NBCUniversal is tapping into artificial intelligence to automate buying across linear and streaming TV. The media company announced at CES a new product for buyers called One Platform Total Audience, which will automate planning across its linear channels and streaming platforms via a single audience-based buy—and potentially give its legacy networks a boost in the process.

Through One Platform Total Audience, advertisers and agencies will be able to develop media plans with NBCU that identify target audiences across the media company’s full portfolio in aggregate rather than manually parsing linear and streaming separately, which also negatively impacts consumer duplication and frequency.

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AI will comb the media company’s content and report back analytics and predictions on where to best place advertising, factoring in the target audience and a client’s previous deals with NBCU. One Platform Total Audience will also be an ongoing tool for advertisers as well, as added shows, movies and events throughout a campaign flight will be analyzed by AI for matches that might better fit a client’s goals.

Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, said this analysis will allow clients to “build a plan, measure the plan and report on the plan against strategic audiences cross-platform—much different than where we exist today, which is primarily a Nielsen plan that is bifurcated from a digital plan.”

The announcement is the culmination of NBCU’s One Platform tech, which was initially announced in 2020 as advertisers were beginning to face the challenges of “this growing business on streaming, which was going to be bought, sold and measured differently than linear,” said Marshall.

The Total Audience product is also a necessary response to advertisers navigating the fragmented state of TV and increasingly shifting investments to audience buying rather than broad demos, said Marshall. 

NBCU also announced at CES that it plans to transact 50% of its deals on audience data rather than broad demos in 2024, a goal that clients have already been on their way toward. Nearly 60% of NBCU’s advertisers incorporate audience-based buys into their deals, and NBCU has seen a 25% increase overall compared to this time last year, according to the company.

The debut of One Platform Total Audience also comes with the implementation of programmatic guaranteed deals at NBCU. While the rise of programmatic has fueled perennial questions about the value of upfront commitments in increasingly continuous sales cycles, and many media companies have begun incorporating programmatic guarantees into upfront deals in response, Marshall said NBCU views One Platform Total Audience as a way to manage the various forms of deal-making media buyers and sellers do.

Now, advertisers will be able to “take their upfront plan, their scatter plan, and their programmatic and make sure they’re not hitting the same people over and over,” said Marshall. “And programmatic in general—2023 versus ’22 will be up 50% in programmatic. So, there’s no doubt it’s going to continue to grow.”

NBCU began conducting test runs of One Platform Total Audience at the beginning of January with clients in the auto, tech and retail categories. All available openings to partner in the test have sold out for the first quarter, and plans to expand the amount of advertising partners able to participate in the second quarter, according to the company. The expectation is for the tool to be fully accessible to all advertisers by the fourth quarter.

The announcement comes at a time when much of the industry is in the process of resetting measurement practices (despite Nielsen’s back-and-forth on plans to sunset legacy ratings) and entering the long-coming post-cookie era. NBCU’s One Platform advancement means it can work with clients at a time when “everyone’s media plans and media mix models are going to be thrown out, so they have to start over in general,” said Marshall.

The tool also could boost NBCU’s linear ad business as audience declines for traditional TV have pushed advertisers away. One Platform Total Audience solves advertisers’ desire for a streamlined buying process, but also allows NBCU an advantage in selling audiences in aggregate rather than in pieces. Marshall pointed to the growth of viewership for sports properties on NBCU, including the NFL, Nascar, golf and soccer, which he said are increasing viewership on both linear and streaming.