LAS VEGAS – If the news landscape feels like an all-you-can eat buffet with cable podcasts, newsletters, influencers and social feeds stacked high, this is not your imagination. Guy Griggs, senior vice president of ad sales and client partnerships at CNN, says the industry has splintered in spectacular fashion and he has the receipts from living through it twice.
“This is my second tour of duty at CNN,” Griggs said at CES 2026 in this conversation with Lisa Granatstein of Beet.TV. “Back then many of the streaming and digital platforms that are out now just simply didn’t exist.”
Podcasts were barely crawling and today they are sprinting alongside influencers who are followed “voraciously by young people because of their authenticity,” he said.
The result is choice everywhere and pressure on marketers to be smarter everywhere.
Scale still matters but now it lifts weights
For all the talk about context credibility and signal quality, Griggs isn’t ready to toss scale into the recycle bin.
“I don’t think that sheer scale will ever become unimportant,” he said.
Reaching net new audiences still wins campaigns. The trick is stacking precision on top.
“When you add on precision to scale, that’s like putting scale on steroids and that comes through context and credibility,” Griggs said.
Put trusted environments together with contextual behavioral and demographic cues, and you get what he calls the ultimate solution. Translation: fewer random impressions, more meaningful ones and fewer headaches in the media plan.
Trust turns impressions into partnerships
As partnerships move past selling impressions, Griggs keeps it simple and a little romantic.
“Trust is key,” he said.
Advertisers need confidence that partners know their audience challenges and objectives and can deliver outcomes.
“When you have that trust, that’s when the magic happens,” Griggs added.
In a world where everyone promises everything, trust is the currency that actually clears.
One portfolio, no silos
CNN is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the target of buyout offers from Netflix and Paramount Skydance. The pioneering news channel not only has linear cable channels, but also an expanding range of digital products. All its media brands share the same goal, Griggs said.
“We don’t even think about holistic or separate,” he said. “We think about agnostic.”
The approach starts with advertiser goals and builds a solution across the full wingspan of CNN’s portfolio. The aim is not to pick sides but to drive outcomes wherever audiences show up.
Personalization is the plot twist
Asked what caught his eye at CES, Griggs went straight to personalization and a new direct-to-consumer chapter.
“What I’m most excited about is personalization,” he said, pointing to CNN All Access, launched in November. Knowing the audience better opens the door to smarter tools and smarter advertising.
“There’s a lot of innovative tools that are gonna be coming out of that,” Griggs said. “I’m really excited about what’s next.”
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from CES 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
