LAS VEGAS—In the run-up to NBC’s 100th anniversary next year, NBCUniversal has been previewing the future of full-funnel advertising at CES here, unveiling new engagement capabilities within its One Platform and highlighting new data demonstrating the power of TV advertising.
This year, NBCU is starting a two-year run of premium, English and Spanish-language programming to celebrate NBC’s 100th-anniversary milestone in the fall of 2026.
“NBCUniversal has long been a leader in innovative storytelling and advertising technology,” said Mark Marshall, chairman, global advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal. “Our One Platform ecosystem has maximized our marketers’ reach and scale over the past five years to prove TV is a performance vehicle in a way no other product in the marketplace has. Now, as we head into our next century, we are kicking off a slate of unrivaled content combined with cutting-edge technology and exceptional end-to-end advertising solutions that will drive demand in new ways and provide long-term viability for our clients.”
At CES, NBCU introduced viewer and advertiser experiences on Peacock with new formats and product features. It also showed creative optimization capabilities including new predictive ad models to forecast creative impact for the world’s biggest live events.
Peacock’s “Live in Browse” feature brings live events to life on the home page, automatically playing in the top row as soon as viewers open the app. Beginning this month, “Live in Browse” will be available for marketers to align their brands with these highly visible marquee moments.
Additionally, NBCU is making its Pause Ad format available within live events. Pause Ads on Peacock drive a 43% lift in site visitation for brands and 43% higher memorability compared to standard ads, NBCU said, demonstrating the effectiveness of this format.
Looking ahead, Peacock will begin piloting new product features on its iOS and Android mobile apps this month to drive fan engagement around its most popular titles even deeper. These daily mini-games and prediction games, along with new curated vertical video playlists of can’t-miss clips from Peacock’s biggest shows, will be tested prior to a broader rollout, unlocking new potential opportunities for advertisers, NBCU said.
NBCU has also developed new predictive ad models to forecast and improve the performance of ads.
NBCUniversal said its Ad Creative Engine uses generative AI, machine learning and statistical models to understand the the historic performance of ad creative within specific content and predict how creative will perform for specific KPIs, including brand awareness, message breakthrough, ad likability and search engagement.
NBCU is now expanding this capability to the biggest moments in live event content, with new models for golf and ad innovations, including Pause Ads and Engagement Ads, as well as an updated Super Bowl ad model for February, leveraging three times more data points since 2018.
In addition, NBCU has tested the effects of aligning the emotional metadata of advertiser creative with that of content using AI and machine learning to drive impact on mid- and lower-funnel conversion. Preliminary tests have shown a double-digit lift in emotionally congruent ad and content pairings. NBCU plans to make this capability more widely available later this year, it said.
At CES, NBCU also released new data showing the effectiveness of TV advertising. Highlights include:
- NBCU’s One Platform total audience campaigns had generated a 32% increase in purchase intent and a 33% increase in brand favorability; a 2 times increase in search engagement; and a 64% increase in incremental store visits, as well as 28% greater reach, 22% higher search engagement, and a 7% lift in prescription conversions
- NBCUniversal was the first publisher partner for Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration, a solution that brings publishers and advertisers together to discover, reach and measure high-value audiences. Through the beta test, advertisers experienced two times more efficient conversion, 10 tmes better match rates and 90% lift compared to standard audience onboarding.
- Consumer packaged goods brands that participated in NBCUniversal’s retail media data collaboration pilot with Instacart saw a return on ad spend of 8 to 17 times, with an average of 37% new-to-brand buyers on Instacart.
- During a successful real-time outcome measurement beta period, NBCUniversal tracked conversions attributed to streaming campaign exposures in flight. Upon completion of the campaigns, advertisers saw an average 8.5 times increase in ROAS, indicating the overall effectiveness of NBCU's streaming environment. This measurement capability will be generally available beginning in Q1.
NBCUniversal also announced that it is a launch partner for Comcast’s “Universal Ads” (UA), a cross-publisher advertising solution enabling new advertisers simplified access into the premium video category
In a statement about UA, Marshall said: “The North Star of advertising has always been combining the premium reach of linear with the precision of data-informed targeting for marketers. Now with Universal Ads, we are delivering that vision to businesses of all sizes. TV has always been a performance vehicle for brands, and UA puts the scaled reach and premium content that TV is known for into the hands of marketers everywhere.”
