As the TV industry slogs through Upfronts season, the traditional broadcasters and cable nets are facing increasing competition both from new channels, as well as digital video outfits.

Variety reported Friday that the TV nets are having to think increasingly outside the box this year as an ever-growing list of content providers vie for a piece of the advertising pie.

The fledgling El Rey Network has already announced advertising pacts with General Motors and Heinecken USA.

More established players like Cartoon Network and The Weather Channel are looking at new ways of serving up ads in shorter bursts, in the hopes that younger audiences won’t tune them out.

And while there has been movement towards the upstarts, traditional TV is still the majority player in the advertising game.

“To be sure, new players are dwarfed by more traditional ones. Advertisers spend $60 billion to $70 billion annually on U.S. TV of all stripes — broadcast, cable, local, syndication and Spanish-language,” wrote Variety’s Brian Steinberg. “Meantime, 2012 Internet ad spending came to approximately $36.6 billion, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. Of that total, just $3.4 billion was spent on mobile advertising.”

Read More: Variety

Brief Take: With an ever-increasing array of companies serving up original television and digital video content, the traditional networks—both broadcast and cable—will have to think outside the box to retain their share of the advertising pie.

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