At Upfronts, Warner Bros. Discovery focuses on cultural influence over showmanship

As Shakespeare famously wrote in Hamlet, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” It’s also the way to win over ad buyers during a busy upfront week.

“We do not want to be your longest presentation of the week, but we do want to be your most impactful,” Ryan Gould, co-president of US ad sales at Warner Bros. Discovery, said to kick off the company’s upfront at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday morning. “In the spirit of good partnership, we will do our best to keep this show to about an hour. So put us on the clock.”

The presentation was concise; we clocked the show at an hour and eleven minutes. So was the way the company addressed the question on everyone’s minds: What about the Paramount of it all?

“Good partnership is what drives us here at Warner Bros. Discovery, so before we go on we do want to address the Ellison—I mean, the elephant—in the room,” Bobby Voltaggio, co-president of US ad sales at Warner Bros. Discovery, said. While there’s change ahead for the company, Voltaggio and Gould noted, there’s change across the media landscape before assuring buyers that the teams they know and work with will shepherd them through the coming transition.

And with that, the execs were done addressing the future of the company during the presentation, moving on to the typical showmanship of the day and pitching its programming as a cultural force with the power to drive business results.

To prove the point, Warner Bros. Discovery began by bringing out two supporting stars of surprise hit Heated Rivalry, Francois Arnaud and Robbie Graham-Kuntz, who shared how the show has helped propel interest in the sport of hockey.

Talent from the company’s news programming (Anderson Cooper, Abby Phillip, Kaitlan Collins, Craig Ferguson), sports programming, (Shaquille O’Neal, Adam Lefkoe), premium shows (The Pitt’s Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa, The Gilded Age’s Morgan Spector, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’s Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lapkus, Brian Posehn, and John Ross Bowie) film (M. Night Shyamalan), reality and competition shows (Leslie Jones, Terry Crews), and even some stars of the Puppy Bowl were on hand to promote the company’s new lineup.

Counting culture: Warner Bros. Discovery execs don’t expect advertisers to take their word for it that the company’s offering is culturally relevant and useful for their business goals.

The company introduced a new measurement and attribution dashboard as well as new ad tech capabilities including a contextual tool, Scene-Level Moments, which allows advertisers to more closely match advertising to what’s happening on screen.

The company also highlighted new shoppable pause ads, more dynamic creative capabilities, and coming agentic experiences for buyers in attendance.

What’s old is new…and novel? The company also highlighted how the more traditional production model for its hit medical procedural The Pitt means the show returns annually, a contrast with the more-typical years-long wait between seasons that has become the norm on streaming. That turnaround time has helped the series grow: Viewership for the show is 61% higher year over year, with The Pitt averaging nearly 17 million viewers in the US this year, the company shared.

A more traditional production schedule can not only help shows grow audiences year-over-year but help it capture audiences online and drive the cultural conversation that brands desire.

“When a story sticks with you, you want to talk about it every single week,” Shauna Spenley, global chief marketing officer of direct-to-consumer at Warner Bros. Discovery, said. “It’s current, it’s kinetic, it’s relevant and our shows dominate these feeds and ignite culture in real time.”