.  

This also becomes even more heavily intensified when you realize that video calls are more draining than being there in person.  Video requires a level of focus that you don’t actually have to have when you are in a room engaging with others.

The new paradigm of working from home requires you to establish boundaries.  One of the most important is scheduling a start, middle and end of your day.

You may get thrown off once a week, but try hard to maintain those parameters.  Your day could start at 7 a.m. or later, but you should always consider when you take your breaks and your lunch and at what time you wrap up the day.  

If you set those parameters in advance, you know your day is bound by time. Then there are specific projects you’re working on. Projects are never really over, but you can fix a time for them.  If you give yourself two hour to work on a project, you will know when that time ends, you have to move onto something else.  That project may not be complete, but you can always come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and a willing mind.  

You also have to schedule “brain time.”  I tend to schedule three two-hour blocks through the week to think and knock stuff off my massive to-do list.  I don’t set the expectation that I will get them all done, but I do set aside the time to make progress.  Sometimes they get accomplished outright, while with others I just move the ball down the field and ensure that I am making progress.  

For me, the most difficult thing to accept is stagnation.  I feel like a shark.  When sharks stop swimming, they die.  I need to keep swimming and making progress or I feel like I'm failing.

One more thing I find valuable -- and I am probably the worst when it comes to this practice -- is to deal with distractions.  One way I am blatantly stealing from author Nir Eyal. In his approach, you don’t give in to a distraction for 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes, if it still feels like something you should do, you go for it.  Most of the time you realize that distraction wasn’t necessary.  

Distraction are a natural part of life.  They mean your brain is working!  You can embrace them by not belittling them.  Just respond when the time is right rather than right away.

Hopefully a couple of these nuggets of wisdom will help you to avoid burnout over the next few weeks as we all work toward the same goals of finding better balance in our work and personal lives.  Good luck!

COMMENTARY

COVID-19: What's Next For Brand Marketers?

• by Oliver Wright , Columnist, 3 hours ago

The pandemic is permanently changing consumption — both what consumers buy and how they buy it. Buyer values are already shifting to products and experiences that are healthier, more trustworthy and environmentally sensitive, and more supportive of the communities in which consumers live and work.

This crisis has provided an unprecedented wake-up call to be agile and relevant to consumers and customers—not just during the crisis, but permanently.

Adapting to consumer needs now

Government-enforced lockdowns have created a global quarantine economy. Digitally enabled delivery is the only shopping channel for many. In many segments, these are likely to be the only viable sales channels in the near term.

But category demand varies significantly. Where some such as food and pet supplies are seeing massive surges, others like fashion are being hit hard. Marketers should recognize that during the emergency, consumers are focused on fulfilling their core needs, not their brand preferences.

In the near term, budgets and workers should be reallocated to the channels and areas of high demand. Social media interactions will be both a key source of insight into that demand and a means of supporting customers through difficult times.

…and next

We have seen consumers signing up en masse, building familiarity with new digital services and channels that had historically slow adoption rates, which in turn is speeding up the digital transformation timelines. Marketing leaders must adapt to this new reality.

That includes looking to rapidly evolve to optimize media and experiences across ecommerce and social channels where consumers have migrated, and prioritizing the digital shelf that for many is the only shelf left for them to compete. 

It also includes investing in advanced digital assets such as digital twins to optimize virtual shopping experiences and ensure anti-infection efficacy attributes are clearly communicated. Radically rethink your digital shelf content for optimal discover and conversion to help consumers find what they want and need. 

Look ahead to the future

Amid all the present challenges, marketers must remember that this crisis will pass. Economies will rebound, creating a‘new normal. It’s therefore vital to build the capabilities that will be needed in the post-pandemic world, closely monitoring the permanence of the different consumer patterns, behaviors and channel preferences established during the emergency.

It also means thinking about how to define and activate purpose-led programs to ensure consumers’ long-term credible trust in your brand.

Marketers will need to be prepared to battle for digital talent and accelerate the building of skills in their teams, which will likely become an even greater priority both during and after the crisis. These capabilities will be among the biggest drivers of success in the future.

The pandemic is putting virtually every aspect of consumer goods companies to the test. It has demonstrated the interconnectedness of the industry and the need for coordination to reduce the negative consequences of shocks like COVID-19 in the future. In the end, it will be those organizations that are most adaptable to change that will be best positioned to ride out the disruption and help both their businesses and their societies come through stronger.

COMMENTARY

Careless Brand Messaging During Pandemic Could Have Long-Term Effects

• by Stacy Bereck , Yesterday

The coronavirus crisis has transported brands and consumers alike to a strange new world, one where comforts and certainty have been replaced by anxiety and confusion. Brands sense that now is a time to take action -- but some seem to be reacting with hastily scripted public service messages. Worse still, a few are combining barely disguised sales pitches with high-minded themes. 

While the uncertainty of this moment may seem pervasive, and possibly a cloak for generally well-meaning brands to hide behind, the truth is much different. Consumers are watching and listening  with the same eyes and ears they will be using after the crisis passes. Brands inclined to “message now and ask for forgiveness later” could be taking risks they never imagined.

In fact, new research from GfK’s Coronavirus Consumer Pulse shows that 85% of U.S. consumers feel that the way brands behave during the COVID-19 crisis will affect their desire to do business with those companies in the future. Fully half of those people (43% of the population) agreed strongly -- meaning that there is passion behind this answer. 

We also found that brands already have a strike or two against them in consumers’ eyes. Almost three-quarters (72%) say that they have seen companies “trying to take advantage” of the crisis, up from just over half (54%) only a month ago. 

This sentiment is extremely pronounced in larger households, where the level is 17 points higher than in single-person homes – and people with at least one child under three years old. Those in urban areas and with higher levels of education are also more likely to see brands as exploiting the pandemic.

We have also seen that “big companies” rank near the bottom of those seen as helping out during the crisis. Only 14% of consumers feel these companies are “taking positive action” -- but they rank among the top five of groups that “could do more” to help, with “the national government” landing at #1 on this list.

The effects of the pandemic are also playing into a number of trends obvious long before COVID-19 came into full force. Trust was already an eroding commodity between consumers and brands, with data breaches, phishing, and aggressive online marketing all playing roles. And, on the flip side, the emerging phenomena of click-and-collect and other frictionless shopping options have gotten extraordinary exposure -- with sometimes mixed results -- during the crisis.

The lesson here is simple: While it may seem we’re living in a strange parallel universe -- one that will ultimately give way to something more familiar -- the impressions brands make today will not disappear. What consumers see of and feel about brands now may well be imprinted more deeply into their psyches; in the midst of the chaos, almost nine in 10 are predicting that they will care. 

Moreover, brands are getting more exposure than they might in normal times to their messaging. More than one in three (34%) consumers say they are watching advertising on TV or the Internet more than they did prior to quarantine, and just one in ten (9%) say they are watching it less -- with some of the largest increases in advertising attention coming from larger and more educated households..

So to companies wondering about the future of their brands, we can only say: The future Is happening right now. Be careful today to give your brand a fighting chance tomorrow.