Selling Screen to Screen

With the dog-and-pony-show portion of the annual US kids advertising upfront out of the way, network sales execs are getting down to business as they fight for their share of the some US$800 million spent by advertisers on three key periods: Easter, back-to-school and Christmas. On the programming side, kidnets are continuing to push content into the digital realm, while their sales counterparts are taking this tack to reach untapped streams of ad revenue. And this year, a few new challenges are threatening to shake up the traditional advertiser/broadcaster relationship. To begin with, an industry-wide shift to embrace a new ratings currency is in the works.