What do CMOs want from TV?
The TV upfronts, happening this week in New York City, are largely a series of pitches to agency buyers by entertainment giants hoping to secure big spending commitments. But it’s the marketers working at brands who actually control the ad budgets.
I spoke with top marketers about what they’re focused on this year, as the industry descends on Manhattan’s theaters and music halls for a parade of celebrity cameos, splashy trailers, and billion-dollar sales pitches. (One new entrant on the unofficial upfronts calendar this year: YouTuber MrBeast held an invite-only breakfast at the swanky Penthouse 45 event space to woo advertisers.)
The hot topics: measurement, live sports, and flexibility.
Alyson Griffin, head of marketing at State Farm, told me that the aim of the upfront has evolved far beyond rate negotiations.
“This upfront feels like a turning point where transparency, performance accountability, and buyer-friendly execution are as important as pricing,” Griffin said.
CMOs are also all about sports — one of the last remaining mass-reach TV vehicles. And, in an uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, marketers are pressing networks to be flexible about how deals are structured.
“There’s a need to be thoughtful about locking in significant spend too early,” GEICO’s VP of integrated marketing and media, Kate Jalkut, told me.
Here are three of the biggest topics for marketers dominating the 2026 TV upfronts.
1. How does TV impact my bottom line?
State Farm isn’t alone in looking for more ways to tie TV spending to business results.
More than 45% of marketers said business outcomes are the most critical factor when deciding which media to buy, per a recent survey from the TV measurement company iSpot. Yet 47% of marketers polled said measuring outcomes is a “significant challenge.”
That’s partly because there isn’t a standard way to measure outcomes across the industry. There’s consensus that it matters and should be a criterion going forward, but there’s no agreement on the actual definition, said Vicky Chang, head of media investment at Tatari, a TV-buying platform.
“Marketers are running out of patience for hand-wavy metrics that gesture toward outcomes without actually delivering them,” Chang said.
TV networks are aware of the problem and have presented a partial solution. On Wednesday, OpenAP, an adtech company jointly owned by some of the biggest US TV networks, made a big outcomes-based play. It’s launching a standard to connect data from TV companies — about who saw a campaign — with data from advertisers about which users performed an action, such as visiting a website or buying a product. The major TV networks are on board.
Advertisers have long-standing gripes about TV measurement methodologies and the ad loads on streaming TV.
“Brands need holistic visibility into exposure and incremental reach across platforms to reduce duplication and maximize efficiency,” State Farm’s Griffin said.
She added that networks and streamers need to offer measurement that captures metrics like attention, engagement, and business impact — not just impressions or GRPs, the old-school “gross ratings points” metric beloved by TV planners since the ’50s.
2. Marketers can’t get enough of sports
When it comes to premium TV programming, sports dominate, with the NFL at the top.
NFL legends Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski were onstage at the Fox upfront, where the network showed off its forthcoming football lineup and a new weekly soccer show. Sportscaster Charissa Thompson joined Andrew Whitworth, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Matthew Stafford at Amazon’s upfront, where it touted “Thursday Night Football” as its big draw. Over at NBCUniversal, it was all about Sunday night sports, from football to basketball and baseball. Disney pitched hard on the Super Bowl and ESPN’s plans to turn Santa Monica Beach into “ESPN Beach” for big game week.
“There are so few opportunities for watercooler TV moments anymore outside sports,” said Eric Haggstrom, an SVP at the research firm Advertiser Perceptions, which regularly polls CMOs and media buyers.
Marketers this year want to know how they can maximize their sports budgets outside 30-second commercials in live broadcasts. That includes integrations in the pre- and post-game, and partnering with athletes for social content, Haggstrom said.
“We need solutions that go beyond in-game logo presence,” GEICO’s Jalkut said.
Jalkut is keeping an eye out for more dynamic ad insertion products, interactive formats, sharper audience segmentation, clearer ways to separate competitors in cluttered categories during ad breaks, and more “second-screen synchronization” that lets broadcasters expand their content — including ads and sponsorships — beyond the TV set.
3. Flexibility is key
CMOs are heading to the upfronts uncertain about how the next year will unfold. Geopolitical events, such as the conflict in the Middle East, and potential weaknesses in consumer spending, make some marketers cautious about big commitments.
Guideline, which tracks billing data from the world’s biggest ad agencies, said upfronts and reserved ad buys will make up 24% of the ad market in 2026, a tick down from 25% last year and well off the 36% in 2020.
Advertisers will expect networks to be more flexible about how deals are structured. And they seek further visibility about the real performance of campaigns — not modeled estimates — to help justify their TV investments, Tatari’s Chang said.
Jalkut said GEICO wants to be agile in responding to business performance, customer insights, marketplace dynamics, and new opportunities that its media partners are still developing.
“There’s a need to be thoughtful about locking in significant spend too early,” Jalkut said.
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