Presented By Tubi NBCUniversal Unveils New Peacock Ad Format, Spotlight, as Platform Inventory Opens Up

Author: Kelsey Sutton. Source: AdWeek

In less than two weeks, NBCUniversal will take the wraps off its upcoming programming on linear and streaming as part of its annual upfront presentation. Ahead of that, though, the broadcaster is emphasizing to marketers that they can earmark their marketing budgets for the company’s digital side, which is growing thanks to the year-old streamer and the other parts of NBCUniversal’s digital video ecosystem.

In a virtual NewFronts presentation Thursday, NBCUniversal’s first appearance at the week of presentations since 2012, the broadcaster highlighted its growing One Platform offering and its streaming-centric arm, One Digital Video, along with a new takeover ad format on Peacock, to highlight the growing digital chops for the broadcaster as it looks to build out targeting tools, data offerings and streaming-centric advertising opportunities for media buyers and planners.

“Back when I was a media planner, the idea of a legacy media company helping you do data-driven targeting was akin to heresy,” Yusuf Chuku, NBCUniversal’s evp of client strategy and insights, said in a video filmed in 30 Rock’s iconic 8H studio. “But no other company is hosting the developer conference at the intersection of media and technology. No other company is able to work across broadband aggregation and streaming like Comcast, NBCUniversal and Sky.”

Inside Spotlight Ads

Peacock, which has cleared 42 million sign-ups and is approaching the $10 million revenue mark, took center stage during the brief NewFronts presentation, which eschewed new programming announcements and focused instead on NBCUniversal’s technical capabilities. Now that users have spent more than 1 billion total hours watching programming on the streaming service, the company is taking the wraps off a new ad format for the streamer to tap into those audiences.

Called Spotlight Ads, the format allows marketers to buy a specific time slot to ensure every Peacock viewer tuning in on an ad-supported tier will see that brand’s ad and chosen creative first during those hours.

The new format, which joins other formats like binge ads and pause ads, will come on the market as NBCUniversal’s inaugural slate of Year 1 advertising partners reaches its end and Peacock inventory is available to other marketers. Starting in the fourth quarter, NBCUniversal will open up Peacock to audience targeting and programmatic buying, said James Kreckler, svp, digital media sales, NBCUniversal.

“No matter how you want to buy, we’re open for business,” Kreckler said. “You name it, we can deliver it.”

Much of NBCUniversal’s presentation was dedicated to a review of the company’s One Platform offering, which began rolling out more than a year ago in a years-long aim to bring all of the company’s ad inventory into one place. A streaming-centric offering, One Digital Video, unifies all of the company’s digital video inventory in one place for easy planning and buying across NBCUniversal’s various digital arms, giving advertisers access to the nearly 200 million consumers NBCUniversal reaches every month (two-thirds of whom are new to the NBCUniversal digital and streaming audience, the company told advertisers).

Contextual targeting

The build-out of the tech stack has taken some time and will continue to roll out incrementally, and this fall, the company will further bolster One Digital Video and Peacock with the rollout of Contextual Intelligence. That contextual targeting tool, which is already available for linear buys, is designed to allow marketers to more precisely align their creative with NBCUniversal programming using machine learning and a category taxonomy first established by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The broadcaster is also looking to expand its dynamic ad insertion capabilities and is enabling linear dynamic ad insertion across its live linear cable feeds, which include CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, Syfy and USA Network. Virtual MVPD providers like AT&T TV Now, Fubo TV, Hulu Live TV, Sling and YouTube TV will begin enabling the live linear dynamic ad insertion capability on those feeds, a rollout that will continue through 2022.

The NewFronts event came two weeks ahead of NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation and less than two months after the company’s One21 showcase for marketers, where it spotlighted new ad-tech solutions, including a proprietary identifier and a data clear room, that offer up more digital tools to make media planning and buying easier and increasingly more automated.

NBCUniversal is expecting even more explosive growth on digital video in the coming years. The company anticipates that NBCUniversal digital and linear viewership will be roughly equal with audiences within the next two years, said Jenny Burke, NBCUniversal’s evp of advertising strategy.