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The cast of The Flash attend CTV Upfront 2014. In less than a week, Bell Media will promote CTV’s upcoming season at Toronto’s Sony Centre.

In less than a week, the Sony Centre in downtown Toronto will host advertisers and their agencies expecting a star-studded show to promote CTV's upcoming season. The red carpet glitz of these "upfront" presentations is an annual tradition in the industry.

But this year, CTV owner Bell Media is the exception.

Its rivals, Shaw Media and Rogers Media, have chosen to scale back their presentations, opting instead for smaller meetings that will allow more face time with their most influential clients.

"We wanted to make it more customized to our agency and client partners," said Alan Dark, senior vice-president of media sales for Rogers. "That's hard to do that when you have 1,500 people in a room."

"We will still reach, across a number of different events, many of those same 2,000 to 3,000 people [that would have attended a bigger upfront]," said Shaw Media president Barb Williams. "But we will do it in smaller events that will target the audience at hand."

It's a major shift in how some of Canada's biggest media players are thinking about selling their advertising.

Upfronts have long been the norm for TV networks in both the United States and Canada – where parties take place shortly after broadcasters have flown to Hollywood to buy rights to air prime-time shows here. They are a chance for networks to convince advertisers and their ad agencies to buy time during hot new programming to air their commercials.

The last time the broadcasters scaled back the annual razzle-dazzle was in 2009, as the financial crisis led to slashed advertising spending across the board. At the time, networks held smaller events and did not call them upfronts: instead, CTV's presentation was called "UpClose" – still a large gathering, but minus the stars – and Global's was "Global Presents." Citytv also held a smaller event.

Rogers in particular has been under some pressure as its massive investment in hockey has not yet delivered the ratings it was hoping for. But Mr. Dark emphasized the scaled-back presentations are not about cost cutting. Rogers is actually spending slightly more, he said, to host six separate events in Toronto and further events in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

"More and more, what we're focused on is not only delivering audiences for clients, but customizing campaigns," Mr. Dark said.

The changing media landscape also plays a role. While TV is still an incredibly important medium for advertisers looking to speak to a lot of people at once, there aren't as many people watching the same show at the same time as there used to be.

Those fragmented audiences mean that advertisers have been more focused on intelligently targeting their messages to customers, rather than a mass approach.

And online video has been growing.

This year, 67 per cent of ad agency executives in Canada said they believe that "online video advertising is as effective or more effective than TV," according to an annual study released by Brightroll and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Canada. The survey of 130 executives also found that nearly one-third now see requests for online video in a majority of requests for proposals from marketers. That number has grown 47 per cent in the past two years.

The majority of the time that Canadians spend consuming media is now happening through digital devices – computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones, according to figures from research firm eMarketer. Time on digital devices will grow 13.4 per cent this year to four hours and 12 minutes a day on average, according to estimates based on analyses of more than 20 different studies. TV still accounts for the second-highest time spent, but it is not growing.

"It is much more about a one-to-one relationship that the customer is developing with their choice of content on their choice of platform," Ms. Williams said. "… The advertiser is also trying to figure out how to move successfully from a one-to-many world to a one-to-one world. We need to be taking a whole different approach to advertising that's much more data-driven, much more targeted, much more addressable and more suited to that one-to-one state that we're aiming for."

Digital media have also changed the way information spreads, Ms. Williams said. Upfronts used to be the big reveal of who had what shows. Now, by the time the Canadian networks get around to theirs, most people have seen the preview clips and read about the most promising offerings.

The change in approach is not happening everywhere. In New York this year, the major American networks continued with their big upfront events, said Judy Davey, executive vice-president of activation at media buying and planning firm ZenithOptimedia, who was there.

But she believes a change in the structure of these sales pushes could be a good thing.

"I like the opportunity to have the one-on-one discussion with greater understanding of what's important to me," she said. "… I don't need to go to a big party, have drinks and meet celebrities."

With deadlines looming to lock in upfront rates on ads, some media buyers also find the barrage of events three days in a row to be unnecessarily exhausting.

At a smaller event, "the buyers can ask more questions as opposed to being fed all the information," said Inese Korbs, senior vice-president of investments at agency IPG Mediabrands.

It's an interesting time for TV to be switching up its game. As online video has grown, digital players such as Google Inc., Yahoo and AOL have borrowed straight from TV's playbook, hosting their own upfront-style presentations to woo advertisers and the agencies who buy media for them. It's a recognition of just how powerful a bit of showmanship can go in selling media.

"It's not too often we get to have 2000 customers in the same room," said Perry MacDonald, senior vice-president of CTV sales. "If we're talking about how great television is, we have to get out there and put our money where our mouth is."

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