Voltaggio: We’d done a lot of good work on a commercial agreement in terms of the opportunity to potentially rep HBO Max. So that work is fueling a lot of the future considerations. We had a debate—third-party audiences, first-party audiences, data clean rooms, and all of that. And we’re in the throes of a huge tech modernization effort as well. So all of that work is not for naught. That’s helping inform our future state, and it’s actually a lot of helpful work going into this next transaction. We’ve done a lot of the diligence beforehand, whether we split or not, that’s going to help us in the future state. We got all our ducks in a row.
Gould: The content strategy, audience development strategy, and the ad product strategy that was built as part of the separation didn’t change as it relates to us not splitting. So the only thing that we really had to change as it relates to the upfront presentation was the corporate branding of the presentation. Even if we were going down the split road, this would still be a Warner Bros. Discovery presentation that would have some announcements as it relates to Warner Bros. and Discovery Global. So to Bobby’s point, if anything, we’re more prepared because it gave us a head start, because we had to think about that way more upstream than in years past.
What can we expect content-wise from this year’s presentation?
Gould: We will touch every nook and cranny of the portfolio: news, sports, entertainment, streaming, theatrical, and so forth. In terms of content initiatives, you’ll see some new, exciting strategies and offerings for [Food Network and HGTV]. As Bobby mentioned, a lot of the work that we did planning for Discovery Global was focused on those two brands, and that’ll start to see the light of day at the upfront presentation.
Sports continues to be a main driver of the upfront negotiations and presentations. This year is the first year that we have meaningful college football playoff inventory to package in with our sports offering and overall upfront offering. Then, the titles that continue to dominate culture and viewership across HBO and HBO Max. We’ll run through a pretty deep slate on HBO, HBO Max, and then Warner Bros. theatrical.
Voltaggio: In terms of our commercial messaging, too, we visit some of the ad products that we launched last year and the success that they’ve seen. We’re going to be launching some other products and augmenting some.
Where do you see the biggest growth coming from?
Gould: For me, it’s really moving away from Nielsen-based demo guarantees into strategic audiences and outcomes. More and more of our conversations are rooted in, instead of Adults 25 to 54, it’s show me your in-market auto intenders. Show me your first-time home buyers. Show me the chief household officer who you know manages grocery lists. That’s really the conversations that we’ve been having. Quite frankly speaking, we haven’t seen the same velocity of transactions, so I think that’s a pretty big growth area for us.
