The upfronts are evolving — and that’s exactly what advertisers need right now

The television upfronts have long served as a cornerstone of media buying strategy — annual events where advertisers make long-term commitments in exchange for guaranteed inventory, premium placements and pricing advantages. In a linear world with finite inventory and relatively concentrated reach, this model made perfect sense.

But that world no longer exists.

Today’s media landscape is fragmented across platforms, formats and devices. Advertisers have more choices than ever before — not just between networks, but between video and display, social and search, retail media and connected TV. In the face of that fragmentation and amid the persistent macroeconomic uncertainty, the traditional upfront model is no longer enough. And yet, paradoxically, the upfronts’ underlying purpose, securing scaled, premium media to drive business growth for brands, has never been more important.

This is the tension driving the evolution of the 2025 upfronts: The upfront is still essential, but it must be reimagined. Fortunately, that transformation is already underway.

The new mandate for advertisers

Advertisers today operate in a world that demands precision, flexibility and accountability. Growth is not guaranteed. CFOs want marketing budgets to stretch further. Every dollar needs to prove its worth. And reach, once reliably found across a handful of broadcasters, is now a strategic challenge for brands.

Buying gross rating points (GRPs) and hoping they correlate to business results is no longer sufficient. Advertisers need to reach the right audience, oftentimes tied to their valuable first-party audience, on the right screen, tied to measurable outcomes. This has shifted the media buyer’s mandate from anchoring on content schedules to focusing on audiences and performance as the lens of planning.

The upfronts are adapting accordingly.

Flexibility and advanced tools from broadcasters are here

To meet this moment, leading broadcasters and streaming platforms are evolving their offerings to provide the kinds of tools and flexibility that modern advertisers require.

NBCUniversal, for example, is live with NBCUnified, which offers marketers the ability to activate advanced audience segments across linear and digital inventory with unified measurement. NBC also offers buyers the flexibility to activate investments programmatically across Peacock and One Platform, which consolidates NBC’s inventory into a scaled, single point of access.

Disney is following suit, doubling down on clean room infrastructure and first-party data on-ramps connected to a Disney data graph that spans Hulu, ESPN and Disney+. Advertisers can activate against advanced audiences with precision and measure their entire buy using a menu of outcome measurement data providers.

Warner Bros. Discovery is similarly evolving with its new Olli, its new clean room solution that connects audiences and measurement across the entire WBD inventory portfolio. Fox and Paramount are also leaning in with their own interoperable solutions to make it easier for advertisers to buy audiences and measure across their footprints. And Roku is leading the charge for the smart TV manufacturers with its newly launched Roku Data Cloud, which gives advertisers the ability to precisely find their high-value audiences using valuable automatic content recognition (ACR) data.

Importantly, all of these players converge around a common theme: Advertisers can now buy how they want, whether via PG, PMP or traditional direct IO. That flexibility is foundational — it means brands can participate in the upfronts without locking themselves into rigid plans that don’t account for changing conditions or performance shifts.

A better system for everyone

These changes don’t just benefit individual advertisers — they improve the overall health of the ecosystem.

When brands can invest confidently, knowing their media is measurable, addressable and flexible, they are more likely to commit budgets rather than hold back budgets and play the scatter market. That sustained investment fuels the creation of more premium, ad-supported content. It ensures that high-quality journalism, live sports and cultural tentpoles remain accessible in an open, competitive marketplace rather than being walled off behind opaque, black box models. It’s a rising tide that benefits publishers, platforms and consumers alike.

Why upfronts still matter

Some might question the need for upfronts at all in this modern world of fragmented reach across dozens of platforms and channels. But that’s a misunderstanding of what the upfronts actually represent. At their core, upfronts aren’t about rigidity — they’re about alignment. They’re a strategic commitment between buyers and sellers to invest in each other and build long-term value. That alignment is even more important in a fragmented world.

What’s different now is how that alignment is expressed. It’s no longer about locking in inventory — it’s about unlocking opportunity. It’s about giving advertisers the tools, transparency and control they need to invest with confidence and giving publishers the signal they need to build and scale premium, ad-supported experiences.

That’s why this evolution of the upfronts is not a weakening of the model — it’s a strengthening of it.

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.