Another strong TV upfront…. a nearly 6% increase over ly for a total haul of $19.73 Billion. If you recall, last year  the digital lap dogs opined that the tick in 2016-17 Upfront sales were more or less an anomaly; a slap on the digital fanny because of their problems with “viewability”. Please. The 2017 results make the continuing migration of ad budgets back to TV (in its most natural form; broadcast and cable) a trend. “Our primary take on the 2017-18 upfront is that national TV is far from dead,” said MDI president Ed Papazian. I wanna take this guy to my favorite pizzeria and buy him a slice! Yes Eddie babe, $19.73 BILLION is pretty fu**in’ far from dead. “In fact, it is evident that a number of major branding advertisers have decided that they will continue to use TV as their primary communications platform—despite rating fragmentation and increased CPMs—due to its huge reach advantage over digital media, as well as the fact that every TV commercial is fully visible”, he went on to say.

What the advertising world is waking up to, is that in the buying and selling of media, Efficacy trumps Efficiency (you can use that one if you’d like) and that you truly do get what you pay for. Question: Whats got more value, 1000 empty impressions that costs a penny or 1 impactful impression that costs a billion dollars? Answer: Since there is no value in Zero, the billion dollar impression has more value. Digital really ought to do itself a favor and stop calling itself ‘Digital’. If all the high quality online publishers, online lifestyle magazines, Netflix, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube TV and Facebook TV want to be known simply as ‘Digital’ (what with all the fraud, corruption, brand safety issues, hucksters and dimwits that come along with it), then they’re throwing themselves out with the bath water. Let’s stick with TV, Radio, Print – evolving their definitions to be tethered to their traditional meaning yet untethered from traditional delivery, Search, Social and finally, ad exchanges stratified by a rating system ranging from “worthless” to “not so bad”. Done. Then, Eddie and I will flip pizza pies in preparation for The New Upfronts (not the same old Newfronts), which will include ALL premium media providers that have one thing in common and one thing only; they are all Effective.

PEACE OUT!

The MBD