How NBCU is looking to make media planning global

NBCUniversal is taking its One Platform global in partnership with Comcast sibling FreeWheel, allowing marketers to manage global linear and connected TV campaigns in a single buy across markets in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas for the first time. The expansion, announced during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity today, covers content from more than 190 countries with launch partners that include Atresmedia in Spain, Bell Media in Canada, Seven West Media in Australia, Sky Media in the U.K., Talpa Network in the Netherlands, TF1 Group in France and Tokyo Broadcasting System in Japan. Omnicom Media Group is also on board on the buy side. “We see a massive opportunity to serve marketers and agencies in the same way globally as we serve them in the U.S. marketplace,” NBCU President and Chief Business Officer Krishan Bhatia said in an interview. “There really has been no platform that was able to pull together content and audiences at scale, and particularly localized content that reaches audiences, in each of the relevant markets.” Bhatia described One Platform globally as “soup to nuts from data and identity to automation to measurement.” Cannes Lions coverage Follow our live blog here Sign up here for email updates See all of the Grand Prix winners here “If you’re a premium publisher like our launch partners, you are looking to compete more effectively for dollars both at a local level but also the multi-market level and pan-regional, but it’s hard to do that,” said James Rooke, president of Comcast Advertising. One Platform’s global footprint will help publishers compete more effectively for pan-regional and global budgets, but also better at the local level, he said. While global marketers often manage their brand’s marketing globally, media planning and buying has tended to be a largely local and regional exercise because of the fragmentation of media markets globally. But that’s changing, Bhatia said. “This is part of our strategy to tap into what we saw as a growing number of leading brand and performance marketers that want to execute globally or in a multi-market fashion, and to do that with fewer partners that can get them the scale and the solutions that they need,” Bhatia said. OMG joining One Platform at the outset of the global launch attests to that interest, he said. “Today there is huge friction when trying to execute from a single access point a multi-market, multi-publisher premium CTV campaign,” said Johan Boserup, global CEO of investment for OMG, in a statement. “Add the need for mass reach and scale, standardization of measurement and reporting, and that friction is currently a battier to entry. One Platform marks a significant step forward in solving these challenges, and one that aligns with OMG’s commitment to delivering first-mover solutions that enable competitive advantage for our clients in a changing marketplace.” “When it comes to the largest marketers, it probably helps” to have so many global networks consolidated in One Platform, Madison and Wall Principle Brian Wieser said. “You can more readily have the most senior level conversations that you might otherwise have to delegate.” Bringing all those players together also helps navigate the complexity of different ratings and measurement standards and providers across countries, he said. Given that the deal means expanding One Platform to countries where both Nielsen and Kantar are the dominant media players, and brings together rival networks and streaming platforms into a common system, the global expansion might also help point the way to how the U.S. Joint Industry Committee made up of competing media networks using multiple measurement providers might operate, Bhatia said. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

How NBCU is looking to make media planning global

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