NBCUniversal said it has completed its upfront sales, saying the dollar volume of ad commitments were “roughly in line” with last year’s upfront, which was in the $7 billion range across broadcast, cable and digital.
With falling ratings, a strike by writers and actors and economic jitters, this year’s upfront has been a buyers’ market, with prices dropping for traditional commercials especially in primetime.
The main exception is sports where demand remained relatively strong.
Confronted with a weak market, ad sellers have almost uniformly sought volume, creating competition for ad dollars. The competition was particularly acute on the digital side, where there was oversupply because media companies have been emphasizing streaming.
After a record-setting upfront last year under former ad sales head Linda Yaccarino, now CEO of Twitter, NBCU, now led by interim chairman for ad sales and partnerships Mark Marshall, said it was able to get as much volume as it could this year largely thanks to a trio of big events: BravoCon coming in November, the Paris Olympics next summer and the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live.
Those events generated more revenue than anticipated, NBCU said.
Peacock also had a good upfront, according to NBCU, with commitments up 30% versus last year. Last year, Peacock doubled its upfront sales to $1 billion.
For the Olympics, NBCU said sales are nearly double the pace of the Tokyo games in 2020 at this point, with advertisers who did not buy the Tokyo games committed to spending more than $100 million in new money during the event.
Already, all of the Prime Pods — shorter commercial breaks with messages from only one or two brands — in the Olympics are sold out, NBCU said.
Instead of simply selling ads in a special anniversary episode of SNL, NBCU is looking to get a group of advertisers to commit to buying a seven-month promotional window. NBCU said it has gotten interest from 30 marketers in 13 categories including auto, wireless, tech, beverages, insurance, retail, consumer packaged goods, financial and travel.
In addition to the Olympics, NBCU said it scored with its sports properties, with revenue up 50% across broadcast, cable, digital and Peacock.
NBCU’s new Big Ten college-football package drew 40 new clients in categories including auto, insurance and retail. Telemundo coverage of soccer’s Women’s World Cup, which also will stream on Peacock, had a record number of advertisers. And Sunday Night Football has strong advertiser demand, NBCU said.
The Women’s World Cup also helped Telemundo generate its highest volume since the 2019-20 upfront.
NBCUniversal, which has been pushing its advertising technology, said programmatic deals are up 50% vs this time last year. NBCU makes ad inventory available across 17 demand-side platforms in order to provide addressability, flexible pricing packages and ease of access while giving brands the ability to buy closer to air dates.
