NewFronts Adds Vice, Subtracts Fusion And Jukin Media Ahead Of Annual Conference

Less than two weeks before the 2018 edition of the NewFronts is expected to kick off, the annual conference has made some changes to its lineup of presenters. Vice, for the fifth year in a row, will pitch to advertisers at the annual New York-set gathering. Meanwhile, Jukin Media and Fusion Media Group are moving in the other direction, opting not to go forward with their presentations.

Both Jukin Media and Fusion Media Group had been expected to make their first-ever NewFronts presentations this May, but both companies are now making other plans. Jukin, which announced its decision to drop out earlier in April, noted that it plans to present at the first-ever Los Angeles edition of the NewFronts, which is expected to occur this fall. Fusion’s parent company, Univision, opted to wrap its digital subsidiaries into a larger presentation, which will go down across two days — May 14 and 15 — in New York.

Vice, meanwhile, will return to the NewFronts for the first time since it was rocked by a sexual harassment scandal

that broke at the end of 2017. The media company’s new CEO, Nancy Dubuc, will appear at the event. Previously, Vice’s NewFronts presentations have been notably wild; in 2017, for example, the company’s pitch included a boxing match between one of its execs and the host of one of its shows. We’ll see if the brand chooses to dress down this year in the wake of its internal turmoil.

In recent years, the list of NewFronts presenters has been a revolving door as companies reassess whether the chance to pitch ad people is worth the price of admission. Owing to that attrition, NewFronts organizer IAB opted to return the conference to a one-week schedule in 2018, after four straight years of two-week activity. An up-to-date schedule can be found on the IAB website.