At the recent Video Ad Summit, one of our most popular sessions, as always, was a fireside chat debriefing the NewFronts and Upfronts with senior ad agency executives. This year, Maureen Bosetti (Chief Investment Officer, Initiative) and Adam Shlachter (President, VM1, Zenith Media) participated, with Tim Hanlon (Managing Director, FTI Consulting) moderating.

The wide-ranging discussion began with Maureen highlighting the continued strong relevance of the upfronts for clients who need to plan ahead and efficiently allocate spending to reach mass audiences. But the upfronts are becoming less about linear TV specifically (which is of course shrinking, in turn driving up pricing for scarcer inventory) and more about longer-term investments in video holistically.

This is a much more complicated buying process which, especially given how audiences are fragmenting to new video outlets on multiple devices. Adam and Maureen discuss some of the key challenges including how to use clients’ data, how to navigate TV networks’ disparate audience targeting initiatives and how their agencies are organized to succeed, plus lots more.

Adam and Maureen also share their thoughts on the NewFronts, which they see as maturing in certain respects, though still not offering the level of scale and efficiency as traditional TV.

All in all the session provides numerous insights from the buy side on how the TV/video ad landscape is fast-evolving and what’s being done by agencies to help clients stay ahead of the curve.

Watch the video now (32 minutes, 5 seconds).