NewFronts 2025—what brands and agencies need to watch
NewFronts from the major platforms are underway and include LinkedIn for the first time. (Ad Age illustration/Adobe Stock and Freepik photos)
Author: Garett Sloane Source: AdAge
Advertisers, internet giants and ad tech companies are at the annual NewFronts digital ad sales conference this week, making deals for the coming year and trying to put some certainty into an uncertain market.
The week kicked off Monday with an economy-focused message from IAB CEO David Cohen, speaking at Google’s NewFronts.
Nothing that we knew about the past seems certain anymore, nothing feels entirely predictable,” Cohen said, “and yet at the same time there is a weird kind of dejá vu.” Cohen compared the current economic climate to the start of COVID when “everyone’s first instinct was to hunker down and pause spend and scenario plan.”
The CEO called on marketers to invest in the latest technology surrounding AI, commerce, streaming and social media.
“There’s a lot of money up for grabs,” Cohen said, adding, “now is not the time for fear, now is not the time for hunkering down and short-termism.”
NewFronts comes at a time when brands shift their marketing strategies minute by minute, partly to account for chaotic tariffs, industry leaders told Ad Age. The industry’s top power brokers are dealing with shaky supply chains and manic pricing changes from the import taxes, making it more difficult to forecast what brands and agencies will spend on ads and even what they will be advertising in the year ahead.
In its presentation Monday, Google focused on its ad tech platform Display and Video 360. Google wants brands to unify their connected TV ad spend in DV360 demand-side platform, which competes with The Trade Desk and Amazon.
Kristen O’Hara, Google’s VP, agency, platforms and client solutions, outlined how DV360 opens inventory from major streamers, including Netflix and Disney, and it’s the only place for digital media buyers to get YouTube.
“DV360 leads the DSP market with over 5 billion hours of ad-supported watch time every month,” O’Hara said, showing a chart making a direct comparison to The Trade Desk and Amazon‘s ad-supported watch time.
The Trade Desk generated 60% of Google’s ad-supported video time, while Amazon generated 10%, according to the chart.
Google and YouTube have a dual strategy this time of year, hosting a marquee event called Brandcast during the main upfront week, which is tailored more toward traditional TV advertisers, in mid-May.
Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Fox, NBCUniversal and other media giants typically host upfront shows, and NewFronts are their digital equivalent, featuring the likes of Meta, TikTok, Snap and other online publishers. Tubi, the Fox-owned free ad-supported TV service, is making its NewFronts debut, showing the crossover among social media and connected TV.
Ad markets are already showing signs of tightening as the economy remains under the cloud of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. The levies, rising as high as 145% on goods coming in from China, threaten the ability of retailers to get products into stores and influence manufacturing.
“So far, we’ve not seen it show up in existing budgets,” said Havas Media Chief Investment Officer Jon Stimmel. “We’re going to see some more pullback in second half of the year; I think the pullback won‘t necessarily be reflective of what the actual spending will be. It’ll be based on [brands] driving additional flexibility into how they’re managing their businesses.”
Last week, Snap reported a 9% rise in first-quarter ad revenue, to $1.2 billion. The platform did not give a forecast for the current second quarter, a sign of unpredictability in ad markets.
Consumer goods giants, including Colgate-Palmolive, Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble, have mentioned the cost of tariffs in their financial reports, leading them to have to consider their product mix and pricing.
For advertising, it doesn‘t mean brands will cut spending, but they will certainly look to squeeze every penny out of their marketing budgets. Brands could pause spending at times and then pick back up when the winds are fairer, and it all leads to a mix that’s not conducive to long-term planning at the NewFronts and upfront table.
Amid all that turbulence, here is what advertisers can expect from the NewFronts.
Platforms under pressure
TikTok is a platform to watch because it’s in the middle of a trade dispute between the U.S. and China. The app was threatened with a shutdown this year, following a new law in the U.S. that tried to get China-based ByteDance to divest from the platform.
Trump gave TikTok a breather to keep operating, but it’s still under a microscope. Advertisers are continuing mostly under the assumption that the platform is open for business.
“We are just continuing, going full speed ahead based on the expectation that TikTok will still be around,” Stimmel said.
On Tuesday, Khartoon Weiss, TikTok’s VP of global business solutions, is set to lead a NewFronts talk in a private gathering, which will include comedian Hasan Minhaj.
Also, Steven Ellis, Paramount Advertising’s chief operating officer, Delphine Fabre-Hernoux, CEO of Beauty Co-Lab at Omnicom Media Group for L’Oréal USA are set to attend.
Google and Meta, which presents on Thursday, are also in some hot water, a boiling regulatory climate, which aims to break up some of their core businesses. Google recently lost two antitrust cases in the U.S., which are trying to force the search giant to sell assets such as Chrome and to get out of the publishing side of ad tech. Meta is currently facing an antitrust case that claims it runs a monopoly in social media with its ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.
At NewFronts, Meta is likely to focus on developments in generative AI—automation in their ad platforms and their creator communities—as they try to counter the influence of TikTok. On Monday, Google talked about generative AI in DV360, in which media buyers use an AI assistant to plan their strategies, decide which inventory to buy and what audiences to target.
Meanwhile, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is holding its first NewFront, just as it is building more video into the platform and highlighting its business-focused creator class.
On Wednesday, Snap will talk with brands and media buyers about new ad products. Last year, Snap let advertisers send direct messages to users for the first time. Brands are sending “sponsored Snaps,” a product that is still evolving and represented a major shift in the company’s thinking around serving ads in the personal messaging portion of the platform.
Ad tech takes center stage at NewFronts
Ad tech dealmaking is going to be more tense than usual. Demand-side platforms are now sensing a moment to contact agencies and brands looking to fix the digital ad ecosystem and cut costs. Advertisers are looking at the supply path in programmatic advertising, making sure ad dollars aren‘t getting wasted into a sea of fees from unrecognizable ad tech vendors.
Infillion, which bought DSP MediaMath in 2023, is appearing at a NewFront luncheon on Wednesday. Amazon Ads is showing up as its own entity, aside from the Prime Video upfront show that the e-commerce giant will hold in mid-May.
“What we look for is unique audiences and inventory access across all the platforms,” said Alex Block, executive VP of global programmatic at digital ad firm Jellyfish, which is owned by the Brandtech Group.
Block sees AI making a key difference in programmatic this year. The tech can help digital media buyers identify consumers quickly and point campaigns in a new direction depending on changing market conditions, the executive VP said.
“Having AI help figure out what the right audience, inventory and pricing could be, that’s important,” Block said. “And we’re always looking for more measurement. Just how do we continue to connect CTV exposure into back-end performance, into real sales.”
Nielsen and Comscore are examples of the measurement firms appearing at NewFronts this year.
T-Mobile Advertising Solutions is coming with a fresh ad tech hook for its second year at NewFronts. The telecom giant recently acquired Vistar Media, an out-of-home ad tech firm, and the DSP Blis. The union of the two will undergird T-Mobile’s network of mobile and in-store advertising, said JP Colaco, senior VP and chief T-Ads officer, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions.
“We think that layering our data on top of [Vistar], that we can turn digital-out-of-home into an outcome-based media platform, and we can drive more results for marketers in that space,” he said.
T-Mobile also wants to take the media network it has in its own stores and branch out, Colaco said.
Publishers make news their NewFronts pitch
NewFronts always highlight some of the key publishers in the online ecosystem, and this year is no different. Condé Nast, for instance, celebrating 100 years of the New Yorker, is hosting an event at the New York Public Library Wednesday.
The New York Times event at The Times Center on Thursday comes as the publisher has been building up its ad tech to reach subscribers and non-subscribers, especially people who visit its daily games universe.
Yahoo is showing up at NewFronts, too, this year—mostly as a publisher, rather than focusing on ad tech in its DSP, after recently reorganizing its ad sales team to focus on its own digital publishing properties, including Yahoo News, Finance and Sports.
Condé Nast, which also owns Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired, Architectural Digest and more brands, is building around premium video titles, distributed across digital sites such as YouTube. The publishing titan also just struck a content deal with LinkedIn, showing its expanding its digital footprint. Vanity Fair’s Oscars coverage garnered 750 million views, according to Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Condé Nast’s chief revenue officer.
It’s a tricky market for brands that focus on luxury and fashion, but Herbst-Brady sees an opening for premium publishers to rely on their stature to appeal to advertisers.
“This is a time of massive disruption, and consumers and clients alike not necessarily knowing where to turn and what to do,” Herbst-Brady said. “And so, I would say, there’s a renewed focus on brands that are trusted and understood and have scale as well.”