The secret to VaynerMedia’s upfront strategy this year

Priorities are clearly shifting for some agencies and publishers approaching the 2025 upfronts, which kick off in New York on Monday.

Live sports are more crucial than ever, with the NFL and NBA now streaming across platforms like Amazon, Disney and NBCUniversal. TV fragmentation is accelerating. And economic uncertainty, including tariffs, is prompting brands to focus on flexibility.

VaynerMedia is heading into the season with a refined strategy that leans on demand-side platform (DSP) unification, programmatic deals and a desire to capitalize on the new wave of live sports inventory. Jordan Bilfeld, director of video activation, breaks down the agency’s upfront strategy for The Current.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What trends are defining this upfront season?

People have started to bundle different channels together. So, it’s not just about the TV upfronts this year. It’s about social, digital, all the programmatic channels.

That’s going to be a trend this year for sure, as we pivot to find new viewership elsewhere outside of traditional cable and broadcast.

What’s different about Vayner’s upfronts strategy this year versus last year?

Every year we have a bunch of pre-upfront meetings to feel out the market. And the last two years have actually been a buyer’s market, which is sort of unheard of because it’s usually a seller’s market.

And this year, the tea leaves that we’re starting to see are that it’s a buyer’s market again for the third year in a row. That should be interesting in terms of rate of change in negotiation with the networks.

Can you take me into the progression of Vayner’s programmatic deals?

Our secret sauce is we buy PMP and PG deals for a number of our clients.

There aren’t as many PG deals. But what we’ll look to do is when we do commit money in the upfront, we’ll negotiate that as a PG deal. And then it’s complementary to biddable PMP buys, where you’re buying more of the premium inventory comparable to a PG rate.

What we noticed is there was so much overlap between the PMP deals and the PG deals. So we decided, in terms of DSP unification, to decision our buys together within one platform. That’s so our PG deals and our PMP deals can speak to each other and mitigate the overlap.

DSP unification, meaning you can more easily track where all your buys are?

Yeah, exactly. Transparency and measurement. Being able to take analytics and see what’s working, see what’s not working and see what’s pacing by publisher or deal. All of that together helps our clients make better decisions in the future.

How common is DSP unification? Generally, agencies scatter their buys among multiple DSPs.

I think it’s new. We certainly haven’t done it before at scale. There’s been a lot of work done evaluating solutions from several DSPs to determine that this is what we should be doing for clients.

Several competitors made a huge push on DSP unification strategies. Each wanted the agency to decision all biddable and upfront buys through a single DSP. We identified the right partner for us and began deploying the solution actually in the scatter market for Q2, to get in front of larger upfront workflows for Q4.

One of the early themes is the dominance of live sports at the upfronts. What’s that looking like for you?

NBC and ESPN are starting to pivot sports into their streaming platforms and their properties.

They’re going to start bundling that stuff together. And once that happens, I think we’ll see sort of a whole new era of TV.

Amazon launched its ad tier last year before the upfronts. Now they’re becoming a major player in sports. Does all their inventory make it more of a buyer’s market?

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

So, in terms of upfront negotiations for certain brands, there’s so much inventory if you want to get involved in sports. There’s definitely a deal to be had.