Why WBD’s Jon Steinlauf Is Pitching Streaming Debuts as Cultural Moments

Warner Bros. Discovery took the upfront stage last Wednesday amid a swirl of unknowns, including the fate of its NBA rights package, the future of the Venu sports streamer and the viability of its bundle alongside Disney.

However, the company also made one thing particularly clear: After a writers’ strike and a complex merger, WBD’s full potential is finally becoming apparent.

In particular, the media company unveiled one of the strongest slates of content of any television network or streamer. The bonanza of forthcoming franchises—including new seasons of House of the Dragon, White Lotus and And Just Like That—will hit Max in tandem with a bevy of blockbuster theatrical titles, such as Dune 2, Furiosa, Wonka and Joker 2. New titles, including The Penguin and The Sympathizer, add further heft to the portfolio.

With such a “hot hand,” as ad sales chief Jon Steinlauf calls it, WBD internally referred to its upfront last week as the IP Upfront, a chance for it to showcase these moments as opportunities for brands to reach viewers during a moment of heightened attentiveness. 

ADWEEK’s post-upfront conversations (see Disney, TelevisaUnivision, Fox, and NBCU) continue with Steinlauf, who told us about WBD’s 2024 upfront event, the commercial opportunities available with the company’s “Screen to Stream” strategy, and the backstory on how CNN landed the first presidential debate live during its Wednesday morning presentation.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

ADWEEK: What were the main priorities, in terms of messaging, that WBD wanted to communicate at the upfront?

Jon Steinlauf: It was split between the power of our intellectual property and our advanced advertising capabilities.

For my portion of the presentation, we wanted [HBO Chairman and CEO] Casey Bloys to lead me because Casey was going to talk about the Original Series, which he did, and I was going to tell advertisers what they could do around that. I was also able to pick up on the theatrical opportunities and fold them into that larger conversation. What we are offering advertisers—an opportunity to sponsor theatrical releases and original series when they debut on Max—is something we have never done before.

I also offered the example of what we did with GMC in True Detective, incorporating some of their vehicles into the series because there was the thematic alignment between GMC being suited for rough terrain and the filming location of the series.

Then the second half of the speech was about our advertising capabilities. The first year WBD existed, we didn’t have the bandwidth to do this. The two companies merged one month before the 2022 upfront. We had two different venues booked and had to figure out how to consolidate our programming and messaging. Then last year we had the strike. This year, we have had a team of data scientists working to gather data from all the touchpoints in the WBD ecosystem. We have theatrical, gaming, Bleacher Report, CNN and more, and we have been working on ways to knit all of that data together into one offering, which is One WBD.

This year marks the first year in which ad spend on streaming video will surpass ad spend on linear, and the WBD upfront seemed to reflect that. Many of its most anticipated series were living exclusively on Max.

I come from a time when broadcast and primetime ruled ad sales, and the cable networks held the upfront to showcase what was coming up. Today, there is far less of that. Most of the premiere shows are debuting on streaming, and it has become the new battleground. Things have changed, and marketers are saying that if they want to wrap themselves around big IP, they have to look to the streaming universe to find those cultural moments. Fortunately, between our theatricals and new original series, we have a hot hand right now.

You also spoke about some of the ways WBD is using AI when serving ads in Max.

Our new contextual understanding product is going to be a really big focus. Using AI, we are able to land ads in scenes of shows that provide inspiration. For instance, during a cooking segment on Food Network, a chef could be grilling a panini, and right after, we could run a spot for a dairy brand. Or. more ambitiously, think about a category like travel. With some upcoming series, such as the third season of White Lotus, Conan O’Brien Must Go or Searching For with Eva Longoria, we are showing beautiful locations that will put people in a mindset to book trips of their own.

In series like those, all of a sudden we have natural contextual alignment with categories like hotels, airlines, tourism boards and many others. 

On the IP front, you mentioned that this screen-to-stream strategy can be a jumping-off point for larger sponsorships. Does that work backward into the archive?

Think about series like Dune, And Just Like That or even House of the Dragon. These series can all be sponsored when they debut on Max, but they also have related IP with extensive backlogs that people are still consuming for the first time. With Dune Prophecy, the new Dune series debuting this fall, we not only have the two recent Dune films, but we also have the IP to the 1980s film. Same with the Sex and the City and Game of Thrones franchises. Both have ongoing adaptations—a mix of film and television series—as well as a massive library of material that can also be advertised against. This allows brands to own share of mind across entire franchises that might be important to the demographic they are looking to reach.

I want to talk about one of the more memorable upfront moments. After walking the audience through some new information about CNN, CEO Mark Thompson came back on stage with a series of notecards. He then shared that President Biden and former President Trump had just agreed to their first televised debate, which would be hosted on CNN. Can you shed any behind-the-scenes insight on how that came about?

I was backstage and trying to follow along with the whole thing, but my understanding is that it had just gotten approved by both campaigns while we were live. I will say that Mark had a line when he broke the news that I think he had made up on the spot, but it was a perfect sales pitch. He said, “When people have something important to say, they say it on CNN.” And then he looked at the crowd of advertisers and said, “And I think you should, too.” Talk about a great line.

Will WBD be back at the upfronts next year?

The last few years have each had their own unique wrinkle, so this is the first year that I think the CFOs can credibly hope to crunch the ROI on these events. I think client attendance was great—we tracked around 3,000 attendees, with a lot of out-of-towners. I think people come in for upfronts, and they attend multiple presentations, schedule some key meetings and get to attend some nice after-parties. I think the buyers get plenty of bang for their buck, and we get to build up momentum that ends up being helpful in getting deals closed.