2026 is going to be a big year for NBCUniversal.
Not only will it play host to the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan; it’s also going to broadcast the Super Bowl, the NBA Playoffs, the regular MLB season on NBC and the FIFA World Cup on Telemundo.
“That will never happen again,” said Mark Marshall, NBCU’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, during a pre-CES press briefing in New York City on Tuesday. “[If] we do nothing with it, shame on us.”
And so NBCU is throwing a lot of things at the wall – or, rather, the screen on the living room wall, including new contextual ad capabilities, new ad formats and a new intelligence platform for full-funnel measurement.
Live from New York!
But first up, live programming.
Starting in 2026, NBCU’s contextual targeting tech will begin continuously scanning livestreaming content in real time to identify highly charged, emotional moments, like when a team scores a goal or fumbles a play.
Its ad server will then match the content with relevant ad creative and automatically insert it into the next available commercial break.
For example, if a quarterback gets tackled and loses the football in the middle of a play, the next ad spot might feature a commercial for paper towels that calls out how the product can be used to clean up fumbles.
NBCU has already seen some success with these types of ad placements in its on-demand video library, according to Chief Product Officer Ryan McConville. But livestreaming requires real-time scanning and metadata generation, which is much trickier to accomplish.
Beyond sports, McConville added that the same real-time scanning will also unlock new opportunities for live news programming, because the AI can automatically flag unsafe content based on a brand’s preset brand safety guidelines.
And because smarter ads need smarter targeting, NBCU is also unveiling a new cross-platform tool called LIVE Total Impact. It identifies viewers who were exposed to ads during tentpole events across both linear and streaming so they can be retargeted after the live broadcast is over.
Think of it as social media retargeting but for television, McConville said.
Crossing platforms
Speaking of social, NBCU also teased the launch of its Performance Insights Hub, which gives marketers access to real-time campaign results across linear and digital media.
The tool has interactive dashboards with show-level impressions, average ad frequency, brand impact lift, incremental search activity and conversion rates. NBCU is working with third-party vendors, including Dynata, EDO and Data Plus Math, to measure each metric.
For example, NBCU demonstrated how a movie studio promoting a film could track ad delivery and impact across linear and digital channels in real time, with detailed info about impressions, reach, brand lift, search engagement and even ticket sales.
Although other platforms like Amazon and Google can provide similar insights, NBCU’s differentiator is the level of transparency and interoperability it can deliver, said EVP of Strategy Gina Reduto.
“The other big places, they’re not cross-platform the way that we are,” Reduto said.
Let’s hit pause
Finally, it wouldn’t be an ad tech showcase without some chatter about programmatic.
After seeing strong results from selling inventory programmatically during the 2024 Summer Paris Olympics, NBCU plans to do the same for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.
Comcast’s recently launched Universal Ads platform will serve as the exclusive ads manager for NBCU’s own coverage of the Games, while actual Olympics inventory will be available via private marketplace deals across partner DSPs.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the recent trend of programmatically transactable pause ads, advertisers will also now be able to buy pause ads on Peacock through programmatic guaranteed deals.
Still, there’s one piece of CTV-specific ad inventory that likely won’t be biddable anytime soon: Peacock’s brand-new “Arrival Ad,” which takes over the profile selection screen with a branded message before any content even begins.
But, hey, if arrival ads demonstrate the same results as pause ads – which drive a 68% lift in memorability, according to Alison Levin, NBCU’s president of advertising and partnerships – then it’s likely only a matter of time before they go programmatic, too.
