Brands have gotten adept at finding and following their audiences across the media landscape. Today, that means everywhere: linear TV, CTV, YouTube and the open web, often in the same evening.
But while attention now flows seamlessly across screens, media plans remain siloed. Upfront and programmatic strategies (and the budgets behind them) each work to find and engage the same audience without a shared view.
This disconnect puts a drag on performance. Brands pay to reach the same audience multiple times in multiple places and without coordination or intent.
Where performance starts to break down
Most brands recognize the symptoms even if they don’t always trace them back to the planning process. Campaigns often launch with strong engagement, only to plateau as frequency accumulates in pockets.
It’s easy to mistake these patterns for normal campaign fatigue and miss the underlying problem, which is that each channel is being optimized in isolation. Upfront buying establishes reach within premium inventory, while programmatic buying independently identifies and targets high-value audiences across digital environments. Without coordination, both paths converge on the same audience.
The result is uneven exposure. Some audiences see the same message too often in one place, and other high-value audiences are never reached at all. Instead of building intentional sequences of exposure, brands create fragmented and repetitive experiences.
The wasted spend and reduced performance that result are the measurable negatives. But these redundant ad experiences also hurt brand trust, causing the exact opposite of what consumers desire, which is for brands to know and understand them.
Why the system still works this way
The root of the problem is structural – and it has deep roots. Upfront and programmatic buying were never designed to compete. They were built for different audiences and optimized for different outcomes. Separate teams (and often separate agencies) manage each channel, with budget and measurement distinct per channel.
This structure no longer fits today’s reality of converged video consumption. But bringing those two worlds together requires coordination across teams, data and technology.
What coordination actually looks like
Upfront and programmatic do not need to be merged into a single buying model. Their strengths remain distinct and valuable. But the opportunity comes from aligning them around a shared audience. That alignment depends on three foundational shifts.
1. Establishing a unified audience: Coordination starts with a consistent cross-channel understanding of who an audience is, which requires connecting signals across devices and platforms to build a unified view of individuals and households. This includes:
- Deterministic data, such as CRM-based identifiers, as the foundation
- Predictive modeling that goes beyond static segments to identify not just who an audience is but who is most likely to take action
- First-party data onboarding to anchor targeting in real customer relationships, so brands use the same audience across upfront and programmatic planning, rather than redefining the audience for each
This makes audience definition a dynamic process of continuous refinement based on signals across channels, behaviors and outcomes.
2. Managing frequency across the entire plan: Once the audience is unified, exposure can be managed across the full video investment instead of by channel. This allows a much more strategic approach to frequency that allows for:
- Increasing exposure where additional reinforcement drives impact
- Reducing redundancy where audiences are already saturated
- Using programmatic to extend reach beyond upfront
There are still limitations, particularly within walled gardens that limit data sharing. But a more complete view of audience exposure inarguably drives better decisions by ensuring optimization doesn’t happen in isolation.
3. Measuring real outcomes: Siloed planning produces siloed measurement, which is one of the most persistent challenges facing media buyers today. According to IAB research, cross-channel measurement is the top concern for 44% of media buyers, and nearly two-thirds of video buyers say they are actively encountering those challenges today.
Moving toward a coordinated approach allows buyers to look at the full picture through:
- Total reach and frequency across channels
- How exposures accumulate over time
- How the combined media mix contributes to outcomes
From unified data to predictive decisioning
Coordination of decision-making across the entire media investment needs to become the default. By building shared audience visibility and seeing how consumers engage across the entire media investment, brands can then move toward an even smarter approach: using predictive intelligence to guide decisions in real time.
Instead of optimizing campaigns based only on past performance, predictive models evaluate signals across every impression. Each opportunity gets scored based on its likelihood to drive a defined outcome, taking into account who a consumer is along with predictive intelligence about when they are most likely to act based on context, behavior and where they are in their journey.
This meaningful shift will allow brands to move from making broad assumptions about audience value toward a more precise understanding of intent. For example, a consumer may fit the right demographic profile, but timing and context ultimately determine whether a message resonates. The same person can be highly receptive in one moment and completely unavailable in another.
This shift is inevitable, but the urgency is growing
Many brands continue to see acceptable performance under current models. Campaigns deliver results, and optimization within channels remains effective. But that perspective overlooks two realities.
First, consumers already engage with media in a fully converged way, and expectations for relevance and experience follow those behaviors. Repetition becomes more noticeable, and irrelevant exposure becomes easier to ignore.
Second, the rise of AI will amplify both the opportunity and risk. Brands with unified audience data will use AI to accelerate optimization and uncover completely new depths of insights across massive data sets, thereby making smarter decisions that drive better outcomes faster than ever. Meanwhile, brands that haven’t adopted this coordinated approach will only be using AI to accelerate the same siloed – and flawed – decisions.
Better together
Upfront and programmatic remain highly effective on their own. But they become more powerful when they work together.
When upfront establishes a foundation of reach and programmatic extends and refines that reach – guided by a shared understanding of the audience – video strategy becomes more coordinated by design. Reach becomes more efficient, frequency more intentional and measurement reflects how the full investment performs, not just its individual parts.
But the more sizable performance gains will come as this audience coordination is amplified by applying predictive intelligence across the entire media plan. Decisions informed by a unified view of audience, context and timing will move brands from reaching the right consumers to connecting at the moments that matter most.
Because in a converged media landscape, the question is no longer whether you can reach your audience. It’s knowing when you’ve already reached them – and what to do next.
For more articles featuring Jes Santoro, click here.
