It’s the big question looming over MediaPost’s Video Insider Summit, this week. What will convince agencies to shift a greater share of their yearly budgets from TV to digital video --
and do so early in true upfront fashion? Well, for starters, interesting digital brand integrations and extensions would be nice, Joseph Tam, Partner and Senior Digital Director at MEC, told summit
attendees on Thursday.
That’s in addition to the obvious expectation of better negotiating costs in exchange for committing to digital video during the traditional upfront season,
Tam said. “We don’t have to buy [video] during the upfront, but if we did, we’re asking what value partners can give us,” he said, noting that the bulk of video buying can
still be done throughout the year. “They’re very interested in having those discussions with us,” he said of the big networks.
Also to their credit, broadcast networks
are increasingly building “fluidity” -- which facilitates dollars being spent across channels -- into their systems, said Tam. Fox is doing a particularly good job of this, he said.
Reassuring those with a vested interest in digital video, Tam added that “the discussions are happening” with the networks, and MEC, for one, has made a decision to allocate
certain amount of TV budget to digital video, this year.