NBCU kicked off upfront week on Monday morning with an original take on a not-so-original trend: ad performance.
Comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers started things off with a parody of the Rosé and Bruno Mars song “APT.” The original lyrics were replaced with comedic mentions of ads on NBC (the chorus was, “ads on NBCU – and Peacock!”), with backup dancers dressed as peacocks to boot. After the song and dance routine, Mark Marshall, NBCU’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, got to business. Marshall addressed how NBCU is tapping into modern marketing hot topics, such as sports and AI, to drive ad performance. These days, no TV ad announcement is worth its salt without at least one mention of performance.
Marshall announced that NBCU’s Performance Insights Hub will fully roll out to all clients by Q4 this year. NBCU initially teased this new ad hub late last year.
NBCU’s Performance Insights Hub is designed to help brands achieve their intended business outcomes by giving them direct access to a long list of outcomes-oriented measurement providers, including VideoAmp, iSpot, LiveRamp, Dynata, EDO and Kochava. (The latter just reached a settlement with the FTC over allegedly selling sensitive location data.)
The ads hub also includes Instacart as the exclusive outcomes provider for consumer-packaged goods.
According to NBCU, pairing Instacart’s first-party commerce data with NBCU’s content slate drives an average of 5.5x return on ad spend. In other words, brands and buyers running NBCU campaigns can use Instacart data for their new favorite buzzword (or buzzphrase?): closed-loop attribution.
Go business outcomes or go home
NBCU also peacocked other related ad products designed to boost ad performance.
From NBCU’s upfront stage, Marshall touted a new dashboard called LIVE Total Impact, which launched earlier this year. The dashboard allows buyers to retarget live TV viewers across NBCU’s linear and digital portfolio. Nearly three-quarters of NBCU’s impressions are on linear, Marshall said, so the ability to retarget viewers there helps buyers achieve the outcomes they desire.
State Farm was one of the early adopters of NBCU’s LIVE Total Impact product. The insurance company saw a 90% incremental lift in insurance quote starts as a result of using the platform, Marshall said. Also among the highlights: A telecom company saw a 40% lift in site visits, and a food delivery company saw a 40% jump in search engagement.
Last but not least, no upfront this year would be complete without at least one nod to AI.
NBCU plans to launch AI-based contextual ad capabilities for live programming to help brands ensure their creative messaging is more aligned with the context of what’s occurring during a particular live programming show.
While NBCU didn’t mention agentic AI onstage, it did mention it in the press release accompanying Marshall’s remarks.
NBCU plans to bolster its agentic AI capabilities with AI agents that it hopes will help “transform” TV ad buying into a “performance-oriented marketplace.”
When it comes to hot topics such as AI, contextual ads and sports, it’s all moot “if you can’t measure the impact of your brand,” Marshall said, establishing performance as the theme of NBCU’s upfront pitch. (And nearly every other TV upfront pitch, for that matter.)
Fox and Amazon are also doing their upfront events on Monday afternoon. AdExchanger will be there, so stay tuned.
