NBCUniversal has created a new platform designed to help brands buy advertising more seamlessly across all of their TV, cable, and streaming services.
The brand hosted a virtual event this week to unveil the technology and the company’s new vision for selling ads in an era, in which consumers are viewing media and technology as one experience. The company’s vision outlines an intersection of three paths – broadband connections, aggregation of global content, and streaming.
“One Platform is also our tech stack, where we’re making investments in four key areas: better audience data; more advanced cross-platform planning tools; better cross-platform optimization and delivery capabilities; and more advanced post-campaign measurement,” said Ryan McConville, EVP, Advertising Platforms & Operations, NBCUniversal. “Using One Platform, marketers can simplify the buying process by utilizing new ways to transact across linear and digital on a single buy. We’re leveraging data-driven insights and technology to find consumers across our portfolio when they are most receptive to advertising. We’re continuing to innovate with new ad products and reduced commercial clutter. The net result is better outcomes for brands and a better viewing experience for audiences whenever and wherever they’re watching.”
The new NBCUniversal One Platform is aimed to reflect this new era of consumption by giving advertisers the ability to purchase ads and target preferred audiences at scale across its platforms.The media conglomerate said that 615 million people spend a collective 85 billion hours a year on Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky.
“One Platform is a reaction to and reflection of consumer behavior,” McConville said. “Viewers today consume content across a variety of screens. If we didn’t offer this cross-platform approach to our advertisers, they would be missing out on reaching vital parts of their audiences. In order to ensure that marketers can reach their audiences at scale across a wide array of platforms and end points, we need to change the way premium video is bought and sold. With new technology, we are re-defining what “TV” buying is, making it smarter and more data driven than ever before, while democratizing access to it.”
“NBCUniversal’s unmatched audience of more than 230+ million U.S. adults 18+ watching our content every month offers both broad reach and precision targeting at scale for advertisers,” he continued. “Marketers can turn to us for high-visibility branding, targeted conversion campaigns, and everything in between. They can leverage NBCUniversal’s data, third-party data, or their own first-party data for more effective targeting, in-flight delivery, campaign optimization, and improved ROI. At the same time, the technologies that power NBCUniversal’s One Platform create simplified workflows and improved reporting so advertisers can better understand the impact of their media buys. Unlike the legacy age-gender transactional model, One Platform offers flexible options for connecting with the right audiences across screens, with better data, more precision, greater efficiency/ROI, and industry-leading cross-screen measurement.”
One Platform aims to seamlessly bring together linear and digital audiences in one media buying location that offers up rich consumer data and optimizes the buying process to make it easier for brands to buy media. The platform is not a stand alone tool, but rather a plug in that media buyers can overlay on their existing systems.
Interestingly, the platform is designed to inspire impulse buys inspired by the content that consumers are watching through storytelling. The commerce engine NBCUniversal Checkout allows brands to make any piece of content from across One Platform shoppable. Additionally, The platform includes an integration with Instagram that ties into Facebook’s Live Shopping and Checkout features through a single backend integration, allowing brands to sell products through NBCU social content on Instagram and Facebook.
A Twitter partnership in the platform allows brands to create interactive ad experiences for social conversations around NBCU’s cultural events such as sports, news and entertainment. For example, LA28 is allowing brands to help shape fan experiences for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“With new self-service and automated solutions, we’re making it easier than ever before for every company — from small businesses to global corporations — to tap into the power of our content,” said McConville.
