AEW To Be Highlighted In Warner Bros. Discovery's Upfront Pitch To Advertisers
AEW appears to be a prominent part of the plans of Warner Bros. Discovery when it pitches to advertisers later this month. The upfront presentation will be the first for the company since the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia.
Warner Bros. Discovery will make its presentation at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden on May 18. It's part of a week where networks traditionally show prospective advertisers their new offerings for the upcoming season.
Warner Bros. Discovery's chief U.S. advertising sales officer Jon Stieinlauf recently discussed the outlook for the newly merged company. He detailed changes to Discovery Premier, an advertising package that includes the first runs of the company's top-rated shows. Among those shows are AEW Dynamite and AEW Rampage.
"We're expanding Discovery Premier," Stieinlauf told Broadcasting+Cable. "It will just be called Premier. We're going to keep all of the top 30-40 Discovery legacy lifestyle shows when they're in first run. We're just adding to it the best of Warner. We have great audiences that come up to comparable reach to broadcast at a lower CPM."
CPM, or cost-per-mille, refers to the price advertisers pay for their ads to be seen by a thousand viewers.
The Broadcasting+Cable article specifically mentioned AEW programming when listing those covered under the banner of "the best of Warner".
Jon Stieinlauf also discussed new ways of measuring audience viewership and setting advertising rates. That space has been dominated by Nielsen. However, Warner Bros. Discovery has also been working with other companies, including ComScore, iSpot, and VideoAmp.
"I think, on the one hand, it's extra work for research teams and for our inventory management teams," Steinlauf said. "But it may be well worth it to get more accurate, more stable measurement across all 24 networks. In the end, we hope that with that world comes the good news that [there are] more people watching our networks than we're currently reporting."
Jon Stieinlauf believes that linear broadcasting remains very important to advertisers. At the same time, he says that he is seeing strong demand for sports and streaming. TNT and TBS recently stopped developing new scripted programming.