Advertisers are looking to reach the right audiences and tell their stories inside compelling content, Karen Kovacs, president of client partnerships at NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, tells B+C.
NBCU is set up to respond to both of those needs during the upfront, Kovacs says.
“Our partners want to tell stories with our stories to the right strategic audiences,” she said. “It’s really nice to be able to deliver on both the premium content piece as well as having the tech innovations and the scale” they need to do the job.
In terms of content, NBCU has some big tentpoles coming up, starting with the Paris Summer Olympics.
“You’re going to see a lot of innovation as to how we’re storytelling around the Olympics,” she said.
After the Olympics, NBCU is in the market selling sponsorships for the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. The celebration will include a Friday-night concert at Radio City Music Hall right before the 50th anniversary broadcast.
Some key sponsors have already bought SNL packages, Kovacs said.
“We’re going to kick off the celebration coming right out of the Olympics this summer,” she said. “It’s SNL. It’s multigenerational. The brand has tremendous influence on our culture.”
Sports will also continue to be driver for NBCU, which will have the Super Bowl in 2026. That year it will also have the Milan Winter Olympics and the World Cup on Telemundo.
NBCU has also been investing in technology to help advertisers identify the audiences the will help them reach their marketing goals.
“We’ve really seen an industry shift taking place with strategic audiences,” Kovacs said. “They are already making up half of our linear and streaming business and it continues to grow.”
NBCU recently launched its one-platform total audiences, which uses artificial intelligence to help find strategic audiences at scale and forecast the size of those audiences across linear and streaming.
In the new media environment, tech companies are not only competing with video advertising, but increasingly participating in the upfront.
“We think we’re in a really interesting position,” Kovacs said. “We sort of stand alone in that we are a media powerhouse and we have tech prowess.”
Much of NBCU’s advertising innovation has originated with its Peacock streaming service.
Peacock has been expanding the amount of shoppable content it streams.
It is also going to be launching a product called virtual concessions, which gives viewers an opportunity to shop for food, beverages and snacks so they don’t have to leave the viewing experience.
Kovacs said it is pretty early to predict how the upfront market will go.
“Q4 looked pretty good,“ she said. “We saw some strengthening in the marketplace.”
The strength of Olympic advertising has NBCU feeling optimistic because the Paris Games are on track to generate the most ad revenue in the history of the Olympics, and NBCU has already set a record for digital revenue.
NBCU also sees positive trend in some product categories, with improvement in consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals, Kovacs said.
Travel is sort of evening out, and the tech category is lagging a bit and hasn’t fully bounced back,” she said.
