The upfront that changed everything? Wait until next year.

The upfront this year is supposed to be dynamic and potentially transformative.

There’s a catch though. The upfront is also predicted to be soft.

Those two things seem diametrically opposed. Sprinkle in ongoing economic uncertainty, global turmoil, interest rate spikes, bank shutdowns and persistent inflation, and my bet is that a natural conservatism takes hold.

For all the talk of change, the macroeconomic conditions — and a potentially smaller pool of overall budgets — lend themselves to business as usual. Let’s look at some of the major predictions and whether they are likely to hold true.

The year of new currency

There’s a lot of talk about how challenging it is to implement new measurement and currencies within existing buying and selling infrastructure due to the amount of testing needed to ensure that new currencies are stable. Given that brands are cutting budgets and staffing while leaning harder than ever toward tracking ROI, a certain risk averse approach is likely to take hold.

Currency is too volatile to undergo a massive shift this season, especially when Nielsen data is still the baseline for most upfront conversations. While media companies have their reasons for wanting change (particularly to gain leverage on Nielsen and its historically big measurement bills), brands are likely to hold off on major shifts until things stabilize (hopefully) by next year’s upfront.

To put this in context: Would now be a good time for the U.S. banking system to shift from dollars to bitcoin?

Attention metrics are all that matters
As the TV business looks to implement better ways of counting audiences, it’s also considering an entirely new way of valuing media channels, ad exposures, ads themselves and everything else. A new crop of attention-tracking firms are raising money and making noise. However, incorporating entirely new data sets — and advertising philosophies — along with new currencies would be challenging under the best of circumstances. Making a change of this magnitude now will likely ultimately feel too risky beyond a few small tests.

Attribution should win

This prediction I feel more strongly about. Yes, it has historically been challenging to track return on TV ad spend, and yes, various attribution systems can add complexity to an already cluttered playing field. But if there is an area where brands and their agencies can push without getting pushback from the CMO, it’s attribution. Thus, we’d expect more aggressive adoption here.

Moving out of TV altogether?

Surely, we’ve already seen many TV advertisers move spending to CTV. But even amidst declining viewership and cord cutting, fully moving budgets out of linear to streaming or even mobile platforms likely feels too extreme in this climate, even for the most forward leaning marketers.

At the end of the day, we expect that most ad buyers and their CMO counterparts are likely to stick with the tried and true this year — which includes plenty of old-fashioned TV. After all, given the circumstances, experimenting isn't really considered a prudent use of budgets, particularly at public companies. And to be sure, no one wants to be responsible for a failed budget on an experimental tech in this environment.

Adam Helfgott is CEO of Madhive.