Survey: 73% of marketers to increase Upfront spending

JamLoop’s survey shows 73% of marketers plan to increase Upfront spending in 2026, with 67% citing price protection and 49% prioritizing access to premium live inventory. Live event CTV is increasingly viewed as a performance-capable channel, with 52.5% saying it can support both brand awareness and measurable business outcomes. The main friction points are limited flexibility (27.5%), rising CPMs, and inventory transparency.

Analysis

The cleanest takeaway is not “CTV demand is strong,” but that buyers are shifting budget from discretionary experimentation into quasi-defensive procurement. That favors the highest-quality live-event inventory owners and platforms with enough data plumbing to prove incrementality, while structurally pressuring fragmented sellers whose inventory is easy to substitute or harder to measure. In practice, this should widen the performance gap between premium, scaled streaming ecosystems and smaller ad-supported channels that compete mainly on cheap reach.

The second-order effect is on pricing power. When marketers are willing to commit earlier for CPM protection, the value of scarce live inventory moves up the curve before content delivery even begins, which tends to support better renewal economics for sellers with sports and tentpole rights. But the same dynamic is a tell: if buyers are explicitly paying for protection from higher CPMs, management teams with weak measurement stories may face a harder 2026 renewal season as procurement teams demand either concessions or usage-based accountability.

The contrarian risk is that this looks bullish for the category while being slightly bearish for margins if supply expands faster than demand. If more streamers and MVPDs flood the market with live-event ad slots, the premium can compress quickly, especially if broader ad budgets soften or recession risk forces marketers back into shorter commitment cycles. The real catalyst over the next 3-9 months is not spending intent; it is whether third-party measurement can close the attribution gap enough to convert cautious planners into larger, multi-year commitments. If it cannot, this remains a pricing story more than a volume story.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Overweight the highest-quality CTV ad inventory owners versus lower-tier ad-supported streamers over the next 3-6 months; the setup favors names with premium sports/live rights and stronger first-party data, where pricing power should outlast sector-wide sentiment.
• Use any post-Upfront strength to short weaker monetization stories in the CTV stack for a 6-12 month horizon, focusing on platforms that rely on undifferentiated inventory and have limited measurement differentiation; the risk/reward improves if procurement pushes back on flexible commitment terms.
• Consider a pair trade: long premium live-event exposure / short generic digital ad inventory exposure for the next earnings cycle. The thesis is that scarce, measurable inventory captures budget first while commoditized impressions bear the brunt of any CPM normalization.
• If you want expression via options, buy 3-6 month calls on the best-in-class streaming/platform names into the Upfront season and finance partially by selling calls on lower-quality peers; the trade monetizes dispersion rather than a broad sector beta move.
• Watch for a reversal trigger in 1-2 quarters: evidence that measurement vendors cannot link live viewership to business outcomes. If that happens, fade the trade quickly, as the current willingness to pre-commit is likely to roll off into shorter-term buying.