On May 13, Warner Bros. Discovery held its 2026 Upfront at Madison Square Garden, presented by ad presidents Ryan Gould and Bobby Voltaggio. It was the upfront with the most direct programmatic news of the week — and the most uncertain future.
The substantive announcements:
- Nearly 50% of WBD’s biddable inventory demand is now coming through upfront commitments — a structural change in how upfronts are negotiated
- WBD is opening up live sports inventory (NCAA March Madness, French Open) to programmatic with strict DSP/SSP performance requirements (2M queries per second)
- A shift from PG (Programmatic Guaranteed) deals toward PMPs, with Steinhauser noting PG growth is “leveling off”
- Launch of shoppable pause-screen ads and scene-level targeting via a Kerv.ai integration
- A centralized cross-channel performance dashboard for in-flight optimization
- A new measurement dashboard tied to the OpenAP Big Nine CAPI (which WBD joined this week)
- Q1 2026 ad revenue: $1.85B
- Executives openly discussed a potential acquisition by Paramount Skydance (“the Ellison in the room”) — this may have been WBD’s final standalone upfront
Jill Steinhauser of WBD: “We’re seeing programmatic guaranteed… still very sizable, the growth is leveling off. What we’re seeing now is more and more upfront going biddable.”
01The structural story: PG plateaus, PMP rises
Programmatic Guaranteed deals — fixed price, fixed inventory, programmatic pipes — were the publisher’s way to convert insertion orders into automated execution. WBD is saying out loud what every premium publisher has been seeing in their pipeline reports: PG growth has flattened, and incremental dollars are going to PMP (Private Marketplace) deals.
This is a meaningful change. PMPs give buyers more flexibility — they can swap audiences, adjust pacing, pull back budget — while still preserving the deal-ID-level controls publishers care about. They are functionally upfront-style commitments but transacted with auction-style execution.
The implication for the wider market: the future of upfront commitments is biddable. If your sales team is still pitching PG as the default automation path, you are pitching last year’s product.
02Shoppable pause + scene-level targeting
WBD’s launch of shoppable pause-screen ads and scene-level targeting via Kerv.ai is also a major signal. Pause ads moved from “interesting innovation” to “expected upfront product” in a single week (WBD launched, Tubi launched, Trade Desk Kokai launched a pause-ads beta, Netflix is in testing).
Scene-level targeting — buying impressions based on what is on-screen — is the more interesting of the two. It is the kind of contextual capability that doesn’t require third-party cookies, doesn’t fight the deprecation timeline, and aligns with the agentic AI buying pattern (an agent can target “luxury car content” without resolving who the user is).
If you are a premium publisher with similar editorial or video content, the question is: can a buyer programmatically target the same scene-level contexts on your inventory? If not, this is a sprint.
WBD's upfront crystallized two structural shifts: biddable is eating PG, and shoppable/scene-aware formats are becoming the new floor.
03The Paramount Skydance merger in the room
The Ellison reference was about David Ellison and Skydance’s pending acquisition path that could ultimately fold WBD into Paramount Skydance. The deal is reportedly being negotiated at a ~$110B scale.
For publishers, the M&A scenario matters because:
- WBD + Paramount = an unmatched premium content portfolio. HBO/Max + CBS + Paramount+ + WBD’s sports rights + Paramount’s sports rights creates a content footprint that competes with Disney head-on.
- Two ad sales teams collapse into one, with rationalization of audience products, measurement frameworks, and DSP integrations. Buyers will get a single point of contact for what used to be two upfront pitches.
- The combined entity becomes a candidate to anchor a competing measurement / identity / CAPI standard — meaningful for the broader publisher ecosystem.
- It accelerates the trend of “fewer, larger premium publishers.” That’s good for the survivors and bad for everyone else’s leverage.
04What marketers should do
05The bottom line
WBD’s upfront crystallized two structural shifts: biddable is eating PG, and shoppable/scene-aware formats are becoming the new floor. Publishers who haven’t moved on either are running on a clock. And in the background, the M&A possibility means this may be the last year the WBD pitch stands alone — making everything they announced this week a preview of what the combined entity will demand from the ecosystem.