A postmortem on this year’s TV and streaming upfront ad market with UM Worldwide’s Marcy Greenberger

“The biggest shift or change this year is it was really a reset year from a digital video standpoint in terms of pricing,” UM Worldwide’s chief investment officer Marcy Greenberger said on the latest Digiday Podcast.

Disney and Netflix were among the more notable sellers to drop their streaming ad rates in this year’s upfront cycle. But they weren’t alone. In fact, given the ramp-up in streaming ad inventory this year with Amazon Prime Video’s entry into the market, seemingly all sellers were more focused on overall spending commitments than specific pricing thresholds.

“There’s just so much more supply that finally convinced the suppliers or the publishers to rethink what the pricing is there often in exchange for volume, but really saw a reset that benefitted advertisers tremendously,” Greenberger said.

And that reset is likely to have a legacy that could outlast these latest upfront deals. In some cases, streaming ad sellers dropped their rates by 30% to 40%, according to Greenberger. “I don’t know that I see another massive reset [in streaming ad pricing in the future] like we saw this year,” she said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

TV ad prices

There’s still a disparity between what we see in terms of linear TV pricing and digital pricing. When you think about it on a total audience perspective — because in linear TV, even if you’re guaranteeing on a demo, you’re still reaching everybody — [linear TV] can be incredibly efficient, sometimes less than $10 [per thousand impressions]. We’re still not even close to that from a digital video perspective.

Streaming ad prices

What I’ll call a more premium publisher or at least the ones that are maybe newer entrants to the marketplace are more in the $20 to $30 [CPM] range.

Upfront flexibility

We’re seeing increased flexibility. Whether that is in the ability to add dollars throughout the year without having to pay a scatter premium or the ability to cancel both a higher percentage of your dollars as well as on a more rolling basis or closer to your live date.

Agency- vs. client-level upfront deals

There were more deals that were done at an agency level versus at an advertiser level. And so that enables clients to come in and out more fluidly, so long as you’re meeting agency commitments. That is one of the ways we enable greater flexibility, but it doesn’t tie individual advertisers to specific commitments.