AdWeek: Buyers Left Smarting After $9.3 Bil. Upfront

The 2004 upfront television buying season proved revealing. It appears that the upfront process itself isn't broken, but rather that the largest ad agencies have so committed themselves to an extremely heavy TV emphasis that they've lost the ability to say no to irrational price increases. The buyers threatened to move money away from TV, if the pricing didn't reflect the decreasing value, but only Deutsch actually squirreled away some money into another medium. The networks smelled suckers, and even ABC was able to tack on price increases. The message to online advertisers isn't optimistic: you can be as efficient as you'd like, but the budget gatekeepers aren't listening.