Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S advertising sales office for Warner Bros. Discovery, will be featured as a keynote speaker at the Advanced Advertising Summit on September 11 in New York.

Steinlauf oversees ad revenue for one of the largest collection of cable networks plus streaming services Max and discovery plus. He will talk about WBD’s expanding advanced advertising capabilities. He might even have some things to say about Barbie, the Warner Bros. box office hit, which will be coming to Max.

Steinlauf joins an agenda that leads of with Laura Schmidt, senior media director for the University of Phoenix, and Laura Grover, head of client solutions at EDO, discussion how they boosted campaign performance with EDO’s new creative rotation optimization product.

The event features panels focusing key industry issues including measuring results, addressable advertising, branded content and local advertising.

Speakers represent companies including The Walt Disney Co., Comcast Advertising, iSpot.TV, Alliant, MiQ, AMC Networks, Vizio and Showseeker.

The Advanced Advertising Innovation Awards will be presented to campaign that used data and technology to achieve outstanding results. There will be awards for the best use of data, the best target definition, the best uses of branded content and best use of multiple platforms. 

There will also be an award given to the best overall campaign.

The Advanced Advertising Summit will be held at ETC.Venues at 360 Madison Avenue. 

The Summit is part of NYC TV Week, which is produced by Future U.S., the publisher of Broadcasting+Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV.

A full agenda and information about attending live can be found here.

Simulmedia, a pioneer in targeted and cross-channel TV advertising, said that Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer for Warner Bros. Discovery, has joined Simulmedia’s board of directors.

Steinlauf joins former Turner president David Levy and former General Motors ad sales head Phil Guarascio as directors.

Also: Simulmedia Launches TV Plus Cross-Channel Ad Platform

"Simulmedia has always been at the forefront of data-driven TV advertising, and now with the exciting growth of ad-supported streaming, it has become a trailblazer in providing marketers full audience reach across the dynamic linear and connected TV ecosystem with its TV Plus platform," Steinlauf said. "I am pleased to be part of their Board and to provide strategic direction to help Simulmedia deliver on its promise of certainty, efficiency and speed to its clients and partners across the TV advertising landscape."

Steinlauf was head of ad sales at Discovery when it acquired WarnerMedia. He was head of sales for Scripps Networks Interactive when it was acquired by Discovery. Before that he was VP of ad sales for Turner Broadcasting’s TNT and TBS and director of ad sales at ESPN. He began his career at Young & Rubicam.

"We are super excited to have Jon Steinlauf join the Simulmedia Board of Directors,” said Dave Morgan, Simulmedia CEO and founder. “Jon is one of the very smartest and most innovative leaders in TV and streaming advertising, and at Warner Bros. Discovery, he now oversees one of the largest, most diverse and premium video ad portfolios in the U.S., including Discovery, HGTV, TBS, TNT, Adult Swim, CNN, Turner Sports, Discovery Plus and HBO Max." ■

Continuing to set the executive lineup for after Discovery’s imminent acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, Jon Steinlauf was named the combined company’s chief U.S. advertising sales officer.

Steinlauf had held the same title for Discovery. JP Colaco, who was brought in by WarnerMedia’s short-lived CEO Jason Kilar to head up ad sales, is leaving the company. Colaco’s top deputies, including Katrina Cukaj, will be reporting to Steinlauf.

Steinlauf was a survivor when Discovery acquired Scripps Networks Interactive. He was head of ad sales for Scripps and tapped to head ad sales for the combined company. Before Scripps, Steinlauf was with Turner, now part of WarnerMedia.

In the new company, Steinlauf will report to Bruce Campbell, who was designated as chief revenue and strategy officer for Warner Bros. Discovery after the deal closes.

“Jon is an industry pioneer, a brilliant thinker and an excellent leader,“ Campbell said. ”I couldn’t be more thrilled to have him join the Warner Bros. Discovery leadership team. I look forward to partnering with him and the entire organization as we bring together two world-class sales organizations to create a complete and differentiated offering for our advertiser.” 

Steinlauf has led Discovery’s effort to get prices closer to broadcast for its highest-rated cable programs by bundling them into a package called Discovery Premiere. He also led the effort to sell commercial at premium prices on Discovery Plus and will aim to do the same thing with the ad-supported version of WarnerMedia’s HBO Plus.

“I am honored to be leading what I believe will be the most talented ad sales organization in the industry,” Steinlauf said. “Warner Bros. Discovery will offer advertisers the most complementary portfolio of brands — spanning news, sports, entertainment, scripted, unscripted and family-focused programming. Together, we will introduce unparalleled ad-supported streaming opportunities to our clients. I've spent the last 30 years of my career at Turner, Scripps and Discovery and have the utmost respect for the Warner brands. It is incredible to me that everything will come full circle at Warner Bros. Discovery.” ■

Discovery moved its upfront to the week when broadcasters make their pitches to ad buyers because it no longer wants to compete against other cable networks.

“We have surpassed  our cable competitors and today we stand shoulder to shoulder with the broadcast networks," said Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer. 

In addition to its cable networks, Discovery is offering ad buyers its streaming service Discovery Plus and will be changing the 15 Go apps that let authenticated viewers with pay-TV subscriptions stream Discovery networks' shows, including series created for digital. Later this year, users of each app will be able to access programming from all 15 Discovery networks.

Steinlauf made that declaration before even before AT&T agreed to spin off its WarnerMedia unit and merge it with Discovery. When that deal closes it will bring more networks and more scale to the Discovery portfolio.

Discovery is also getting ready to roll out Chip and Joanna Gaines's Magnolia Network and has created a special Equity & Inclusion Solutions ad package. 

(Who will program and sell those networks is still to be decided by Discovery CEO David Zaslav, set to run the combined company. Zaslav opened the upfront, welcoming advertisers to "day one of Discovery's new adventure.")

Discovery’s big weapon in taking on the broadcasters is the Discovery Premiere bundle created by Steinlauf three years ago.

Also Read: Discovery Using iSpot To Measure Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns

Discovery Premiere offers advertisers commercials in the first run of the top rated shows on Discovery’s networks. Discovery’s networks has more shows that generate a 1 ratings in the sales demos than broadcast networks have, and their prices on a cost-per-thousand viewers basis is lower. 

“We already have over a hundred advertisers on in the second quarter and we’ve tripled our ad revenue on Discovery Premiere in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the second quarter of 2020,” Steinlauf said. 

Discovery Premiere offers advertisers reach because its shows run on a variety of networks -- HGTV, Food Network, Discovery, TLC, OWN, ID -- that have different audience profiles.

During this upfront Steinlauf said it will be encouraging advertisers to shift from buying based on age-based demos that don't count older viewers. Counting 55 plus viewers increases the supply of impressions Discovery has to sell and those consumers have a huge amount of purchasing power.

Discovery Plus enhances reach even more because it has a disproportionately high share of subscribers in non-cable homes, he added. “Every time you step into another platform, you’re getting new audiences.” 

Overall, Steinlauf notes that the broadcast proposition has eroded. Ratings are down and there is far less scripted programming on the broadcasters. Instead, the schedule is filled with game shows, newsmagazine, variety and competition shows and more reruns.

The drop in scripted shows is partly because of the way the pandemic hit Hollywood, disrupting production. But it’s also the result of the big media companies shifting their focus to building their streaming services.

“When NBC develops the next This Is Us, where does it go? Does it go to Peacock or does it go to NBC,” Steinlauf asks.

At the same time, broadcast prime time is the most expensive advertising inventory and prices are likely to be up sharply in this upfront, partly because of a tight supply of scarce ratings points and the return of some COVID-affected categories to the market.

“The bar is very high,” Steinlauf said. Buyers “have to look at the product that the broadcasters are putting on the air and see how does this hold up to the legacy pricing of broadcast prime.”

But brands and buyers looking to shift their ad dollars form broadcast to streaming might be in for a rude surprise because supply is tight there too.

“If you’re looking for high-quality television and film in the streaming space, you don’t have a lot of options,” he said because Netflix and Disney Plus don’t take ads and. Hulu, the top ad-supported streamer is largely sold out.

“Maybe TV was too much of a bargain for too long and it may be streaming needs more years to grow bigger,” he said.

Discovery unveiled its new streaming service earlier this month, but it was quietly pitching advertisers Discovery Plus to advertisers over the summer.

When the Discovery Plus launches Jan. 4, the ad supported version will have between four minutes and five minutes of commercial per hour. That makes it so attractive to advertisers that they were willing to sign up for Discovery Plus at prices that are three times higher than Discovery’s linear cable channels, according to Jon Steinlauf, chief U.S. advertising sales officer at Discovery.

Also Read: Discovery Hires Hulu's Keller to Head Digital Ad Sales

“The ad market has been screaming. They’re saying linear has too many ads. You get a country that’s been watching Netflix for 10 years and they’ve never seen an ad,” Steinlauf said. Compared to cable, the light ads version of Discovery Plus is “going to feel like nothing.”

The lower ad load is also attractive to advertisers looking for more ownership of the content viewers are watching. “They want to have more engagement,” Steinlauf said. “They can stand out more in an environment with less ads. I get that.”

On top of that, Discovery Plus’s viewers are most likely to be among the 35 million lapsed cable subscribers that advertisers can no longer target by buying commercials on linear networks.

Also Read: Analyst Sees Discovery Plus Breaking Even in 2023

Advertisers will pay for unique incremental reach and they can get that with viewers who’ve cut the cable cord, Steinlauf said. “Discovery has these great brands and a great library and the ad sales experience to be able to step into those 35 million [cord-cutters]  and say to advertisers comes with us. You get all this extra reach that you wanted, and typically these are younger families with some affluence but they don’t really like sports.”

On top of that, Discovery’s ad tech can deliver unique audiences and unique ad experience.

Also Read: Discovery Enters the 'Plus' Wars with Jan . 4 U.S. Streaming Launch

Discovery Plus’s inaugural sponsors include Boston Beer Co., Kraft Heinz, Lowe’s and Toyota. Steinlauf said he wants a broad range of advertisers on Plus.

For example, one of Discovery Plus’s inaugural advertisers is Kraft Heinz. For Kraft, Discovery could identify the episodes of its cooking shows in which cream cheese is an ingredient in a recipe and run Kraft commercials only in those episodes.

Discovery uses proprietary technology to search the closed-captioning data on shows for keywords that might be important to advertisers.

Like other ad supported streaming services, Discovery’s ad tech will be able to offer pause ads, binge ads, exclusive hours for a single advertising, even voice ads.

:”It’s going to be exciting,” Steinlauf said. “We are already getting the CPM bump.”

During Discovery’s presentation explaining its direct-to-consumer strategy to advertisers, the company said that while cable commercial prices have traditionally lagged broadcast on a CPM basis, ads on its authenticated streaming apps generate twice the CPMs of cable and Discovery Plus will garner three times.

In addition to the benefits of a light ad load and incremental reach, Discovery Plus benefits from coming along at a time when advertising supported streaming is in high demand but short supply.

In the upfront, the media companies wanted digital budgets for Pluto TV at ViacomCBS and Tubi at Fox, but AVOD inventory is still hard to come by, Steinlauf said.

“The supply of AVOD is extremely tight not necessarily because there isn’t viewership, but because the viewership is going to non-commercial platforms,” he said.

Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime and for now, HBO Max are not add supported. Some of the other big services are hybrids, including Hulu, CBS All Access and Peacock. (Discovery isn’t saying what proportion of Discovery Plus subscribers it expects will take the “light ads” version at $4.99 versus the $6.99 ad free version.)

Steinlauf said a large percentage of Discovery’s Go sales are made via programmatic channels and the same will be true for Discovery Plus.

“There are a lot of tech players, resellers, MVPDs and platforms [in that space] but the programmatic experience will help us a lot when it comes to Plus with the ability to talk to agencies and advertisers who want to zero in on our content” and the audiences they attract, he said.

Internally, sales for Discovery Plus will be handled by the same sales reps who sell the company’s cable channels and go apps. “The future superstar AE is like a three sport athlete. They have to be good at linear, Go and Plus, which means you’v go tot be good at streaming and ad tech and programmatic and data.”

Discovery ad sales is having a good year, Steinlauf said, noting that the company has told analysts that third quarter was better than second quarter and fourth quarter will be better still.

“We didn’t have the disruption of being in sports and out of sports. We don’t have the problem of getting content made because our talent, like the rest of us, is at home and what they do on television is what they do in real life,” he said. “So they’ve been able to create about a thousand episodes of content during the pandemic.”

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With the concentration of the TV business, and the consolidation of advertising sales teams at those companies, a handful of top sales executives now control more than $22 billion in commercial inventory in the cable business.

Most of that inventory will be negotiated and sold over the next few months in the upfront market, determining the financial fates of those companies or the coming year.

Here is a Multichannel News scorecard of the executives responsible for selling cable advertising and what kind of hand they’ll be bringing to market for next season.

Donna Speciale

Title: President, Turner Ad Sales
Company: Turner
2017 Ad Revenue: $4.033 billion**
Outlook: A top media buyer before joining Turner, Speciale has been on a quest to make the television experience better for viewers and Turner’s portfolio of networks more attractive to media buyers. Turner has been among the early movers by cutting commercial clutter at truTV, creating audience-targeting products and building up branded content production studios. She sees her competitors moving in her direction and ad dollars flowing as a result.

Jon Steinlauf

Title: Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer
Company: Discovery Inc.
2017 Ad Revenue: $3.809 billion**
Outlook: Steinlauf, who had been in charge of ad sales at Scripps Networks Interactive, became head of sales for Discovery when the latter company acquired Scripps. The two companies both feature nonfiction programming that is viewed live; as a single company, it will continue to emphasize that advertising works on strongly branded networks because much of it is contextually related to the content, and because fans are receptive to the messages they see in their favorite trusted shows. Discovery’s respected head of sales, Ben Price, will leave after the upfronts.

Sean Moran

Title: Head of Marketing and Partner Solutions
Company: Viacom
2017 Ad Revenue: $3.699 billion**
Outlook: Under Sean Moran, Viacom is looking to build a variety of marketing services that go beyond selling spots. Viacom acquired WhoSay, a social-media influencer marketing company, and VidCon, a place where content creators convene. It has also put together a shopper marketing unit. Viacom expects its Advanced Marketing Services to generate $300 million in revenue this year and that after years of shrinking ad revenue. Viacom forecasts that ad revenues for the fourth fiscal quarter will actually be up.

Laura Molen, Mark Marshall

Titles: Executive VP, Lifestyle and Hispanic Advertising Sales Group, NBCUniversal; Executive VP, Entertainment Advertising Sales, NBCUniversal
2017 Ad Revenue: $3.397 billion**
Outlook: Cable networks are an integral part of NBCUniversal’s expansive television portfolio. Entertainment networks, including USA Network and Syfy, are ratcheting up high-profile programming. USA recently announced a new country-music competition show headlined by Shania Twain and Jake Evans. Its lifestyle networks — Bravo, E!, Oxygen — boast strong connections with consumers that benefit advertisers. With NBCU joining the OpenAP audience-targeting consortium, advertisers will have a broader pool of viewers they can reach using data-driven buying techniques.           

Ed Erhardt

Title: President, Global Sales and Marketing
Company: ESPN
2017 Ad Revenue: $2.609 billion*
Outlook: Live sports events continue to be attractive as on-demand viewing reduces ratings of on-demand programming. That leaves ESPN in a pretty strong position, despite its well-publicized decline in subscribers. Under new president James Pitaro, ESPN continues to position itself as an alternative to primetime for a broader range of products, not just beer and razors, with a large number of women tuning in. In April, ESPN launched its new app and its direct-to-consumer streaming product ESPN+, designed to capture the attention of sports fans and cord cutters and create additional advertising opportunities for sponsors.

Peter Olsen

Title: Executive VP, Advertising Sales
Company: A+E Networks
2017 Ad Revenue: $1.491 billion *
Outlook: At its upfront event in March, Olson promised media buyers that A+E Networks was planning to deliver “no gimmicks, just results.” The company’s networks, led by A&E, History and Lifetime, are doubling down on real-life story telling and it has signed deals with prominent women including Leah Remini, Elizabeth Vargas and Gretchen Carlson. A+E has also been aggressively pressing its work with Data Plus Math, the company getting attention for its attribution platform, which should provide marketers with a scorecard on what media work best and, within TV, which networks and shows really make the cash register ring.

Marianne Gambelli

Title: President, Advertising Sales
Company: Fox News
2017 Ad Revenue: $1.068 billion*
Outlook: With a hurricane of political news blowing across the nation, the category is gaining audiences, and those curious eyeballs are attracting ad dollars from additional advertisers looking for big numbers and live viewing. President Donald Trump’s favorite network has maintained its ranking as the No. 1 cable news channel and viewership is increasing for Fox Business Network. Fox News Channel has also been updating its digital product to attract users and advertisers. With tightly contested midterm elections coming up in November, viewership is expected to rise even more on Fox News and its cable news competitors, all of which will be offering special election-year political news and results packages at premium prices to sponsors.

Scott Collins

Title: President, National Advertising Sales
Company: AMC Networks
2017 Ad Revenue: $960 million**
Outlook: Known best for The Walking Dead, AMC has parlayed owning television’s No. 1 scripted series into big increases in ad rates over the past few years, despite declining viewership for the zombie apocalypse drama. And at a time when “peak TV” conditions are ratcheting up competition for viewers, AMC is doubling down on burnishing its reputation for airing high-quality scripted programming at scale on networks that gladly accept advertising. This year, AMC is also rolling out its data-driven advertising unit, featuring Aurora software that optimizes campaigns across networks.

Ed Georger

Title: Executive VP, Advertising Sales and Digital Media
Company: Crown Media Family Networks
2017 Ad Revenue: $505.9 million *
Outlook: Like the little engine that could, Crown Media’s Hallmark Channels keep increasing viewership with family-friendly and advertiser-safe programming, especially during the fourth-quarter holiday season, which is crucial to a whole range of marketers. Hallmark Channel continues to prosper with its focus on other holidays — Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. — and its support of pet-related projects, including its Kitten Bowl. Crown is producing additional movies for its maturing Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel and, at a time when many are looking for skinnier bundles, is pushing another linear network with Hallmark Drama.

Louis Carr

Title President, Media Sales
Company: BET
2017 Ad Revenue: $313.0 million*
Outlook: With linear ratings rising for the past three quarters, BET has maintained its status as the No. 1 cable network among African-Americans, a title it has held for 17 consecutive seasons. The network continues to emphasize how its viewers are avid consumers in many categories, including movies. BET special events — such as the BET Awards, the Hip Hop Awards and the Soul Train Awards — also pull big numbers. BET is big on social media and digital, and its BET Experience is the prototype in Viacom’s strategy for bringing fans to live events.