Upfront Marketplace Finally Starts to Move

NEW YORK If nothing else, the 2009-10 upfront will be remembered as a marathon game of liar’s poker, a bluffer’s marketplace governed by the twin dictates of fear and paranoia. A preoccupation with controlling the flow of information inadvertently put the freeze on any early bidding, and with two months having elapsed since the game got under way, only a fraction of business has been completed.
 
According to sources on both sides of the table, advertisers have locked up an estimated 25 percent of the broadcast and cable TV inventory on offer in this year’s upfront, at aggregate cost-per-thousand declines that are nowhere near the double-digit rollbacks agencies had targeted back in June.

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