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Upfronts 2026: ‘Outcomes’ deliver the most impressions

From the people who brought you such relentlessly applied buzzwords as “fandom” and “agentic” comes a new term attendees to Upfront presentations in New York this week must have already heard 37,223 times — “outcomes.” 

With the ad-supported television business, both new and legacy, declaring an era in which “prestige” has given way to “performance,” virtually every presentation to advertisers this week was steeped in a jackhammered-home through line of ROI. 

Warner Bros. Discovery’s presentation at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday epitomized this performance-driven mania. Moving away from the softer-edged, lower-resolution "brand awareness" pitches of the past, WBD announced that it’s joining an initiative led by the data and identity platform OpenAI that uses conversion API (CAPI) to bypass blockers and other browser restrictions. Warner also presented a new “dashboard” that helps advertisers make adjustments in the middle of campaigns. 

The goal, of course, is to prove that ads on Max and CNN actually move products off shelves, allowing the broadcaster to act more like a precision-targeted digital platform.

“Measurement is no longer a backend, post-campaign exercise,” said David Porter, head of advertising research, data and insights for WBD, in a company statement. “With the ‘Always-On Measurement & Attribution Dashboard,’ clients will better understand performance while the campaign is still running …”

A day earlier at Radio City Music Hall, NBCUniversal rolled out its “Performance Insights Hub,” which, starting in the fourth quarter, will seek to accomplish pretty much the same task.

Fox was also all-in on with its own agentic-AI-powered, outcomes-delivery focus, subheading its presentation, “Turn passion into performance.”

TV’s so-called "performance pivot" reflects a broader industry realization: In a fragmented media landscape, where the coin of the realm (i.e. Nielsen impressions) are under intenser scrutiny, advertisers demand a direct line between a 30-second spot and a retail transaction. And it wasn’t just (increasingly desperate?) legacy media companies hammering away at the buzzwords.

The "outcomes" theme was further solidified by the heavy hitters of streaming, with premium U.S. SVODs now reaching around 115 million users with partially ad-supported tiers, per Antenna’s most recent research report.

Netflix and Amazon emphasized their unique ability to connect "fandom" with "fulfillment." 

The integration of live sports – including Netflix’s NFL Christmas Day games — is being sold not just as high-reach content, but as a high-intent environment where AI can predict viewer behavior in real-time.

On Wednesday, Amy Reinhard, president of advertising for Netflix, noted that the streamer delivers “purchase intent” that’s 23% higher versus competitors. 

“We see a tangible shift from just content-first decisions [in TV ad buying] to a much more integrated approach where content, authenticated signals, and ad tech are developed and activated together,” said Alan Moss, VP of global ad sales for Amazon, speaking on Mike Shields’ Next in Media podcast. “I think the big story this year is going to be the integration of premium content and ad tech, like AI agents to drive measurable outcomes all year long.”

Of course, with so much AI-powered tech lingo flying around, all drilling down on an ever-more-complex array of audience insights, the comedian emcees that routinely keynote the Upfront presentations had material to work with. 

Disney/ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, for instance, was but comic who skewered the complexity of modern media buying: "Our goal this year was to make it as difficult as possible for you to give us your money.”

— Daniel Frankel

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EchoStar’s ‘forced pivot’ to an ‘asset-light’ future presses on — FCC OK’s spectrum sale, but escrows $2.4 billion for tower vendors

The official ending of Charlie Ergen’s 5G network dream comes as the Dish pay TV business takes another circle towards the drain

We kind of suspected that EchoStar was in for it a year ago, when we started getting weird emails from far-right “consumer groups,” offering us “alerts” to just how “woke” the telecom had become.

Way too indebted (at more than $25 billion)? Sure. Way too exposed to, and on the bad side of, super-swampy regulatory politics? Most definitely. But too woke? Recalling the fundraiser Chairman Charlie Ergen threw for the late John McCain back in 2008, that for longtime Charlie chasers like us, fell into the category of “MAGA lies that just aren’t at all believable.”

The labeling felt like a coordinated smear campaign, part of the Trump Administration’s plan to wrench away EchoStar’s AWS-4 spectrum holdings and put it in the favored paws of Elon Musk and SpaceX/Starlink, and do it in a way that wouldn’t raise too many hackles among telecom-industry denizens. Even a good word to the president from Newsmax chief Chris Ruddy on Ergen’s behalf couldn’t change EchoStar’s fate.

This week, the FCC cleared Starlink to use 65MHz of radio spectrum, purchased from EchoStar for $17 billion last September; the agency also green-lit AT&T’s use of 50MHz spectrum, acquired from EchoStar for around $23 billion around the same time.

EchoStar’s statement on the latter deal’s closure is insightful.