Inside WBD’s New Pitch to Advertisers Amid Paramount Shakeup

Voltaggio: I had mentioned the tech augmentation earlier. That’s really going to help fuel the outcome-based modeling. We have agentic AI woven throughout our ad tech stack that is going to help us find more nuanced audiences and advanced audiences in a prescriptive fashion that we’re going to deliver for our client base. Also, contextual targeting is going to be a key thing that you hear from us.

It’s interesting in terms of the tech and also how the upfront is changing to more programmatic deals.

Gould: We’ve moved to an upfront environment and marketplace that is really rooted in structuring deal terms that are always-on through the upfront cycle. That being said, obviously, volume commitments will be agreed upon and met. Pricing arrangements will be agreed upon. But we approach the marketplace from a transaction-agnostic perspective, and we’ve seen more and more of our upfront deal flow and volume come through programmatic pipes and deal structure. We’ve seen a couple of years of growth across the programmatic lines of business as it relates to upfront, and I think we’ll continue to see that this year as well.

Paramount famously isn’t in upfront week; it does client dinners instead of one big event. Will WBD stay in upfront week, or do you see the company leaving it in the future?

Gould: I can’t speculate on the future, but I know that Bobby and I debated if we keep our presentation on the date and time as part of this week. And unequivocally, while it takes a lot of time, energy, effort, and capital to host and put on an upfront show, we’re doing it because we believe that it drives tremendous value for our team, our company, our partners, clients, and the ecosystem. So as long as we have a say, we’ll definitely advocate for it. Because if we didn’t believe in it, we wouldn’t be doing it.

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