I wrote a piece for The Drum (a website about marketing) about this year’s TV Upfront advertising marketplace, the scripted content shortage, and why smart marketers should invest in the creator economy and in high quality news to drive Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) or ROI in 2024. Here’s an excerpt:

The media industry is facing a summer of discontent. TV networks are suffering through one of the slowest Upfront sales periods in recent memory. The online ad industry is still plagued with waste and fraud. And now Hollywood is on strike, meaning we’re unlikely to see any new scripted programming before 2024.

All of this comes at a bad time for an industry that is reeling from ratings declines in traditional media, increased production costs, and competition for attention from gaming and social media. It’s a tough environment for any marketer to demonstrate return on investment with their advertising dollars.

If you’re an advertiser, the obvious places to turn in the absence of fresh, scripted programming is sports and unscripted television. These might work for some advertisers who need to get their messages to market in the run-up to the holiday shopping season. Increasing local advertising investments might also be worth contemplating.

There are two other areas that I’d suggest that you consider: the creator economy and news.

Read more at The Drum.

Lou Paskalis is Chief Strategy Officer of Ad Fontes Media, a Public Benefit company that is dedicated to restoring advertisers’ investments in reaching audiences in quality news journalism with a unique technology that allows them to measure, mitigate and monitor bias and reliability in a manner consistent with their values and principles. Previously, he was President and COO of MMA Global, a trade association focused on architecting the future of marketing. In that role, he was responsible for driving innovation and change across a broad portfolio of functional areas, initiatives and forward-looking activities centered on shaping the future of marketing. He has three decades of client-side leadership experience, having led Global Communications Planning, Media Investment, Marketing Data Strategy and Brand Safety and Suitability at Bank of America; Media, Content and Mobile Marketing at American Express and many related roles at E. & J. Gallo prior to that. He is well- known as an outspoken champion for marketing innovation, governance and the advancement of the art and science of marketing as well as a strong advocate for journalism and marketers’ unique responsibility to support news organizations in their valiant efforts to defend truth.