Commentary
Why The NewFronts Are Not In Kansas -- Or Paris -- Anymore?
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, Yesterday
President David Cohen kicked off last week's IAB NewFronts by promising they would not be your parent's prime-time upfront presentations and the Interactive Advertising Bureau's members didn't let him down.
You needed to look new further than Revry's presentation to realize these ad pitches definitely were not in Kansas anymore.
Like it's programming, Revry's newfront presentation was a campy, drag queen-filled send-up that leaned heavily into the queer culture its audience represents. And in case you weren't there, check out these pictures and you can see just how transcendent if truly was.
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Meta's newfront, meanwhile, might have been mistaken for Netflix's, given how much it leaned into the streaming service's hit "Emily In Paris."
The presentation was hosted and emceed by "Emily" co-star Ashley Park, and had numerous plugs to the series, including a mock-up of Meta ad chief Nicola Mendelsohn as "Nicola in New York."
Meta's newfront was replete with lots of world-shattering stats, deep dive panel discussions, etc., but there was also a genuine moment when Ashley Park turned from star to fangirl gushing over her love of Oreos cookies to Mondelez's Jennifer Mennes (below).
While the newfronts didn't have quite the star power advertisers and media buyers might expect to see at a network TV upfront, there were still plenty on hand, including actor James Marsden pitching for Amazon's "Jury Duty" series.
While the biggest start at Conde Nast's newfront was likely its own editorial team, especially Chief Content Officer Anna Wintour, there was a heartfelt interview with women's world featherweight boxing champion Amanda Serrano by Conde Nast Entertainment President Agnes Chu.
The funniest celebrity appearance goes to Weird Al Yankovic's hand-off to Roku chief Charlie Collier at the start of its newfront.
The worst presentation has to go to Vizio, which inexplicably showcased cheesy computer renderings of a "powering transformation together" living room image for nearly half its presentation, with actual presenters squeezed into a little thumbnail portion of the screen.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
Joe - sounds like your computer had a glitch -- the comments were flowing with overwhelming positivity and the (amazing) motion graphic above was only 3-4 minutes of a 62 minute presentation that includes 115 slides and five sizzles so the description of your experience does not match reality. Having read your coverage, I'm not totally suprised! (Ziing! come on, one cheap shot with typos deserves another, LOL) In all seriousness, thank you for watching - sorry your viewing experience had a hiccup, though you're the first to describe this issue, we are going to chat with IAB about it.
@Jason Damata: Nice try blaming the messenger. No computer glitch on my end, because I tried it on separate devices. It was how the streaming fed through to my screen, which were Apple devices. Perhaps viewers needed to be on a Vizio screen in order for it to work properly.
Either that, or Vizio's presentation was the only one of more than 30 to glitch on my end. That would be one amazing coincidence.
There were at least three "direct-to-screen" presenters including LG, Samsung and Vizio, and aside from the weird way Vizio's deprecated the mainstage into thumbnails and showcased its computer graphics in the big screen, it was the worst of all of them.
In fact, Vizio's was the worst of all the IAB NewFronts I covered this year, or in 40+ years of covering upfront/newfront pitches of any kind.
That's why I called it out. I could go into more detail about why, but it's not worth my time -- or the time of MediaPost's readers.