Fox's Marianne Gambelli on Early Upfront Talks

The upfronts week presentations have ended, and now it’s time for the real work: the negotiations. Adweek is sitting down with each of the ad sales chiefs who presented this week to talk about their respective events and their strategies for navigating this year’s marketplace. Following NBCUniversal’s Mark Marshall, next up is Marianne Gambelli, Fox’s president of advertising sales. During Fox’s upfront presentation on Monday, she reminded marketers that unlike most of their rivals, her company is entirely ad-supported, with none of its content behind a paywall that advertisers can’t access. Gambelli, who had already discussed Fox’s upfront strategy in this week’s issue of Adweek (alongside Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier and Tubi CEO Farhad Massoudi), talked with us about getting animated for Monday’s event, what’s driving the upfront marketplace so far and how this year’s negotiations will be different from last year’s. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Adweek: What was the message you wanted Fox's upfront presentation to get across?Gambelli: First of all, to entertain and to be respectful of people's time in terms of making it something that they would enjoy watching. And to get our point across. We are 100% ad-supported; our content will be in front of a paywall [and] be accessible to your brands. We want to work with your brands, and we have great shows; we're taking the business that affects you very seriously. We put a very polished presentation forward to show that those things still matter. We're not focused on this streaming platform that is not going to be ad-supported and you won't have access to. We’re developing rich, premium content that your brands will embrace—and viewers will embrace. To that point of making sure people had fun, we got to see an animated version of you and your sales team in the presentation—but that wasn’t your real voice. What happened there?It was Alex Borstein who did my voice. All of the voices were done by the [voice actors] from Family Guy, who had done the animation. We thought it would be funnier and a little more cheeky if we did it that way versus us trying to be funny. Marianne Gambelli and her ad sales team in animated form. During upfronts week, companies sometimes take swipes at other presenters—certainly Jimmy Kimmel more than anyone—but it felt like Fox was a bit punchier this year than in the past.We feel like we have a completely different stance than our competitors. They're all becoming very much alike in how they're approaching the business and how they're approaching their content development, and we feel that we have this niche that's very unique and beneficial to our customers. So the idea [was] to take a little latitude—and with the animation, we felt like we could do it without being a direct hit. This was the first time Fox has done all three of its upfront events—Fox Entertainment, Fox News and Fox Sports—within a one-week span. They’re usually more spread out. Why were they more tightly compressed this year?It was more about timing. We knew we wanted news and entertainment close together. Tubi, obviously with the NewFronts [presentation], was locked into that time period. What we thought with sports, because NFL is so important to us and we have such a big investment there, we wanted to time that around the NFL [schedule] announcement [on May 12]. So we were trying to do things that made sense for informational purposes. Because again, you're asking people to commit time in a virtual world, so we waned to be respectful that the information was current and of value. With Broadcast’s Breadth and Tubi’s Depth, Fox Goes All-In on Ad-Supported in Upfront What have your early upfront conversations been like?There's a lot of optimism around the economy. I think brands are excited about what lies ahead. And I feel like that will be represented in this marketplace—I think brands will probably spend ahead of that, just because they're going to want to secure inventory that may have been very scarce last year. Again, they still need the scale of broadcast. Sports is playing a big role in that, because you can't get that scale anywhere else. And the return of all our production—[which means] originals across all our entertainment assets—I think bodes well for advertisers. They want to get in, so we do feel very confident that the market will be healthy. With all the connected TV platforms being so aggressive in coming for linear ad dollars this year, it must be nice to have Tubi in the fold as a way to counter those arguments.Tubi's the perfect brand extension for us. It brings in a much broader audience; it complements the Fox broadcast audience perfectly. It's younger, it's all the things we talk about. Plus, it's data digitally served, and it's all premium content. And it's all ad-supported, but [with] limited ad loads; it's all the things that you would want. Dollars are going to shift as audience is shifting, and we feel like Tubi is the perfect place to capture those dollars. Tubi Branches Into Originals to Build on Record Growth Under New Owner Fox What’s the biggest way this year’s upfront will be different than last year’s?Last year, you had uncertainty around everything. I think the uncertainty around sports was probably the biggest catalyst to slow things down. You didn't know what was happening with NFL, you didn't know what's happening with baseball; huge amounts of dollars were up in the air that I think just stalled clients, but there was also uncertainty about what the shutdown looked like. So I think having more confidence in the economy, having more confidence in the schedule and also being through a year of scatter where they weren't actually able to get the content that they wanted, because of scarcity—I think [all that] has led everyone to kind of [again] look at scale, saying OK, this piece is valuable. And we have to get that base laid in. Sports is actually leading our marketplace, ahead of entertainment. That just shows that brands need scale, and sports delivers.Marianne Gambelli What else are you seeing?Sports is actually leading our marketplace, ahead of entertainment. That just shows that brands need scale, and sports delivers. And no one delivers like broadcast when it comes to that type of reach. So I think that sports is playing a bigger role in brands’ marketing plans, because it's consistent, it's reliable. And you can't get that size and scale anywhere else. Is that because of the new NFL deal, where people know you’re in it for the long-term, or just the marketplace changing as we emerge from Covid?I think it's both. It's long-term consistency, but I also think sports has become more male-female, it has become an entertainment alternative, and [it] brings viewers to the TV set [for] a live sporting event. And it drives a social conversation—and all the other things that brands want to be part of. So I feel like it's a combination of both. Knowing that they can build some equity in a property for many years to come on the same platform, I think gives them comfort. What are your top upfront priorities this year?Showcasing and selling the power of the Fox portfolio, and focusing on Tubi, which is the perfect extension to Fox and further provides advertising partners with more opportunities to engage audiences at scale.

TV Upfronts

Fox’s Marianne Gambelli on Early Upfront Talks and Using Tubi to Grab Shifting Ad Dollars

Despite viewership changes, brands ‘still need the scale of broadcast’

Jason Lynch

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Jason Lynch