How Trump tariffs are impacting media spending and the TV upfronts

Media buyers and sellers have described a marketplace tinged with looming uncertainty related to the unknown impact of tariffs since last year’s presidential election. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced Wednesday, including a 10% tax on all foreign trade partners and additional reciprocal tariffs posing far higher rates on certain countries, has sent the marketplace into chaos. “Yesterday’s news will change the conversation from what might happen to planning for the worst,” said one media buyer, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity. “We’re still waiting on the material impact, outside of markets tanking and how consumers will respond,” they added. The broader stock market registered its worst day Thursday since 2020, with the S&P 500 down nearly 5% and Nasda’s decline nearing 6%. While the immediate impact is still being evaluated, media buyers find themselves at the precipice of upfront season, during which advertisers set long-term commitments to media sellers, including their most in-demand inventory such as the Super Bowl, which NBCUniversal is already actively pitching at $7 million per unit. Before Trump’s tariff announcements, multiple U.S. ad sales forecasts from IPG’s Mediabrands and consultancy Madison and Wall had already lowered industry growth rates in part due to the potential impact of the tariffs. Read more: 2025 US ad growth forecast lowered due to Trump policies A second buyer said they’ve been receiving constant calls from media sellers asking about the state of client budgets and commitments, but that they weren’t hearing from clients to start planning their next moves. “I have never experienced a phenomenon with such a big thing in the news and so little [communication],” they said. While talk of tariffs has been active for months, from Trump’s campaign to initial taxes aimed at Canada, Mexico and China to category-specific auto tariffs and now the tax across all trade partners, the implementation has nonetheless shaken many. One agency responded to a request for comment by saying they remain in “wait and see mode.” See also: how brands are referencing tariffs in their ads “The advertising, media and marketing industries have all become incredibly short-term focused and myopic, certainly over the last decade,” said Dave Morgan, CEO of TV ad platform Simulmedia. “Unfortunately, way too many people in the industry have become reactive and not proactive. What this will mean is total commercial communications will go down, and that means total employment in the sector will go down and long-term commitments and spending will be shortened because of the uncertainty.” However, while the specific outcome of the tariffs remains unclear, multiple sources noted that the uncertainty caused by them, nonetheless, has just as hard an effect as any potential negative outcome. What it means for spending While Morgan predicts overall spending to decline across the board, the tariffs could indicate multiple outcomes per category and per marketer. That’s because the taxes could play out in a variety of ways based on each business’s evaluation of its supply chain, including the timing of product launches and shuffling of product line rollouts based on reworking where materials are sourced, said Morgan. These core production elements can have great impact on media investments as brands look to plan long-term channel strategies and inventory placements. And, beyond the brands themselves, anticipated strain on consumer spending as a result of the tariffs could be another reason brands need to reevaluate their media strategies, said Morgan. “The upfront is a futures game—any uncertainty forces marketers to pull back on long-term commitments, which is bad for the upfront,” said the first buyer. This could result in marketers suspending spend in brand-building channels such as TV while focusing on performance media bought in short-term deals. However, the math isn’t necessarily so simple. The second buyer said some marketers found success in the beginning of the pandemic in launching brand campaigns to speak to consumer pain points, although doing so may not be possible for all advertisers’ budgets. The buyer anticipates some media companies to be fast to offer discounts and incentives to combat spend fleeing the TV marketplace. “Some will move fast in the upfronts because the TV companies may be so worried that they’ll discount things early,” said Morgan, echoing the second buyer. And outside of discounts, Morgan expects pricing in TV to broadly decline as consumers feeling wallet pressure choose to stay home and watch TV rather than go out. “We’re going to see impressions going up and spend against it going down, which is going to put downward pressure on pricing.” This comes as buyers and sellers already have a difficult task during this year’s upfront in resetting rates based on the transition to exclusively trading on big data currencies, promising an even more complex math for upfront spenders. Read more: How Nielsen’s big data shift could disrupt the upfronts “More and more, we are seeing fewer must-buys [in an upfront model], and we’re seeing more of an always-on marketplace,” said a third buyer. While the buyer noted pushes in the TV and streaming space to measure business outcomes or guarantee on performance-based conversion metrics, the buyer said the market uncertainty exacerbates competition between legacy media and digital, tech, social and retail media. With digital media, “you’re getting performance and efficiency, and these are things that really matter to clients” in tighter economies, said the third buyer. “In order for what we would consider the traditional upfront video marketplace to ensure that they’re staying competitive, focus on efficiency, focus on flexibility and focus on performance.” “Flexibility” became the defining word of the pandemic marketplace as advertisers sought digital-like deals with longer cancellation windows and options as well as less firm dollar commitments to TV inventory. While the second buyer said the market has “taken its foot off the gas” in demanding flexible deal terms more recently, “never before has flexibility been more important” and buyers will have less wiggle room at the negotiation table. “Whatever I need, they have to give me,” said the second buyer of talks with media sellers. “Somebody’s going to want to take my money.”

How Trump tariffs are impacting media spending and the TV upfronts

Featured Stories