NBCUniversal is doubling down on its push to transform the TV sales business, revealing a series of updates on its progress, including a plan — with marketers on board — to transact on a new measurement currency, in a shift from Nielsen’s decades-long run.
The company has formed a measurement innovation forum, with GM, T-Mobile, Pepsico, State Farm and Marriott among those signing on to transact with the company through new currencies.
“We’ve gotten the whole industry to start to align around a similar framework where we now are zeroing in on a set of new currency providers, ranging from iSpot to VideoAmp to ComScore,” says Krishan Bhatia, president and chief business officer for global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. “And most if not all of them are going to be currency-ready as we head into the next upfront cycle for various parts of the measurement container.”
The currency push has been a long time coming for the company, which, like its peers, has been frustrated by the slow pace of change at Nielsen (the measurement firm remains a partner to NBCU, and continues to provide its panel-based data).
But the company also continues to push forward with its digital video advertising efforts, which are centered around NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock. While the streaming service is smaller than many rivals (it now has more than 15 million subscribers), executives at the company have touted efforts to drive more ad value from the platform through a number of initiatives.
Among them is a plan to launch a self-serve advertising platform that will be much more accessible to smaller brands and advertisers, who are not in the marketplace with multi-million dollar ad buys.
“In the past, television was the domain of maybe 1000 to 2000 marketers,” Bhatia told The Hollywood Reporter in an Interview. “We have a whole ecosystem of other marketers that are direct to consumer brands, e-commerce brands, performance marketers, local businesses, that buy media because they obviously need to drive their business, but they measure it in a different way. And they need a lower entry point. And they need tools and capabilities that are more self serve.”
“We wanted to basically lower the barrier of adoption and make it as easy as possible for you to go live with advertising and streaming,” he adds. “We’re in beta testing right now. We’ll start to roll that out as we go into 2023.”
The company also plans to roll out new ad formats, including a sports-focused format that will let a brand sponsor highlights of games in progress, for viewers that turn the game on after it’s already started.
The company also announced that its next developer conference, One23, will be held Feb. 16, 2023.