Joining a television broadcaster as head of ad sales just weeks before its annual upfronts presentation is certainly a tall order.
But that’s just what John Kozack did.
Kozack unexpectedly took over ad sales at TelevisaUnivision after former head Tim Natividad left in April, but he’s in a good position to meet the challenge. Other than a brief four-month stint as CRO of Allen Media Group earlier this year, he spent the past two decades plus at TelevisaUnivision as its EVP of multimedia sales.
TelevisaUnivision is in a unique position to attract Hispanic consumers, who make up a $4 trillion economic force shaping mainstream culture across the US, Kozack told AdExchanger.
“Our tagline for the upfront is simple,” said Kozack. “It’s, ‘We get Hispanics.’”
The upfront pitch
With that in mind, TelevisaUnivision is making a three-pronged upfront pitch this week: sports, streaming and culture.
In 2027, TelevisaUnivision will have exclusive streaming rights to Spanish-language broadcasts for the Super Bowl and the Gold Cup, a regional soccer tournament that includes countries from the Caribbean, North America and Central America. Internal data suggests that 50% of TelevisaUnivision’s audience doesn’t watch English-language sports broadcasts on other platforms, providing nearly unduplicated reach for advertisers.
Then, there’s streaming. TelevisaUnivision’s streaming platform ViX is now the fastest-growing streaming service in the US regardless of language, according to Kozack. Included in that service is ViX MicrO, the company’s short-form vertical video offering, which is already airing its own brand-sponsored microdramas (or, more appropriately, “micronovelas”).
Culture is the third pillar of TelevisaUnivision’s strategy and something that Kozack says often comes up in his conversations with chief investment officers. TelevisaUnivision’s plan is to tap into culture more deeply next year with new televised music tentpole events.
AdExchanger spoke with Kozack the week before upfronts to talk about his vision for the business.
AdExchanger: What’s come up this year in your conversations with advertisers and agencies?
JOHN KOZACK: The conversations have been going really well. We have some tailwinds here at TelevisaUnivision. People are looking for outcomes. We drive outcomes. We know that this works, right? Our advertisers know that this works.
Most of our content, even our prime time, is watched live. We have a growing streaming network, we have a big sports slate and we have our audience graph for precision targeting. I think that message is resonating in the market with our agency partners. So far, so good.
Back in 2024, it seemed like Hispanic audiences were becoming less represented in third-party, broker-provided data. Is that problem still getting worse?
It hasn’t really gotten better, but that’s why we have our data graph, which reaches 98% of US Hispanics. If you rely on third-party data, US Hispanics are underrepresented in that, no doubt. That’s the No. 1 reason why we built our graph.
We’re partnering with agencies to figure out how their data can work with our data, and that’s going well, but, yeah, it’s still an issue.
On a related note, given current political and economic tensions in the US, do you worry about losing brand support due to hesitancy?
For the most part, it’s been okay. Once in a while, we’ll get a client or two who brings it up.
But that definitely is short-term thinking. What you don’t want to do is abandon the market, because it’s hard to get them back. If you have a real relationship with our audience, you don’t want to abandon that now. Marketers realize that, actually, when you sit down and talk to them about it.
You’ve already got microdrama content on the platform while other competitors are just starting to dip their toes into short-form video. Why do you think you’re so ahead of the curve?
It works really well for us, because Hispanics are early adapters to technology, and they have been for a long time. We also promote it really well throughout our ecosystem, so that helps.
It has to be relevant content, too. We know our audience and we have this trust with them. Our content people know exactly what’s going to resonate with US Hispanics.
What do you think of the CTV-as-a-performance-channel trend?
I think you’ll see more data-driven video throughout this upfront and a lot of people talking about trying to guarantee some things on outcomes. I don’t think the industry is there yet, but there’ll be talk about that.
You have to have the lower funnel and you have to drive outcomes – there’s no doubt about that. But you shouldn’t abandon the middle and the top, just for the lower-funnel stuff.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.
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