NBCU says 40% of its upfront deals are on Nielsen alternative currencies

About 40% of NBCUniversal’s upfront deals this year so far have been “outside of traditional age and gender guarantees,” said Laura Molen, president of ad sales and partnerships for NBCUniversal, as the media company reported results of its alternative currency trials with iSpot.tv today. That 40% incorporates deals via NBCU’s own Adsmart measurement platform, the OpenAP advanced TV platform backed by NBCU and other networks, and deals done with independent measurement provider iSpot.tv. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here “One month ago, Linda Yaccarino [NBCU’s chairman, global advertising and partnership] said from the upfront stage, ‘We’re liberating you from what you all know is broken and finally breaking away from legacy,” Molen said. “And a month later, I’m here to tell you that we are already living in a multi-currency future.” Well, perhaps not everyone. WPP’s GroupM issued a roadmap last week saying it will use iSpot, Comscore, VideoAmp and Nielsen One Alpha with some clients to “shadow Nielsen deals” but will still use legacy Nielsen ratings to write deals for more than a dozen of its largest clients, including Unilever, Nestle and Mars. Other agencies have cited reluctance by big clients to go beyond testing with alternatives to the dominant Nielsen currency, though Horizon Media has said it will write up to 15% of this year’s upfront deals using alternative measures. In a nearly hour-long virtual presentation, NBCU and iSpot executives laid out a case from their test with 67 advertisers across 158 brands in 12 categories that their particular take on cross-platform measurement has paid off. The tests included training more than 800 users, about half on the buy side, Molen said. The presentation was part of a flurry of "Cannes-versation" starter news releases involving Nielsen alternative currencies in advance of the International Festival of Creativity beginning next week. Most of the brands in the NBCU iSpot study turned out to be using a less-than-optimal mix of over-the-top or streaming advertising as opposed to linear, said Kelly Abcarian, the Nielsen veteran who’s now executive VP for measurement and impact at NBCU. Ideally, most brands maximize their results in terms of achieving unduplicated reach and optimal frequency, by putting 20% to 40% of their buy into OTT, Abcarian said. Obviously, the point was that buying Peacock was a good idea. Abcarian said iSpot data shows 64% of Peacock viewers are “streaming only,” which means they can’t be reached with linear TV buys. Sean Muller, iSpot's CEO, went through a case with an unnamed “major retailer” that was able over the course of several months to increase its cumulative audience reach from around 30% to around 90% through a combination of spending more on linear but also spending a bigger share on OTT. Cannes Lions 2022 Read all of Ad Age’s festival coverage here Check out our live blog here But the presentation wasn’t entirely about selling more impressions on Peacock or NBCU. Muller noted that brands can reduce ad frequency while increasing reach by shifting money to OTT. He compared a plan from that big unnamed retailer, classified as a “beginner” in media optimization, that included 1 billion impressions with a 7% OTT mix to a “pioneer” advertiser that needed only 616 million impressions to achieve the same reach, thanks to a 33% OTT mix. The unnamed “pioneer” brand reached 24% more streamers but with 66% lower frequency, Muller said.

NBCU says 40% of its upfront deals are on Nielsen alternative currencies

Featured Stories