Streaming services want your ads

Streaming Shakes Up Annual TV Upfronts

Streaming was center stage this week as networks kicked off their annual TV Upfronts highlighting their upcoming programming slates.

Some context: 2024 has been the year of ad-supported streaming services—and it shows no signs of slowing down.

• In January, Netflix’s ad-supported tier had more than 23 million monthly active users. 

• YouTube’s first-quarter ad revenue also increased by more than 20% to $8.1 billion.

With ad-supported streaming exploding, there's now a surplus of streaming impressions available for advertisers to buy. During upfronts, platforms shared new ad capabilities like:

• Warner Bros. Discovery’s new shoppable ads, advanced contextual targeting, and interactive video formats for its Max streaming service

• TelevisaUnivision’s vertical ad formats for easily transferring social creative to TV

• Amazon’s three commerce-enabled ad formats for Prime Video: pause ads, shoppable carousels, and trivia ads

And advertisers are ready to spend. Advertisers are projected to spend $18.8 billion on upfronts (1/3 of total TV ad spend)—and around 2/3 of that is expected to go to digital/streaming, per eMarketer.

As upfronts continue today and tomorrow, we’ll be keeping tabs on new opportunities for advertisers to capitalize on the streaming surge.

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Marketing Budgets Shrink to Post-Pandemic Low

A new Gartner survey of nearly 400 CMOs and marketing leaders found marketing budgets have fallen below 2021 levels.

By the numbers: 

• 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2024 is allocated to marketing, down from an 11% pre-pandemic average.

• This also hovers below the 8.2% average over the four years since 2020.

“The new normal is that we just simply have less funding in marketing now,” said Ewan McIntyre, a vice president analyst and chief of research at Gartner for Marketers.

Despite the budget crunch…C-suite execs have high expectations for marketers. 73% of marketers say they're being asked to do more with less, and 64% say they don’t have enough to execute their proposed strategy.

Our thoughts? While Gartner predicts the budget squeeze could drive more AI adoption, we think more and more companies will realize the value of hiring fractional and freelance marketers to make the most of every last marketing dollar. 

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Disney and Walmart Bring Retail Data to Streaming TV Ads

Disney Advertising and Walmart Connect are teaming up to integrate Walmart's retail media insights across Disney's streaming platforms like Hulu and Disney+.

The integration: Walmart's audience data and measurement solutions will be available for programmatic CTV ad campaigns.

• This provides closed-loop attribution by applying Walmart's omnichannel purchase data via clean rooms.

• Advertisers can reach Walmart's 145 million weekly customers across Disney's streaming content

The value prop: Advertisers can leverage Walmart's retail data for planning, activation, and measurement, bringing them closer to understanding purchase intent and true business outcomes.

What will it look like? This new service is rolling out this quarter with select CPG, electronics, telco, auto, apparel, beauty, and pharma advertisers—and will continue scaling to more brands over the next few months.

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Today From MarketerHire: Pricing paid social campaigns

“How should we navigate pricing for our paid social campaigns?” Our marketer-in-residence, Michael Cahill, is constantly asked this question by clients.

His answer? A simple, four-step process:

1. Define campaign objectives.

2. Assess complexity of audience targeting.

3. Evaluate creative requirements.

4. Consider the expected level of reporting and optimization.

So what does this look like in practice? In Michael’s recent LinkedIn post, he helps solve the complicated pricing puzzle of paid marketing services.