• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, December 10, 2019

AT&T's WarnerMedia media and entertainment unit and its ad-tech platform Xandr will be pitching ads together at the Upfront next May, the companies announced today.

The move is a logical one, given more than a year of working together on launching and enhancing products, they said.  

Their joint Upfront debut, set for May 13 in New York City, will represent "a culmination of two years of commitment, collaboration and innovation with our partners at Xandr to make superlative advertising solutions available in market today, alongside premium content that matters to audiences globally,” said Gerhard Zeiler, chief revenue officer, WarnerMedia and president, WarnerMedia International Networks. “Our sales teams have been in market for well over a year, hosting dozens of client meetings and developing tangible solutions for partners." 

"We are at a pivotal moment in time in the advertising industry," added Xandr CEO Brian Lesser. "In partnership with our colleagues at WarnerMedia, Xandr aims to not just make advertising better, but completely reinvent it.” 

The joint Upfront will feature successful advertising case studies resulting from the partnership and, as would be expected, a focus on pitching the advertising opportunities around the ad-supported HBO Max streaming service, also set to launch in May.

In 2019, WarnerMedia and Xandr collaborated on go-to-market strategies but held separate, complementary Upfront events.

Unsurprisingly, the announcement didn't mention that the 2020 Upfront will also be the first at which there is no Turner presence. WarnerMedia absorbed the Turner assets in a restructuring this past March, eliminating the Turner brand shortly before it would have celebrated its 50th anniversary.