The CW is bringing something unusual to this year’s upfront: a whole new night of programming.

The 2018 Upfront: Sales Execs Claim Strong Hand Going Into Upfront | Top Broadcast Sales Executives | Buyers Want Better Measurement, But Will Use Old Metrics in Upfront | Levy Wants 5% of TV Ad Budgets Spent on Audiences | Pitching Hispanic Buying Power | Broadcast Networks Take Center Stage

In February, the network, a joint venture of CBS and Warner Bros., announced it will broadcast original shows on Sunday nights. But to Rob Tuck, executive vice president for ad sales at The CW, the network is not just adding another night, but two more hours of original content.

The difference is that The CW’s young viewers are less likely to be gathered around the TV set on Sunday at 8 p.m. than most networks’ consumers. Instead they’ll watch whenever they want on digital devices ranging from connected TV to mobile phone.

Already Selling on Convergence

That digital demographic was one reason why The CW was an early mover in selling its advertising based on convergence, which means selling traditional and online viewing together, Tuck pointed out.

“We had to transform ourselves many, many years ago, because our audience was there,” he said, adding that while traditional ratings are eroding, multiplatform viewing of the network should be up by the end of the year.

Upfronts 2017: CW Charts Path From Broadcast Net to Multiplatform Player

The CW rolled out its own formula for planning and buying cross-platform ad schedules seven years ago.

“Obviously, our peers have all adopted it in some form,” he said. “It’s got a bunch of different names, but the concept is all there. The concept is the same.”

In April, NBCUniversal announced it would be using CFlight, a metric that combines linear and digital viewing, as its currency in the upfront. Other networks have adopted “fluidity,” which allows a network to fulfill audience guarantees using viewers watching on either traditional TV or digital.

“I applaud all the different models that are out there and what everybody’s trying to do, but the basis of it is we still have to have one overall rating so that you can really track what you’re doing across the different platforms,” Tuck said. “It just makes sense.” The CW’s size and its concentration on primetime shows for younger viewers makes fancy metrics and audience buying less of a priority than other channels that have other dayparts and a broader range of viewers.

Still, having a single way of measuring TV is important for advertisers and their agencies.

“Some form of uniformity would make a lot of sense and make it easier for us as well as everybody else,” Tuck said. “I don’t think the business is there yet in figuring that out.”

Tuck said The CW is testing Nielsen’s DTVR (Digital TV Ratings). “But we’ve got our eyes on a bunch of other things,” he added.

Benefiting From Current Trends

Though some analysts predict ad spending on TV to be flat to down in the future, Tuck said this is a good time for The CW to be adding programming. Advertisers are looking for more of the kind of content TV networks provide, in order to reach consumers as traditional ratings decline.

The CW will benefit from other trends in the industry, including the ad reductions going on at networks including Fox, NBC and the Turner channels. Dollars may also shake out of YouTube and other digital players because of concerns over safe content, viewabilty and measurement, Tuck said.

“I do think there is definitely an appetite to have more of the premium original content for our platform and so I just think that’s going to be an opportunity there,” he said. “We’re small, so we’re not going to change the dynamics of supply and demand in the market. But for us, this is big.”

When it comes to getting TV advertisers to shift their spending to data-targeted audience buying, Turner president David Levy isn’t messing around anymore.

Turner was one of the pioneers in offering data-based products and selling ads based on audiences rather than broad Nielsen demographic ratings, but audience buying remains a fraction of TV ad sales.

Levy wants that to change this upfront and is calling on all advertisers who haven’t yet adopted it to shift 5% of all their TV budgets — not just those spent at Turner — into audience-based buying.

The 2018 Upfront:Sales Execs Claim Strong Hand Going Into Upfront | Top Broadcast Sales Executives | Buyers Want Better Measurement, But Will Use Old Metrics in Upfront | The CW Brings a New Night to the Market | Pitching Hispanic Buying Power | Broadcast Networks Take Center Stage

Levy also wants to get rid of TV metrics that have been used since the 1950s. “You can start collecting your full benefits at 67 years old,” he said. “Nielsen’s TV metric is 67 years old. It’s time for the Nielsen TV metric to retire.”

Related: Fox, Turner, Viacom Team Up to Push Data-Driven TV Ads

The benefits to audience buying are clear to the hundreds of clients.

“We’re seeing incredible double-digit incremental results on return on investment,” he said.

If a consumer packaged goods client shifts 5% of its TV budget to audience-based targeting, it will see a 6% increase in return on investment compared to a 100% demo-based campaign. If 10% is audience-based, ROI rises 12%. If 20% is audience-based, ROI is 24% higher; and going 50% audience buying results in a 60% higher ROI.

On top of that, Turner has begun guaranteeing the outcomes of its audience-based campaigns. “And by the way, all of them have been successful,” Levy said.

There are benefits to TV networks in the shift to audience buying. For one thing, it eliminates dayparts. In TV, some advertisers won’t run ads in daytime or late night, even if that’s where their consumers are watching.

That doesn’t happen in the digital world that TV competes with. “You don’t say to Facebook, ‘Don’t put me on at 8 o’clock in the morning.’ When you log on to Facebook, or I log on to CNN.com, they don’t say what time did you log on, because I’m going to pay a different price for late night versus primetime,” Levy said.

Turner also gets a premium price. “If I’m guaranteeing you get those auto intenders, that’s going to be more expensive” than guaranteeing adults 18-49.

Levy stressed that he’s not looking for advertisers to just shift 5% of their spending at Turner.

Related: Attribution Data Points to TV Ads Driving More Sales

With Fox and Viacom, Turner is one of the founders of the OpenAP consortium, which aims to make audience buying easy by offering standardized definitions of audience segments and third-party post campaign reports.

“It’s an industry call-out,” he said. “This industry has to start spending 5% of their dollars on audience buying. As an industry we’re not getting enough clients to come in.

“This is the time, this is the year, when audience buying is a must. People are going to start getting left behind if they don’t start doing it.”

Levy’s 5% harkens back to the early days of cable, when ad agency Ted Bates decided to spend 5% of its TV budget on cable.

“Back then, people knew cable worked,” he said. “They knew it was going to help build reach and frequency. Now, if you want to build ROI, you need to get into audience-based targeting.”

Rita Ferro

Title: President, Ad Sales, Disney/ABC Television Group
Broadcast Network: ABC
2017 Upfront Sales: $2.1 billion.
Outlook: America’s Network is using a “Forward Together” theme to reinforce that Ferro’s team has a portfolio that includes ABC, Freeform and the Disney Media kids business. But with the “Disney Difference,” it can include other Disney units, from films to theme parks, in campaigns. Disney also just announced the launch of Luminate, a suite of advanced advertising products that will be used by both the Disney/ABC networks and by ESPN.

Joe Marchese

Title: President, Advertising Revenue, Fox Networks Group
Broadcast Network: Fox
2017 Upfront Sales: $1.6 billion
Outlook: Marchese is looking to innovate the heck out of the TV ad business. He said his goal was to get Fox’s ad load down to two minutes per hour by 2020. The first place he’s targeting is Sunday night, when each commercial pod will have just two 30-second spots. How much will advertisers pay for that uncluttered environment? We’ll see. Marchese is also pushing six-second ads, which seem to fit particularly well in live sports.

Tonia O’Connor

Title: Chief Revenue Officer, Univision Communications
Broadcast Networks: Univision, UniMás
2017 Upfront Sales: Not available
Outlook: With Telemundo hot on its heels, Univision is rolling out a number of new initiatives in time for this year’s upfront. Univision this month unveiled Aperture, a suit of data-driven advertising products that include precision targeting, a selfserve campaign builder and Campaign Impact, which help evaluate a media buy’s effectiveness. Aperture also features Fokal, an analytic firm that helps drive results across data sets. To reach younger viewers, Univision has made deals to produce projects with Snapchat, Facebook Watch and PopSugar.

The 2018 Upfront: Sales Execs Claim Strong Hand Going Into Upfront | Buyers Want Better Measurement, But Will Use Old Metrics in Upfront | Levy Wants 5% of TV Ad Budgets Spent on Audiences | The CW Brings a New Night to the Market | Pitching Hispanic Buying Power | Broadcast Networks Take Center Stage

Jo Ann Ross

Title: President and Chief Advertising Revenue Officer, CBS
Broadcast Network: CBS
2017 Upfront Sales: $2.5 billion
Outlook: Never better, according to CBS’s ebullient chairman and CEO Les Moonves. No longer stodgy, CBS has been a pioneer in the over-the-top and subscription businesses and Ross said advertisers are interested in CBS All Access, CBSN and CBS Sports HQ. Last year, Ross added digital sales to her portfolio, with former Facebook exec David Lawenda, now executive VP of digital sales and strategy, reporting to her. CBS has also set up CBS Eye Max, a unit devoted to ad innovation and creating branded entertainment with clients.

Rob Tuck

Title: Executive VP, National Sales, The CW
Broadcast Network: The CW
2017 Upfront Sales: } $500 million
Outlook: The CW is an early adopter in monetizing digital viewership, a key for a network that attracts young (for broadcast) viewers. Its convergence sell has been copied by other broadcasters to capture eyeballs glued to mobile phones, iPads and other connected devices. This year adds a new night of primetime programming (see related story), creating the opportunity to generate more advertising revenue.

Linda Yaccarino

Title: Chairman, Advertising Sales and Client Partnerships, NBCUniversal
Broadcast Networks: NBC, Telemundo
2017 Upfront Sales: $6.5 billion*
Outlook: NBCUniversal will kick off Upfront Week on May 14 with a presentation that covers its entire portfolio of broadcast, cable and digital opportunities for advertisers. Yaccarino has been pushing an advanced advertising agenda and this year helped give the audience buying business a boost by joining Fox, Turner and Viacom in the OpenAP consortium. NBCU also launched CFlight, a new metric that measures on air and online impressions. * NBCU upfront revenue across broadcast and cable.

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.

Sony Crackle has ordered a second season of gritty drama The Oath. the SVOD service said at its upfront presentation in New York Tuesday (April 24).

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson executive produces the show, which was created by Joe Halpin.

The Oath is the network’s most-watched new original series and has the highest retention rate, episode to episode, of any Sony Crackle original, the service said. 

Exploring a world of gangs made up of those sworn to protect and defend, the series “sheds light on corrupt and secret societies that are nearly impossible to join — only a select few make the cut — but once inside, members will do what they must to protect each other from enemies on the outside and from within their own ranks,” in Sony Crackle’s words.

“Our audience has truly responded to this authentic, raw and compelling series,” said Eric Berger, chief digital officer, Sony Pictures Television Networks and general manager, Sony Crackle. “Thanks to Joe, 50 Cent and our stellar ensemble and production team for bringing this powerful story to life. We look forward to taking the next step together.”

Season one featured Sean Bean, Ryan Kwanten, Cory Hardrict, Katrina Law and Arlen Escarpeta in the cast.

“The Oath has been one of the highlights of my professional career as a writer, so having the opportunity to take our storytelling to that next level is incredibly exciting,” said Halpin. “Sony Crackle, 50 Cent and the entire cast have been amazing collaborators. We have so much more story to tell and I can't wait to get started.”

Nickelodeon will resurrect its 1990s pre-school series Blues Clues, part of the more than 800 episodes of new and returning series slated in the upcoming year, the networks announced prior to its Tuesday evening upfront presentation.

The additional episodes – up 20% from last year – is part of the network’s overall strategy of giving it target kids audience an opportunity to experience its content on a variety of platforms and through new technologies such as virtual reality and location-based experiences. 

Among the new shows to hit Nickelodeon in 2018 and 2019 is a remake of Blues Clues, featuring the original animated puppy Blue and an as yet revealed new live-action host, according to the network. The series ran on Nick Jr. from 1996 to 2006 

Also making a comeback to Nickelodeon is a spinoff of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The animated Rise Of The Mutant Ninja Turtles series will feature the voice of WWE superstar John Cena as villain Baron Draxum, according to the network.

Other new series include Los Casagrandes, a spinoff from the network’s animated series The Loud House featuring show characters Ronnie Anne and his brother Bobby Santiago; and Pony, an animated buddy comedy that follows the life of an average girl whose talking pony comes to live with her and her family.

On the live-action front, new shows include Keep It Spotless, a competition series from the WWE’s John Cena; Knight Squad, a comedy set at a magical school for knights in training; and Musical Dares, a short-form series that features a new twist on the classic concept of musical chairs. 

Signature Nickelodeon series returning with new episodes include Spongebob Squarepants, The Loud House, Henry Danger, The Thundermans and Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn.

Nickelodeon also announced a new partnership with IMAX to bring its multi-player, virtual reality offering SlimeZone to select IMAX VR Centres globally this month.

Nickelodeon Group President Cyma Zarghami said the network’s rollout of new content and new technological advances represent the network’s efforts to “reinvent” itself for a new generation of audiences accessing content on new generation platforms. While the network is not abandoning its linear TV roots, she said the network has to reach kids where they are with content they want.

“Great IP will take viewers to every platform,” she said. “That’s not to say we’re leaning one way or the other; it is to say that unlike five or 10 years ago when something works, it works everywhere. The reach you get with linear, even with a diminishing universe is still a significant audience.”