“Clearly, we’re going through a transition here,” Chase Carey, chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox, said during an earnings call last week. “Advertisers, without a doubt, have more choices. They want more flexibility in some ways. You could say the upfront we’re about to go into, while important, is probably a bit of an antiquated practice, given where the world is heading.”

For the advertising world, that direction is toward digital, and more of that money is likely to come from the share that has gone to the networks. While some streaming services like Netflix do not accept advertising, marketers are increasingly seeking out other new digital outlets that do, like Snapchat, Vine and YouTube, where viewers — especially younger ones — are spending an increasing amount of time.

“We’re at the tipping point now where the very role of TV in our mix is under consideration,” said Ivan Pollard, a top marketing executive at Coca-Cola North America. “Ten years ago, they held a much stronger hand than they hold today, but they all know that. They’re talking differently to us.”

Magna Global predicts that total TV ad revenues will be flat over the whole year, even as spending on digital media increases 19.1 percent. The group forecasts that digital media ad revenues will match television ad revenues by the end of 2016, each accounting for about $67.5 billion in spending and about 38 percent of the total ad market.

“There’s no question that we’re seeing a new advertising reality here, because money definitely has migrated out of traditional media into new media,” Robert A. Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, said during an earnings call last week. He added that he expected his company’s networks, which include ABC, ESPN and the Disney Channel, to fare “just fine” during the upfronts.

To compete, television networks are featuring a host of their own digital offerings during this year’s upfronts, along with more data and targeting capabilities, qualities that are extremely important to marketers as they seek to increase the effectiveness of their ads. Executives are also highlighting television’s ability to reach broad audiences, and big events, like sports and awards shows, also dominate.