Like television itself, the TV advertising space is evolving.

“It’s really morphing from a blue ocean to a red ocean. So, you can appreciate the additional inventory, the additional content that frankly allows the channel to be more efficient and less stale for viewers. So it does seem like it’s going to increase,” Denny’s vice president of brand engagement Erik Jensen said regarding his belief that consumer demand post-pandemic will soar, leading to higher TV advertising spending than ever.

Jensen explained this outlook to Variety’s digital editor Todd Spangler as part of Variety Upfronts, presented by LG Ads. The panel discussed succeeding in marketing for modern connected TV audiences and included LG Ads’ co-founder and chief product officer Raghu Kodige; Ricardo Rivera, the group director and senior director of PepsiCo at OMD USA; Fox Corporation’s executive vice president of sales and insights Audrey Steele; and Nicole Whitesel, Publicis Media’s executive vice president of advanced TV, client success.

Steele also noted that as connected TV has grown, so has non-premium digital.

“Non-premium video is saturated and tapped out in terms of what it can deliver, in terms of return on ad spend and CTV is really sort of just at the beginning of… its use, in terms of delivering on those objectives,” Steele said. “It’s perfect synergy with linear television, which is part of what helps drive its return on ad spend.”

“The other kind of important aspect is to sort of look at what consumers want,” Kodige added. “As long as you can keep the promise, that we all can keep the promise of keeping that content premium and those ads really relevant, because if you do that, I think the industry can continue to benefit from having more ad-supported streaming sort of take off, which I think benefits consumers as well as brands and agencies.”