Advertising Age
TV’s upfront marketplace appears to be lurching toward its end, according to media buyers, several of whom expect the marketplace to wrap up anytime between the end of this week and sometime next week.
The buyers said business is being written at both broadcast and cable networks and in all cases involves lower CPM rates, or the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers. “Numbers are narrowing to where we think we are going to be doing business,” one buyer said. “The marketplace is [down] low single to high single digits.” At least one of the more significant media-buying firms is done with its upfront negotiations.
While prime-time ad time is getting locked in at CPMs down 1% to 3% at most of the broadcast networks, NBC has made deals that call for price rollbacks in the mid-to-high-single-digit percentage range, buyers said. More…