NBCUniversal unveils ‘converged, data-driven future’
March 22, 2022
At One22, NBCUniversal’s second annual local-to-global developer conference, the company laid out its vision for industry interoperability and cross-platform activation with new partner integrations and enhancements and updates to the company’s One Platform technology stack.
Specifically, NBCUniversal says it is fully enabling programmatic buying on streaming platform Peacock and enabling programmatic guaranteed activation of NBCUnified audiences; scaling cross-platform activation with iSpot and cross-publisher activation with OpenAP; and driving industry-wide workflow efficiencies with automated cross-platform RFPs in partnership with Mediaocean and Salesforce.
After enabling programmatic guaranteed access to Peacock on-demand inventory in October 2021, NBCUniversal is now fully enabling Peacock programmatic buying, expanding on current enablement in 2022. Specifically, the company will launch new Peacock DSP integrations consistent with its DSP-agnostic approach, including with Adobe, Amazon, Amobee, Beeswax, Samsung DSP, Viant and Xandr; Peacock private marketplace deals; and access to Peacock linear channels and premium live events.
In addition, NBCUniversal will make its NBCUnified audience segments available for activation through programmatic guaranteed buys as well as direct buys.
Coming later in 2022, marketers will be able to activate cross-platform advanced audience media buys using iSpot viewership, a data source already adopted by a number of advertisers and agencies. NBCUniversal is also integrating its NBCUnified first-party data and identity platform with OpenAP’s OpenID to make it easier for its marketers to activate cross-platform advanced audience campaigns across the entire premium media ecosystem. Upon campaign completion, marketers will receive aggregated cross-platform, cross-publisher deduplicated reach and frequency through OpenAP’s XPm framework.
To drive efficiency for the media planning process, NBCUniversal, together with Salesforce and Mediaocean, is offering 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.
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, increasing response time, and enabling faster, more efficient fulfillment.
In addition to these expansive partnerships and new One Platform tech enhancements, at One22 NBCUniversal also premiered its first round of Certified Measurement Partners and converged technology and creativity with a series of data-driven innovations and new commerce experiences.
The officially named additional certifications across two key categories as part of the Certified Measurement Programne:
Currency Contender:
o iSpot.tv (National)
o Comscore (Local)
Streaming / Digital:
o Conviva
Audience Verification:
o DoubleVerify
o MOAT
o IAS (Integral Ad Science)
Ad Catalogue:
o iSpot.tv
Ad Serving:
o FreeWheel
o Innovid
Keith Zubchevich, CEO of Conviva, commented: “Comprehensive streaming measurement is the future and Conviva’s continuous measurement platform solves for streaming measurement by delivering census-level, standardised, audience insights fully controlled by publishers, yet interoperable with other forms of measurement. We’re proud of our role in helping NBC innovate and solve for the 70 year old challenge in media measurement.”
NBCUniversal also used One22 to unveil its new data-driven innovations including The Harmonizer, Sequential Storytelling, and the future expansion of NBCUniversal Checkout across Comcast’s global video platform.
“For NBCUniversal, the advertising experience is the user experience,” said Josh Feldman, Global Chief Marketing Officer, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships. “We’re excited to unveil new ways for our partners to meet those users where they are: from leveraging our company-wide data activations to drive brand relevance, to harmonizing creative messaging, to engaging consumers through story, to driving transaction at the point of inspiration.”
The Harmonizer, a tool that will debut next month on NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service, Peacock, enables marketers to identify which ad creative to serve audiences based on consumer signals. Whether it’s 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. The Harmonizer can be used across Solo, Binge and Pause ads to drive ongoing consideration of brands for consumers at the right moment, based on their specific behaviour.
Sequential Storytelling, one of several commercial innovations that will be unveiled later this spring, leverages a specific, targeted audience segment to tell a brand’s story over time, and take audiences on a journey through the funnel. By pairing sequential brand creative with audience segments developed using NBCUnified’s first-party data—and tapping into the scale of NBCUniversal’s massive One Digital Video ecosystem—marketers can pique consumers’ interest on one channel, deepen their engagement in a second installment to drive consideration, and eventually inspire them to purchase.
Finally, NBCUniversal and Comcast are continuing their commitment to bring state-of-the-art, interactive, commerce-enabled experiences to audiences. Notably, the two companies have begun collaborating to integrate NBCUniversal Checkout into Comcast’s entertainment platforms. This means that, in the future, a Comcast customer could see a must-have product within NBCUniversal programming and simply say, “Shop,” into their Xfinity remote and complete their purchase seamlessly with NBCUniversal Checkout.