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The 2025 Warner Bros. Discovery upfront began long before ad sales leaders Ryan Gould and Bobby Voltaggio took the stage.
The Friday before its upfront event, WBD shared details about its new adtech tools—the linear demographic tracker DemoDirect and the forthcoming, data-driven, full-portfolio ad platform NEO. In addition, the company announced WBD Storyverse, which opens the WBD content library of IP like Harry Potter or Friends to brands for potential partnerships, and the re-rebranding of Max to HBO Max, with Spider-Man memes of various brand iterations all teed up for the occasion.
The announcements set the stage for Gould and Voltaggio’s first upfront as ad presidents since replacing Jon Steinlauf in February, as the company doubled down on prestige and came to market as one streamlined WBD.
ADWEEK’s upfront postmortem interviews have already included NBCUniversal, Fox, Amazon, and Disney, and now WBD’s Gould and Voltaggio are opening up about how brands can utilize WBD Storyverse, the company’s adtech, the value of enduring titles and stories, and if they’ll do this all again next year.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Warner Bros. Discovery teased WBD Storyverse, DemoDirect, and NEO before the upfront, but can you discuss how they all help ad buyers connect with the company more efficiently?
Ryan Gould: Over the past couple of years, we found a lot of success under this One WBD approach, and within that, we also had a handful of clients who leveraged our library of IP to help their brand messaging, both on and off of our platforms. If it happens once, it’s unique. If it happens twice, it’s a coincidence. If it happens three times, it’s a trend. And if it happens four more times, we made it a product.
In the past year, we’ve had a handful of partners who’ve come and leveraged our IP to build cultural, relevant, creative messaging and partner with us in deeper ways. So we just wanted to make a broader announcement [for WBD Storyverse] to the advertising community and just let them know that we’re open for these types of partnerships. And again, [at the upfront], we tried our best to balance the art and the science of advertising. That’s definitely more in the art silo. When we go over to DemoDirect and NEO, that’s more science.
Bobby Voltaggio: We have the content, and then we want to make it as efficient and streamlined in terms of the buying process for our clients and our partners. So, DemoDirect and NEO are to facilitate the ease of the activity. A big theme is to offer more and more transparency around how they’re buying, where their ads are running, the frequency in which they’re running, and the audience targeting elements—that’s all wrapped up in DemoDirect and NEO.
We’re trying to provide enhanced technology to meet our clients where they are, and just be as streamlined in the operational process as possible.
How important is that transparency and streamlining to a product like WBD Storyverse, where you’re offering an entire company’s worth of titles and properties but narrowing it to a brand’s specifications?
Gould: If you take the Hellmann’s example, which is essentially a romcom scene, we can take that creative and use our Moments [AI-driven content] product to align around similar scenes that feature a romantic, comedic tone.
Voltaggio: Our content lives everywhere, so ease of use for our clients to bundle it and find those ideal matches with the technology that we’re implementing here. It’s one cohesive offering.
How specific can brands get in a Storyverse search, and how involved should they be in the process?
Gould: We leverage AI and machine learning to scan our catalog of digital content, and it not only marks objects but also reads the copy to make assessments on sentiment. We can get super granular to targeting beach scenes or sunglass products, or whatever it may be.
One thing that I didn’t mention about Storyverse is the conversations that we’re having in the market and continue to have with brands. It is a collaborative process with the community, and we really need to find brand fit. One of the things that could go wrong is if we send a message that our complete catalog of IP is commercialized and open for everyone—that’s definitely not the case. This is a collaborative, white glove process with our top partners.
During the upfront—in the shift back to HBO Max, the discussions of the successful brand partnerships around White Lotus, and the preview of theatrical releases from both Warner Bros. and A24—was there intentional focus on creating shows and movies with enduring legacy similar to the series and films that drew brands to Storyverse?
Voltaggio: It’s a common theme that Ryan and I were getting across: The cultural relevance of our content. It’s the cultural relevance that drives conversation. It drives consumer behavior. So it’s a very holistic way that we’re approaching our content and utilization of that IP for our clients in this fashion, with the tech to back it up.
So when a show like The Pitt on Max finds that relevance, how did breaking down the silos make it easier to send Season 1 over to TNT before Season 2 debuts later this year?
Gould: The average consumer doesn’t say to their family and friends, “Hey, I’m going to stream The Pitt,” or, “I’m going to linear watch The Pitt.” They just say, “I’m going to watch The Pitt.”
They look at video pretty holistically, regardless of how it’s delivered into their living rooms. The disconnect from a B2B perspective is that planning, buying, and strategy is built differently for pay TV than it is for streaming and digital, but the products are kind of the same. We are super excited because season one of The Pitt on Max was a huge success, and then TNT still reaches tens of millions of people, so the promotional power of having Season 1 on Max is a nice flywheel of internal promotion for that show.
Now the commercial application just got that much more enticing, because now when we go to brands, we have connectivity, not only between Season 1 and Season 2, but we have connectivity between one of our most prominent linear networks and our streaming service, HBO Max. So there are definitely sponsorship opportunities that will be cross-platform, but also targeting abilities to reach specific audiences across both.
Voltaggio: If we could utilize the content in multiple areas and create a larger audience with incremental reach for our clients, it’s a win-win. With technology to cross over and sell in a converged fashion, so we can bundle it up for our clients, it makes it more meaty for them, more worthwhile.
WBD has taken those partnerships a step further by setting up activities and activations around specific shows and movies, reaching out to fans directly. How has that appealed to advertisers?
Gould: It’s two different applications. The first is creating new experiences and events for and around our IP in partnerships with brands, and we did this as recently as a few weeks ago, around the season three finale of The White Lotus. We set up an activation at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles, in partnership with American Express, Diageo, and Google—who were partners of the show—and this allowed them an opportunity to not only put their products in the hands of hundreds of thousands of fans, but also build social buzz and marketing with influencers. So we will continue to do that.
The other application is where we can show up on existing events in a unique way that cuts through the noise. We mentioned Comic-Con with Rick and Morty. The Last of Us had an activation at South by Southwest this year. How can we potentially show up at Coachella, Art Basel, Sundance, where there are existing audiences, where there’s an endemic fit with our IP? We definitely want to bring brands along for that ride.
In the TNT Sports segment of the upfront, WBD acknowledged what that division looked like last year when it still held NBA rights, but showed advertisers that it had substantial sports partnerships in the College Football Playoff, Roland-Garros (The French Open), the Unrivaled women’s basketball league, the Big East, and the Big 12, among other areas. What has buyer reaction been to the new configuration?
Gould: Ad buyers and brands appreciate our approach with our sports portfolio, because it’s straightforward, it’s sober, and it’s honest. We know what our sports portfolio is today versus what it was last year, and we’re genuinely excited about it.
The way that we interact with sports fans is different: It makes you feel good; it makes you feel warm and fuzzy; it makes you laugh. It’s serious, and it’s entertaining at the same time. What you find with brand partnerships is a very similar approach. If you look at the marketing that we do around our sports versus a competitive set, it’s more thoughtful. It’s more collaborative.
Voltaggio: It all goes back to the cultural relevance that we were talking about earlier: It’s an always-on fandom approach that is critical in that same conversation.
So, after a nearly two-hour upfront event and a week of announcements, are you going to be back at upfront week in 2026?
Gould: We haven’t had those conversations yet, but we are pleased with the execution of the event.
The marketplace has spoken in the last 12 hours, and I think that everything that we set out to accomplish at the upfront, we were able to do it. We wanted to be practical, we wanted to give calls to action, and we wanted to put our clients at the center, and we were able to do that. So, we’re excited to continue the conversations with clients around the actual upfront and the deal-making now that the presentation is over, and once that dust settles, we will probably take a look at next year.
