NBCUniversal has just closed its Upfronts and benefited from the travel sector’s strong return to the market, with a 30% increase in advertising commitments from that category. But Pharmaceutical outpaced all industries with a near 40% expenditure increase.

NBCUniversal says its One Platform (a holistic cross-platform buying and planning solution spanning local, national and global inventory) is “driving a halo effect for the industry across unified, enterprise-scale partnerships”. It also reports that more agencies have been prioritising local budgets.

“Advertising is a futures market, and if the results of this Upfront say anything, it’s that we have built the future our partners want,” declares Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Global Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal.

• NBCUniversal is fully enabling programmatic buying on Peacock and enabling programmatic guaranteed activation of NBCUnified audiences.
• The broadcaster is scaling cross-platform activation with iSpot and cross-publisher activation with OpenAP.
• The ad-funded content giant is driving industry-wide workflow efficiencies with automated cross-platform RFPs in partnership with Mediaocean and Salesforce.
• New advertising products are coming soon that enable brands to pick the right creative for the right moment and boost sequential storytelling to defined audiences.

Full programmatic enablement on Peacock

After enabling programmatic guaranteed access to Peacock on-demand inventory in October 2021, NBCUniversal is now fully enabling Peacock programmatic buying. Consistent with its DSP-agnostic approach, NBCUniversal will launch new Peacock DSP integrations with Adobe, Amazon, Amobee, Beeswax, Samsung DSP, Viant and Xandr, among others. NBCUniversal will also make its NBCUnified audience segments available for activation through programmatic guaranteed buys as well as direct buys.

Scaled cross-platform activation with iSpot and OpenAP

Starting this year, marketers will be able to activate cross-platform advanced audience media buys using iSpot viewership, a trusted data source already adopted by leading advertisers and agencies. NBCUniversal is also integrating its NBCUnified first-party data and identity platform with OpenAP’s OpenID to make it even easier for buyers to activate cross-platform advanced audience campaigns across the entire premium media ecosystem.

Upon campaign completion, marketers will receive aggregated cross-platform, cross-publisher de-duplicated reach and frequency through OpenAP’s XPm framework.

Automated cross-platform RFPs to streamline workflows

NBCUniversal is working with Salesforce and Mediaocean to offer the industry a new way to create, manage and automate converged RFPs across linear and digital. “Available for all agencies and publishers to use later this year, this added layer of automation to One Platform will streamline the day-to-day workflows for planners and buyers,” NBCUniversal explains.

Specifically, Mediaocean’s Prisma and Salesforce’s Media Cloud are coming together, thanks to NBCU’s APIs, to transform how RFPs are processed. Agencies will now be able to submit a single RFP across linear and digital, which will be automatically added into NBCUniversal’s proposal pipeline. Benefits are improved response times and faster, more efficient fulfilment.

Picking the right creative for the right moment – new ad format

At One22 NBCUniversal announced ‘The Harmonizer’ – a tool that will debut in April on Peacock and enable marketers to identify which ad creative to serve audiences based on consumer signals. Those signals could be a viewer’s tenure on Peacock, a specific behaviour like binge watching, or content genre.

“The Harmonizer ensures that brands are aligned and in-tune with consumers’ expectations,” NBCUniversal says. “It will help drive ongoing consideration of brands for consumers at the right moment, based on their specific behaviour.”

Taking viewers through the awareness-to-purchase funnel

Another new ad product, coming within the next couple of months, is Sequential Storytelling. This leverages a specific, targeted audience segment to tell a brand’s story over time and take audiences on a journey through the marketing funnel. “Marketers can pique consumers’ interest on one channel, deepen their engagement in a second installment to drive consideration, and eventually inspire them to purchase,” NBCUniversal says.

Sequential Storytelling will leverage audience segments developed using NBCUnified’s first-party data and make use of the company’s large digital video ecosystem.

Bringing interactive, commerce-enabled experiences to audiences

NBCUniversal Checkout is going to be integrated into Comcast’s entertainment platforms. A Comcast customer could see a must-have product within NBCUniversal programming and simply say, “Shop” into their Xfinity remote control and complete their purchase seamlessly with NBCUniversal Checkout. NBCUniversal Checkout has already been deployed across NBCUniversal’s One Platform and the resulting shoppable activations have consistently proven twice as effective as traditional ads, the company reports.

NBCUniversal calls the expanded Olympics measurement a test-and-learn initiative. “Our partnership with iSpot is completely changing the TV and advertising business model,” the media owner claims. Select NBCU advertisers are being given access to impact measurement including granular attention and interruption rates, business-outcome reporting and creative performance that includes pre-testing and brand-lift analysis.

The statistics being released daily by NBCUniversal during the Games are designed to show what can be measured thanks to the iSpot.tv initiative, but they also reveal the stunning success of this event for the broadcaster-streamer and its advertisers. And this is not just smart adtech – the data demonstrates how lower ad loads are helping to drive engagement and how that combination is economically viable.

During primetime on Tuesday, NBC had a 24% lower ad load and delivered 134% more impressions per unit than the other three U.S. broadcast networks combined, according to the figures released by NBCU. Throughout the Games up to that point, the Olympics coverage on NBC had a 27% lighter ad load and delivered 169% more ad impressions per unit than the other three broadcast networks combined.

On February 7, NBCUniversal demonstrated how it can link ad exposure to business outcomes. Data revealed that viewers were 34% more likely to search for brands that advertised in NBC Primetime Olympics coverage vs what it calls competitive broadcast/cable norms. On February 5 there was a 39% greater likelihood that viewers would search for brands that advertised in the Primetime Opening Ceremony versus competitive broadcast/cable norms. The February 5 data from NBCU showed that brand recall was up 53% and message memorability was up 70% versus “competitive broadcast/cable norms”.

Tuesday (February 8) delivered 982 million household TV ad impressions within Olympic Games coverage (nearly four-times the nearest show that day). The broadcaster-streamer had delivered 6.7 billion household ad impressions since the Games opened on February 2. Completion rates on Tuesday were 98%. NBCU is claiming 10% higher engagement/attention rates for advertising during the Games versus the industry average for the Games so far. During Week One of the Olympics, advertisers have seen a 9% uplift in purchase consideration compared to the week before the Games, while the same figure for non-Olympic advertisers if flat.

Across all TV on Tuesday, the Olympics were the No.1 programme by ad impression delivery with a 12% share of voice. On Feb 5 they delivered 23% SOV. On Tuesday, the Olympics accounted for around one-ninth of the TV ad impressions that day. The Olympics had a 39% share of voice against the other broadcast networks, and 449% more impressions than the No.2 show, Celebrity Big Brother on CBS.

The test-and-learn initiative builds on NBCU and iSpot.tv’s business outcome arrangement established in 2018, designed to provide full-funnel attribution that correlates TV and video ad exposures to the actions taken as a result. “From digital activity on websites and apps to in-store visits and call activity, brands will understand the lift in activity and conversions from their investment in NBCU vs. their total TV and video spend during the same time period,” the media owner explains.

iSpot.tv has been broadly adopted by the video industry and marketing world. Thirty per cent of brand advertisers and half of the top 100 television and video advertisers utilise iSpot.tv. Krishan Bhatia, President & Chief Business Officer at NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, says: “iSpot.tv has set a high benchmark for measuring ads at scale and sharing information broadly with the industry. That transparency and dedication to accuracy has established a foundation of trust on all sides of the industry and made them an ideal partner to conduct such a massive test.”

Using iSpot.tv, brands who advertise with NBCU will gain access to real-time airing data for linear, streaming and time-shifted viewing, and receive comprehensive reports on a next-day basis that include ad impressions, reach and frequency, linear and streaming overlap and incrementality, among other metrics. Measurement will be provided at the household level as well as at the person level for age/gender demos and/or for customised audience segments.

“I’m looking to create a unique consumer experience where consumers believe that the value exchange, where they see advertising in return for content, is worth it. Without that they will opt-out of advertising [by paying for ad-free environments.]. Working with partners, there is lots of opportunity to reinvent what the advertising product looks like.”

She cited a practical example: less advertising once it becomes clear that the viewer is embarking on a binge-viewing session. Indulge that, she advised media owners. “Advertising, when it is done well, is a service to the consumer and if we don’t provide that service, people will not participate in our advertising, and none of us want that.”

Reed needs frequency capping so viewers do not get a negative view of the brand because they are inundated with their ads – and NBCU is delivering on that wish, at least on its own media assets. Molen said: “That was a big thing. We heard back from consumers as well as marketers, who were saying that if we watch lots of streaming, we are seeing the same commercial over and over. We built frequency capping to make sure viewers experience different ads.”

Both these executives are big fans of the pause ad, now available on Peacock, with Molen calling it a “big and beautiful ad for marketers” and Reed embracing the opportunity it presents “for beautiful brands with beautiful stories to tell.” The L’Oreal marketer said: “You literally have a billboard inside someone’s home – a big, beautiful canvas.”

NBCU has brought another ad innovation to market in the streaming environment, called Spotlight. With this, a buyer gets their ad inserted as the first commercial in the first standard ad break for every viewer on the streaming service, regardless of what they are watching (so including virtual linear channels and long-form VOD). Spotlight is only available for primetime. This is an attempt to bring the fast reach build of linear TV into the streaming environment as audiences grow.

You can find out more about The Future of TV Advertising U.S., and link to the video recordings of the event, here.