Marketers no longer wait until the official upfronts week in May to think through their TV and video buying strategies.
In fact, these types of conversations don’t have a set timeframe at all, several industry veterans told AdExchanger. Rather, they’re now happening on a near-constant basis.
If any single event can be considered the jumping-off point for TV upfronts, it’s the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES), which kicks off this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.
CES was already a useful event for marketers prior to 2020. But it became essential following the COVID-19 pandemic, which helped accelerate the blurring of lines between media and technology and elevated streaming video’s importance as a viable advertising channel.
Against that backdrop, CES is “no longer just a gadget show,” said Courtney Howell, head of agency development at Samsung Ads. Nor is it simply an outlet for industry players to schmooze with one another (although that certainly happens, too).
Instead, CES is a place for sharpening marketing strategies and previewing all the products that TV buyers and sellers will be pitching to each other the rest of the year.
“It’s when you start revealing your hand as to what each of you wants to get accomplished,” said IAB CEO David Cohen.
Talk nerdy to me
For the last five years, for example, Disney has hosted its own “Global Tech and Data Showcase” at CES, which focuses on the company’s data, measurement and campaign-optimization products.
At 400 in-person and 1,200 virtual attendees last year (and more expected this year), the showcase is certainly smaller than Disney’s main upfront presentation, which was seen by nearly eight times as many people in 2025. But Disney’s advertising team is expecting to have over 125 individual meetings during the week of CES. Members of their product and data science teams will also attend many of these meetings, said EVP of Sales Adam Monaco.
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With the tech experts on hand to answer questions, “We can really talk about how storytelling and technology are meeting all in the same place, and about the different ways in which our clients want to transact,” said Monaco.
But the nerdiness goes both ways, and agencies have their own tools to share.
“The publishers, especially the larger ones, want to hear more about what agencies and their holding companies are doing in the tech and AI space,” said Alex Stone, SVP and managing director of enterprise partnerships at Horizon Media.
CES is such a huge show (the event spans more than 2.5 million net square feet of space and welcomed over 140,000 attendees last year) that agencies and other companies have plenty of time and opportunity to give thorough, hands-on demos, added Stone.
According to Stone, a lot of the sell side’s AI experimentation stems from “what they’re hearing on the buy side, in terms of where our interests lie.”
Mark your calendars
Another benefit to kicking off the TV upfront season with CES is that it helps to shape the larger advertising industry events timeline for the year, which – like audiences themselves these days – tend to be a lot more fragmented.
Take IAB’s NewFronts in New York, which have typically taken place the week before upfronts as a way to bring more independent, digital-first publishers into the conversation. Last year, the organization announced it would be moving the event up to March 23-26, where it would have more of “a buffer on both sides,” per Cohen.
Admittedly, that might put NewFronts in competition with Disney’s Sports Summit, which is scheduled for March 24 in New York. But the shift allows the IAB to make more space in its fall schedule for its Podcast Upfront and PlayFronts events, as well as a new influencer-focused track called CreatorFronts.
Similarly, Stone referred to a “trifecta” of advertising tentpoles that all represent different parts of the typical advertising road map. CES, he said, is about determining what buyers and sellers are trying to accomplish for the year.
By contrast, April’s Possible event, despite being only a few years old, is where agencies and advertisers can deliver on those goals. And June’s Cannes Lions, which happens just before most upfront negotiations close, is a time to celebrate those accomplishments, said Stone.
But first, it all has to start at CES.
“That’s our starting line for the year,” said Howell.
