Author: Greg Jarboe / Source: Tubular Insights I stood in a long line waiting to get into Turner’s 2017 Digital Content NewFronts event,
I stood in a long line waiting to get into Turner’s 2017 Digital Content NewFronts event, which was held in Skylight Clarkson North, which was built in 1933 to house and unload trains from the historic High Line track, and now functions as one of the city’s largest and most exclusive venues. That gave me lots of time to talk with media buyers. And, yes, there were lots of media buyers among the 700 people in line. The junior ones were sent into events early to hold seats for the client and the senior agency executives. The mid-level media buyers played rock-paper-scissors with their colleagues to see who covered one of the 34 events. And the senior ones, who had been to Digital Content NewFronts for several years, wondered why more attention wasn’t paid to measurement.
Oh, a senior media buyer who didn’t want his or her name used, let me know why programmatic buying hadn’t decimated the jobs of human media buyers. Although agency executives had expected programmatic buying to reduce their headcount and costs, that hasn’t happened – because there are 97 different flavors of ad-tech and the agency still needs people to use duct tape and bailing wire to place video ads. At the same time, programmatic buying had started as a way to sell remnant space, so it got the reputation for being a source of cheap inventory. But, even The New York Times has a director of Programmatic advertising, but their inventory commands premium prices. So, my hypothesis is dead wrong – and I need to go shopping for a New York Yankees sweater.
But, wait. Isn’t this supposed to be a column about the Turner NewFronts? Um, that’s why…
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