The NewFronts, an annual showcase for what’s fresh and exciting in digital media, kicked off this year with a talk about dialectics. Some audience members may have felt transported out of their seats in a glossy Manhattan venue back to college philosophy class, but a ruminative tone felt fitting for an industry that is grappling with terms like “existential crisis” and beset by mounting regulatory pressure and rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI).

David Cohen, the CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade group that hosts the weeklong event, took to the stage ahead of Google’s presentation last Monday to discuss various dialectics — or opposing ideas that exist in conversation to arrive at concrete truths — that he views as defining digital at the current moment: traditional Hollywood versus the creator economy; innovations in generative AI disrupting old workflows; and a desire to balance personalization and performance with tighter privacy rules. 

The last point felt particularly relevant arriving just a few days after Google delayed the deprecation of cookies for a third time and as the U.S. recently announced plans to force a sale or ban of TikTok, a NewFronts presenter, over its ties to China. TikTok’s showcase was at capacity Thursday evening as the company pledged it would fight the crackdown in court. It was an instance of thorny real-world politics seeping into an occasion that largely focuses on glitzy presentations rife with celebrity cameos and hobnobbing over cocktails.   

Questions around the death of the cookie, another seismic shift casting a long shadow, drew a mix of responses. Marketers understand the gravity of the change, but a drifting timeline — Google has slated the rollout for next year — has sapped a sense of urgency and resulted in an unclear effect on budget allocation.

“It’s kind of like, yeah I have to think about this. But do I? Do I need to spin my wheels and spend my resources in getting up to speed with these new solutions [or] am I wasting my money because it’s not really happening?” said Jennifer D’Alessandro, head of ad sales and marketing for the publisher Future Today, which owns and operates hundreds of advertising video-on-demand channels.

The IAB is trying to combat resigned attitudes in relation to cookies, and Cohen believes marketers are taking the issue more seriously than they did even six months ago. The stakes of keeping digital practices in line are higher as the channel’s dominance is further enshrined. Digital video is forecast by the organization to grow 16% to $63 billion this year, usurping linear TV for the first time in market share. 

“It’s not helpful when we continue to push back the timetable because some folks will just say, ‘This is never going to happen.’ I hear all of that,” said Cohen of cookies during an interview at the NewFronts. “Our goal is just to make sure the industry keeps the foot on the gas and stays vigilant because this is going to happen.”

All eyes on AI 

The cookie conundrum and potential app bans were pressing discussion points but not particularly fun ones at the 2024 NewFronts. In their efforts to dazzle and excite media buyers, publishers leaned heavily on AI, echoing a concurrent raft of earnings reports that put the technology front and center. A Meta executive at the top of the company’s NewFronts Thursday joked that a live band accompanying the presentation should play a drum fill every time the two letters were used together. 

The Instagram and Facebook owner hawked new AI-powered creative tools coming to its TikTok lookalike Reels, including the ability to automatically expand videos to fit different aspect ratios and screen surfaces. Google and TikTok trumpeted generative AI’s ability to make buying and running campaigns easier. 

TikTok is releasing a Pulse Custom Lineups feature that uses AI to curate trending, brand-safe content that aligns with specific advertiser goals. Google outlined several AI solutions for its Display & Video 360 demand-side platform, such as a commitment optimizer that helps agencies manage complex yearly deals with multiple publishers. 

AI is viewed as a potentially important piece in solving the cookie deprecation puzzle by helping marketers produce more effective alternatives. The IAB’s latest state of data report revealed one-third of brands, agencies and publishers are experimenting with AI to enhance their first-party data sets. 

“As AI relates to media planning and targeting, that’s pretty vanilla,” said Mark Zamuner, president of Juice Media, on a call ahead of the NewFronts. “In my mind, it’s really about how are you leveraging it, not for just planning, but the execution and driving outcomes.”  

A changing marketplace

Some of the other trends underpinning digital, including the convergence of streaming and traditional broadcast, were reflected in the lineup of NewFronts presenters and have raised fresh debate over the event’s relevance.

Amazon, which has made the NewFronts central to its streaming pitch for the past several years, eschewed a big stage show and will instead host its first upfronts later in May, chasing more traditional TV budgets. Prime Video has been in the spotlight as the service introduces commercials and sees traction for primetime programming like NFL “Thursday Night Football.” 

Google’s YouTube will have its annual Brandcast the same week as Amazon. Spotify put on an “alternative to the NewFronts,” called Spotify Sparks, in the midst of the media-buying bonanza. Meanwhile, Paramount Global has foregone any sort of NewFronts or upfronts push altogether in favor of pitching individual agencies and brands for the second year in a row. 

“The whole debate between upfronts and NewFronts, everyone’s asking: What’s the point of having both? There’s no story there, as far as I'm concerned,” said Cohen. “There’s a single video marketplace. It so happens it plays out in two separate weeks.” 

With a slate chock full of ad-tech players and platforms like GSTV, which places ads on gas station TVs, the 2024 NewFronts highlighted digital’s bigger gravitation toward performance. Retail media has become a hot topic and many players in the space see connected TV as their next growth stepping stones.

“We’re continuing to see a shift from brand marketing to performance marketing which impacts how advertisers consider their overall marketing spend,” said Dave Simon, general manager of growth initiatives at Moloco, in emailed comments. “I do think the Newfronts serve as a great forum for digital-first platforms to highlight their capabilities. But just like the upfronts, the real work for the media companies begins once the event is over.”

The performance-oriented mindset has potentially affected some of the NewFronts agenda, notably on the content front, according to attendees. 

“We had a writers’ strike for a long time and there’s not a lot of new content being talked about,” said Future Today’s D’Alessandro. “I thought it would be a flood.”

Better days ahead?

One of the other dialectics Cohen mentioned at the top of the NewFronts related to the state of measurement. The executive noted that marketers have moved past relying solely on panel-based data and that a multi-currency world is within reach, a nod to Nielsen’s slipping dominance in the wake of reporting errors and a bumpy transition to a cross-channel model. 

“We are finally starting to see traction on new currencies,” said Juice Media’s Zamuner. 

Fraud and transparency also received a lot of attention, possibly a consequence of damning reports on the state of programmatic that have shown massive amounts of waste on junky Made for Advertising websites. 

“I think it’s key for media buyers and agencies to lean into that and push. They should know where they’re running,” said D’Alessandro. “It seems like this is the year that they're going to start making more demands.”

Publishers and platforms also seemed eager to move past the old ways of doing things. Google touted that CTV stands to be a better, more privacy-forward channel than digital since it won’t rely on third-party cookies as a baseline. But some experts cautioned that what qualifies as aboveboard in the eyes of regulators may not stay so for long. Digital stakeholders will need to keep on their toes to avoid getting caught in the same snares that are dogging them today.

“CTV is not plagued by the same challenges around cookie deprecation. You’ve got IP address, you’ve got ACR data. Most people just don’t pay attention to that as a privacy compliance issue. It will be,” said Cohen. “There is no doubt in our mind that, eventually, IP address will be under the same pressure that third-party cookies are under. It’s just a question of when that’s going to happen.”