At Possible, indie agencies sharpen their upfront strategies

MIAMI — At the Possible conference in Miami, the upfronts dominated poolside conversations just two weeks ahead of the 2025 negotiations. Amid economic uncertainty — especially around tariffs — and a flood of new streaming inventory, marketers are preparing for another year defined by flexibility and efficiency.

The Current gauged the mood of the moment, catching up with leaders shaping the conversation — speaking with the heads of media investment at two independent agencies, head of investment at a holding company and the CMO of the NBA, whose league is poised to become a central force in this year’s negotiations.

Deanna Cullen, head of media investment at Wpromote, expects overall upfront spend to stay roughly on par with last year. But the big shift, she says, is in negotiating more flexibility into the deals.

“A lot of conversations I’ve been having, especially in the programmatic space [and] with the tariffs conversation, [is] how do we cut out a lot of the middlemen and introduce more efficiencies and get straight to the source and get straight to the premium inventory,” Cullen tells The Current.

Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at VML, agreed with that sentiment, saying there’s increased interest in flexibility.

That’s a natural evolution, given how upfronts have changed since 2020. Long-term, rigid commitments are being supplanted by more agile deals. Jordan Bilfeld, director of video activation at VaynerMedia, says he expects it to be a buyer’s market for the third year in a row. That puts pressure on sellers but opens doors for smarter media strategies.

Cullen sees a growing emphasis on platforms and partners that can prove their value — not just with scale, but with performance. “It’ll be interesting to see how others try to capitalize on leveraging data, AI, mass reach and facilitate a more condensed path to conversion,” she says. “I think that’ll be the holy grail of really accentuating why one platform or one publisher may be of more paramount importance in our media mix than another.”

NBCUniversal President of Advertising Sales and Spend Karen Kovacs told Adweek it’s too early to predict the impact of tariffs on upfront ad spend, but she still anticipates a monumental year for the entertainment giant.

Meanwhile, signs of pricing pressure are already visible. EMarketer estimates that CTV CPMs across the six major players — Netflix, Disney+, Max, Peacock, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video — have dropped by an average of around $6.50 from Q1 of 2024 to Q2 of 2025.

Curbing cautionary conservatism

Against the backdrop of uncertainty, Cullen is urging her clients to keep brand building. “We want to make sure cautionary conservatism does not take the day and that we find ourselves in a situation where we pull back budgets materially and negatively impact their future outlook,” she says. “This is actually a prime moment where they can capitalize on the opportunity to continue to build their brands in the right way.”

The upfronts have historically been the way for advertisers to find scale, and 100 years of evidence shows the brands that keep spend up during tough times maintain or increase their market share.

The NBA’s massive opportunity

Meanwhile, VaynerMedia is leaning hard into private markeplace (PMP) buys and demand-side platform (DSP) consolidation to maximize its impact. Bilfeld says the agency is running all of its upfront buys through a single platform for improved transparency and measurement. This allows the company to optimize spend between PMP and PG deals while minimizing overlap, which had been an issue in past years.

This year’s upfronts will be more of an omnichannel experience, Bilfeld says, with digital, social and programmatic increasingly bundled together in the same negotiations.

But the biggest prize this year is live sports — the crown jewel of the upfronts. Last year, Peter Lazarus, NBC Sports’ EVP of advertising sales and partnerships, estimated about 40% of upfront spend went to sports. This year, experts believe that number could grow even higher — fueled by a major shake-up in NBA media rights.

“What’s super interesting this year is it’s the first year three of the big players, Amazon, Disney and NBC, have had two major properties — the NFL now the NBA.” Bilfeld tells The Current. “I’d describe it as a triple bidding situation.”

Advertisers have more opportunities than ever to access live sports on streaming and national channels. The NBA’s $76 billion media rights deal goes into effect this fall, just as upfronts deals activate. Peacock, Prime Video, Hulu and ESPN+ will stream games, while national broadcasts ramp up their coverage.

“It’s going to be massive,” NBA CMO Tammy Henault tells The Current. “We’re going to have five times more national broadcast television games and then all the national games are going to be streamed as well. We’ve never had that before. The reach is just going to be awesome.”

Battling fragmentation in a distracted world

The surge in live sports comes as marketers and publishers try to solve for fragmentation. Cullen says DSPs are teaming up with major publishers to create a more active pipeline for inventory so it can be seamlessly bought and automated.

“There is more media than ever before where we can facilitate a little bit more consolidation but still access all that premium inventory that drives incremental value for our clients,” she says.

Retail media is another area she’s watching with a keen eye. Cullen is interested in partners who can activate against retail data and can showcase that incrementality. Last year, retail data became a bigger force within upfronts deals.

For Wpromote, which works with challenger brands that don’t have massive CPG-level budgets, this is where strategy and precision become key. Cullen is focused on carving out unique audience consideration tactics and being performance driven.

“You need to figure out novel ways to cut through,” Cullen says. “You need to do more with less. You need to figure out differentiated ways for you to capture more of that market share. And you need to be measuring every step of the way.”