Fox Secures Low-20% CPM Hikes in Upfront ‘for the Ages’

Fox Corp. CFO Steve Tomsic wasn’t kidding when he remarked earlier this week this upfront “has been one for the ages.” The company has completed what it calls its strongest upfront in decades, securing CPM (cost per thousand viewers reached) increases at the top end of the market—in the high teens and low 20s, according to a source familiar with negotiations. Volume was along strong for the company. Fox saw revenue growth in linear, digital and streaming, and more than tripled its upfront business with Tubi compared to last year, its first marketplace with the streamer after buying it in April 2020. Tubi and Fox Digital also doubled the number of new advertisers in the upfront, while the company saw growth in all three of its verticals: entertainment, sports and news. “The upfront has been one for the ages,” Tomsic said Monday at the Credit Suisse investor conference. “Our guys are saying they haven’t seen this kind of strength for close to two decades. … It’s been manna from heaven for us.” The company had a feeling that the upfront would be a lucrative one, said Tomsic, given that its scatter pricing this year, especially in entertainment, had been “off-the-charts strong.” Though Fox’s upfront talks were still underway when Tomsic spoke, he said that he expected the company would have “pretty similar volume” to prior years. The company went all-in on ad-supported TV in the upfront, emphasizing its broadcast network’s breadth and streamer Tubi’s depth. During its upfront presentation last month, Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier told marketers that “we're committed to producing content for you that is never locked behind a paywall.” Fox’s Marianne Gambelli on Early Upfront Talks and Using Tubi to Grab Shifting Ad Dollars Fox repeated as the No. 1 broadcast network last season in the adults 18-49 demo, but weathered the same steep double-digit drops as its linear peers. The broadcaster’s fall schedule—its last one with Thursday Night Football—leans into the strength of its existing franchises. The CW was the first media company to finish its upfront negotiations last Friday, followed by NBCUniversal and Disney on Monday, both of which reported the strongest upfronts, respectively, in company history. Marianne Gambelli, Fox’s president of advertising sales, told Adweek last month she felt “very confident” the upfront marketplace would be healthy, given the optimism around the economy and the fact that brands will “want to secure inventory that may have been very scarce last year.” Sports led the way In an unusual upfront twist, “sports is actually leading our marketplace, ahead of entertainment,” Gambelli told Adweek in May. “That just shows that brands need scale, and sports delivers. And no one delivers like broadcast when it comes to that type of reach. So I think that sports is playing a bigger role in brands’ marketing plans, because it’s consistent, it’s reliable. And you can’t get that size and scale anywhere else.” Gambelli said her top upfront priorities this year were “showcasing and selling the power of the Fox portfolio, and focusing on Tubi, which is the perfect extension to Fox and further provides advertising partners with more opportunities to engage audiences at scale.” "Dollars are going to shift as audience is shifting [from linear to streaming]," she added, "and we feel like Tubi is the perfect place to capture those dollars."