NBCUniversal’s Fandango snapped up Vudu from Walmart for an undisclosed price Tuesday, making it the latest independent streaming service to get gobbled up by a big media player. “We are moving into the consolidation phase of the streaming business,” said Forrester principal analyst Jim Nail, citing this deal and Fox’s acquisition of Tubi in March. […]
NBCUniversal opened more of its inventory to programmatic platforms on Monday, with a new product integration through FreeWheel and The Trade Desk. FreeWheel, a sister-company of Comcast’s NBCU, is coming out of beta with its “unified decisioning” platform, which operates an auction where programmatic demand is considered alongside direct-sold campaigns for OTT inventory and video […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Gone In A Snap NBCUniversal quietly sold its $500 million stake in Snapchat stock late last year to rebalance its portfolio toward streaming media. The broadcaster invested in Snapchat during its IPO three years ago to expand the network’s digital presence. Since then, NBCU […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hang On St. Christopher Google’s travel advertising business (along with the travel marketing vertical in general) could be severely disrupted by the impacts of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Spending on travel search ads may drop by $1 billion in Q1 […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mark It Down A 2019 report in the Harvard Business Review declared that marketing has lost prominence within the overall business hierarchy, based on US ad expenditures decreasing. Two of its authors revisited the topic in a new article, noting, “Many scholars and practitioners […]
As the streaming wars intensify, NBCUniversal on Thursday sought to draw a clear distinction between the soon-to-be-launched Peacock and its streaming and digital competitors. Peacock will debut with 10 ad experiences that emphasize interactivity and performance, the company revealed during an investor day in New York City. It will run just five minutes of ads […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. There’s An App For That Mobile apps earned $190 billion in ad revenue in 2019 and are forecast to surpass $240 billion this year, according to App Annie’s annual report. App stores made $120 billion from in-app and app download payments, with 72% coming […]
NBCUniversal wants its content to appear wherever viewers want it: places like YouTube, Roku, NBC apps, Snapchat, mobile phones and work computers, in addition to linear streams in their living room. But scheduling ads that will light up across all of these platforms is a highly fragmented, manual process. So NBCUniversal hired former Kargo President […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Political Unrest There’s dissent brewing in Menlo Park. The New York Times reports that more than 250 Facebook employees recently signed a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg slamming the company’s decision to let politicians lie in ads on its platform. The impassioned letter pleads […]
NBCUniversal’s Denise Colella will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on Oct. 15 and 16. People watching a TV show shouldn’t see ads they don’t care about. Transforming the TV ad experience to incorporate more targeting is a key mission of Denise Colella, SVP of advanced advertising products and strategy at NBCUniversal. […]
Digitally native companies made nearly $1 billion in commitments during this year’s upfront, making them the biggest advertiser category in NBCUniversal’s $7 billion upfront, the company said during its Q2 earnings Thursday. The digitally native category includes the “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) as well as direct-to-consumer companies like Peloton, NBCU’s CEO Steve […]
By the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, NBCUniversal believes it’s “within reason” that all TV will be delivered through an internet connection, said its EVP of strategy and business operations, Krishan Bhatia. “We firmly believe that all content and associated advertising will be distributed over IP [internet protocol], over digital means, whether that’s to […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Remember Oath? Verizon Media Group, the company formerly known as Oath, is shrinking as the telco shifts its focus and most of its resources to 5G. The media group, which is made up of Verizon’s acquisition and merger of AOL and Yahoo, saw revenues […]
NBC Universal and Sky, both owned by Comcast, announced this week that they’re combining inventory and targeting tools. The hope is to help global advertisers expand their reach to international markets across TV and digital. Audience Studio, NBCU’s data-driven media offering, is merging with Sky’s ad tech offering, AdSmart. The combined entity will be called […]
Cords are getting cut left and right, but TV still works … right? “We all know that TV does drive ROI, but there haven’t really been any proof points like there has been in digital,” said Donna Speciale, Turner’s president of advertising sales, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York City on Wednesday. That’s […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Who To Antitrust? There’s mounting pressure on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged antitrust violations by Comcast-NBCU. The American Cable Association (ACA) published a letter to Makan Delrahim, the DOJ antitrust chief, that said Comcast poses “a much greater threat to competition” than […]
Political advertising has been good to Comcast. Comcast’s cable advertising revenue increased 15.2% to $684 million in Q3, but that bump would have been just 0.6% without political advertising, the company disclosed Thursday. Meanwhile ad revenue at media division NBCUniversal was up (4.2% for its cable networks, 9.2% for broadcast). The increase was attributed to […]
By Sarah Sluis, Ryan Joe, Allison Schiff, Alison Weissbrot and Rae Paoletta Programmatic is expanding, becoming a glossier way to transact and add value to both the buy and sell sides. “We are moving rapidly into a programmatic-first world,” said Sal Candela, president of enterprise partnerships at Omnicom. “There is a surge of quality inventory […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Mike Rosen, executive vice president of advanced advertising and platform sales at NBCUniversal Media. It’s the rallying cry of today’s TV doomsdayers who believe that consumers want to avoid all advertising on TV: “Shut […]
Concert, the ad marketplace run by Vox Media and NBCUniversal, added three more large publishers to its network Thursday, increasing Concert’s reach from 80% to 90% of all internet users. PopSugar, Rolling Stone and New York Media were selected to create a strong offering around entertainment and female-focused content, according to Ryan Pauley, head of […]
Advertisers want everything at scale: a niche audience, a brand-safe environment, and beautiful, engaging ads. Atlantic-owned publication Quartz, Vox Media and NBCUniversal’s ad marketplace Concert are partnering to add scale to their respective ad offerings. With the partnership, advertisers can buy in a single deal across Quartz and business-minded publications at Vox Media and NBCUniversal: […]
NBCUniversal has joined the TV consortium OpenAP. Launched just over a year ago, OpenAP is a joint effort by broadcast networks Fox, Turner and Viacom to create a common data standard and provide a more accurate representation of advanced TV audiences across platforms. Through a multiyear agreement, NBCU will license its data platform Audience Studio […]
NBCUniversal is about to do something TV companies have talked about for years: transact TV in a similar way as digital – on impressions. NBCU revealed Thursday that it would begin to measure live, on-demand and time-shifted TV ad buys using a common impression-based metric called CFlight. CFlight will be part of NBCU’s upfront pitch and […]
NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said Facebook faces big repercussions because it breached users’ trust. “The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Facebook’s business model is based on data people don’t [always know] they’re sharing and then selling that data … to a buyer Facebook [doesn’t even] know,” Burke said Tuesday in response to Facebook’s […]
Although national broadcast networks have led the charge on audience data and automation – at least in the linear TV environment – local station groups aren’t far behind. NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations is laying the foundation for greater addressability at the local and regional level. The division houses 39 NBC and Telemundo local TV stations […]
NBCUniversal is deepening its bench of data-driven executives, revealing on Wednesday that it had hired its first SVP of advertising technology, Ed Kozek. Kozek was previously SVP of ad product and engineering for The Weather Co., where he worked on the audience and data platform WeatherFX. Now he will manage NBCU’s proprietary ad products. NBCU […]
TBS and TNT’s new CMO, Michael Engleman, is on a mission to make the networks’ brand marketing engine much more agile. Engleman, who helped rebrand the Sci Fi Channel as SyFy during his time at NBCUniversal, thinks broadcasters will be forced to adapt as new content producers and channels compete for consumer attention. For years, […]
Netflix will inevitably need ads, predicted Jo Ann Ross, CBS’ president and chief advertising revenue officer, during a fireside chat at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on Thursday. “Maybe they’ll offer a lower-cost version of their service [or a different model],” she said, “but if they’re spending that much money [on content], they will look for ways […]
The ad industry needs to check itself before it wrecks itself. That was the rallying cry Tuesday at NBCUniversal’s swanky State of the Industry Forum, where 150 digital and broadcast advertising luminaries gathered in midtown Manhattan for fancy eggs and frank discussion. “I’ll cut right to the chase: We have a problem,” said Linda Yaccarino, […]
As NBCUniversal’s portfolio has evolved, so has its sales pitch to brand marketers. When NBCU merged its linear and digital sales teams in 2015 and combined all its content groups, its client partnerships team assumed a greater role within its sales organization. That team, led by client partnerships EVP Ali Tarrant, became the broadcaster’s conduit […]
