A host of Madison Avenue stalwarts are checking in to “The White Lotus.”
American Express, Diageo, Google, BMW of North America and Abercrombie & Fitch have struck sponsorship agreements for the third season of the popular series, and the arrangement spotlights how quickly the old rules of TV-ad sales are fading into the past.
In a not-too-distant era, HBO programs were shown free from commercials of any sort, and indeed, most of the programs that run on the premium cable service are not formatted for advertising interruptions. On Max, the streaming service of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, however, subscribers may not expect their programming to stream ad-free. A tier of the service supported by commercials, after all, costs less than one that is not.
Such dynamics allow Warner to create ad deals that pair commercials with programs they never would…
