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The NBCUniversal Upfront 2025 will kick off at Radio City Music Hall on Monday, where media companies will pitch and persuade brands to spend billions of dollars on advertising.
The annual advertisement-selling event would see TV networks going head-to-head with streaming companies as they look to secure a big chunk of their ad revenue for the year.
Streaming giants Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), and YouTube (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), who are fairly new on the scene, will be participating in the event along with traditional TV networks Fox (NASDAQ:FOX) (NASDAQ:FOXA), Disney (NYSE:DIS), Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD), Paramount (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA), and NBCUniversal (NASDAQ:CMCSA).
The event will be held amid a backdrop of Trump tariffs, which has the industry on edge.
Media analyst Michael Nathanson told The Wall Street Journal that this year’s upfront market “will be especially challenging, given all the uncertainty over tariffs.” He added that a growing supply of ad inventory, due to the proliferation of streaming options, also lessens the urgency to buy now.
The president of advertising sales and partnerships at NBCUniversal, Karen Kovacs, said brands that maintained spending on advertising during past slowdowns have had better sales and market share than others who cut down ad spend.
According to ad research firm iSpot, 28% of advertisers plan to increase their ad purchases during the upfront.
eMarketer expects that TV networks’ ad spending at the upfront could fall by $4B to $13.4B in 2025. For digital ads, spending will stay flat at around $13B in a worst-case situation. If tariff-related impact is limited, spending could go up to $14.7B.
Research firm Guideline said advertising on traditional channels is expected to fall 5% this year.