Daily MIC: Rousey-Carano Fight Averages 12.4M Viewers; FOX Sports Eyes 24-Team CFP Expansion, ESPN Pushes Back; Media Companies See Upfront Shift in Biddable Inventory Accelerating

Research evidence excerpt

Daily MIC: Rousey-Carano Fight Averages 12.4M Viewers; FOX Sports Eyes 24-Team CFP Expansion, ESPN Pushes Back; Media Companies See Upfront Shift in Biddable Inventory Accelerating

MEDIA, INTERNET & COMMUNICATIONS DAILY

May 20, 2026

DIS, WBD, AMCX: Future of TV Briefing: The upfront is overtaking streaming’s

programmatic marketplace (Digiday) - The upfront and programmatic advertising

marketplaces have become intertwined. For Disney, 70 percent of advertiser demand for its

biddable inventory comes from upfront advertisers, according to Disney svp of addressable

sales Jamie Power. “The upfront shift into biddable, it started last year, and it’s accelerating

into this year,” she said. Warner Bros. Discovery is also seeing that acceleration. Nearly half

of the company’s biddable demand comes from upfront advertisers, according to a company

spokesperson. “It’s been a dramatic last year. This past cycle was the most dramatic shift to

that,” said Jill Steinhauser, group svp of platform monetization and partnerships at WBD. For

starters, there’s the shift toward programmatic private marketplaces. As upfront ad sellers

allowed programmatic spending to count toward upfront commitments, initially that money

had been largely wrapped up in programmatic guaranteed deals, which are basically just

an automation of traditional fixed transactions. More recently, though, there has been a shift

toward PMPs, which allow advertisers to control spending by bidding on inventory. Biddable

is “the fastest growing part of our programmatic business,” said Disney’s Power. “We are

transacting millions of dollars a day biddably. In the first half [of the company’s fiscal year],

we were up 60% year over year; in the back half of our fiscal, we are pacing to be above