ANA asks TV industry to change Upfronts’ date

ANA specifically asked the television advertising industry to move the annual presales from a spring/beginning of summer broadcast of the fourth quarter to the third quarter of an autumn/winter market that buys a conventional calendar year.

Aside from the change in the moment of negotiations and the quarters represented in the initial presales agreements, ANA said that nothing else has to change regarding this process. “The essence of the transactions in the market shouldn’t change either, with each company making its own independent determination of when and in what advertising time it will buy. Moreover, it should be a process based on the flexibility that includes as an option, more timely presales,” said ANA in a statement.

Albeit ANA did not describe any other specific change, it did refer to them. “The moment is just one of the choice advertisers make,” said the president of ANA and CBO at P&G, Marc Pritchard, but added: “We need much more market transparency in the entire media system to enable options to eliminate media waste, improve effectiveness, and raise consumer experience dramatically. That is the only way to achieve a true transformation and reform of the media”.

ANA also launched two documents with the summon to educate both media buyers and level C sellers on the process and why it is important to change the market moment now. “Presale of the calendar year is a modification of the presale of the year of broadcast inherited in advance, in which the same general principles are applied: purchased advertising, sold in advance,” points out one of the documents and adds: “However, the temporary framework has been changed to buy inventory in a presale of the specific calendar year in advance with the typical negotiation window produced in Autumn or beginning of Winter”.