NBCU closes 2024 upfront—inside the media giant’s dealmaking

NBCUniversal is the first of the major media companies to close its 2024 upfront negotiations, with leadership touting strength in its sports content and streaming. But as advertisers weigh the importance of committing budgets in the traditional media ad haggle, NBCU’s results also reflect trends in audience-based buying, shifts to modern buying models and the welcoming of first-time advertisers into the TV market, said Mark Marshall, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU. “The upfront used to be do-or-die—you needed to hit the numbers or your year was in trouble,” Marshall told Ad Age. “Now, it’s the starting point of the race, and programmatic and scatter follow up behind it. It’s a different mentality for the marketplace.” See America's Hottest Brands 20 brands that are trending in 2024 Click here This year, NBCU is in between major tentpole content slates—in last year’s market, it kicked off sales for this year’s Paris Olympics and “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary. Next year’s upfront will mark NBCU’s 100th anniversary, with the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Telemundo, Super Bowl LX, Milan Cortina Olympic & Paralympic Games and BravoCon. “Sometimes in years where you have these big tentpoles, everyone gets so focused on those,” said Marshall. “In these years where it’s more of a normalized year, the conversations go back to the specific brands—Bravo and NBC prime are the two big ones [this year].” NBCU saw strength across the retail, insurance, personal care, beverages and travel categories. Marshall noted particular strength in retail, and added that “auto was barely up. I would have thought they would be up more and I think they will be strong in scatter,” said Marshall, noting data that cars are moving off of lots more slowly. Marshall also said NBCU has seen an uptick in technology advertisers, particularly around the Paris Olympics, after “a drag” in the category for the past two years. Check out the latest Olympics marketing news here Although the volume of ad commitments to NBCU’s news and entertainment verticals were similar to last year’s, Marshall said the media company’s upfront for its broadcast properties overall grew alongside a market trend “back to big reach vehicles.” This was primarily driven by sports content, such as the NFL. The media company said it received its highest upfront commitments to sports to date. It grew its digital sports business double-digits compared to last year’s upfront, and saw a 20% increase in investments for its Hispanic sports properties on Telemundo. “We saw a shift of advertisers who had gone away from [broadcast] to streaming coming back into it,” said Marshall. “While streaming is great and it’s targeted, it doesn’t provide the immediate reach that [advertisers] need for limited time offers or opening a movie. It was an interesting shift bAack to what was prevalent three or four years ago before streaming really came into fashion.” Streaming upfront Ad commitments to Peacock, in part fueled by the growth of streaming sports, were also the highest yet, according to NBCU. While Marshall declined to specify a dollar amount for this year, the streamer broke $1 billion in ad commitments in the 2022 upfront and grew 30% in last year’s upfront. Marshall said a contributor to Peacock’s commitment growth was broader emphasis on streaming sports. The ad chief said that “at this point last year, we weren’t talking about sports streaming—I think ESPN probably was, but that was about it in the marketplace.” In January, Peacock’s exclusive AFC Wild Card game reached 27.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and the streamer has grabbed more exclusive games for next season. Streamers such as Amazon Prime Video have grown their sports offering as well. In this year’s upfront, “you started to see [advertisers] actually have specific sports streaming budgets, whereas in the past, it might have just been a streaming budget in general, or they were peeling it out of linear,” said Marshall. “This time, there were actually line items for sports streaming in particular.” Earlier this year, NBCU set a goal to do 50% of its deals on advanced audiences rather than traditional demographics. Marshall said that NBCU’s upfront reflected that, with over half of deals are no longer on “narrow age and gender” demos. This is in part fueled by advanced products such as NBCU’s One Platform Total Audience, which uses AI to plan and segment audiences across linear and streaming platforms for advertisers to incorporate into deals. First-timers Marshall also pointed out a trend in first-time upfront buyers. NBCU said its upfront commitments via the media company’s small and medium-sized business growth division grew 50% compared to last year. Within the group, investment in sports grew 90%, while commitments to news were up 60% and primetime 45% compared to last year. The three verticals were more closely tied to the upfront model than digital streaming inventory. Network groups have made more moves to attract SMB advertisers to TV as the medium competes for ad dollars against tech and digital companies. Earlier this week, Paramount launched its self-serve ad platform aimed at SMB advertisers. Disney and NBCU host similar platforms. Marshall said NBCU has seen SMB advertisers slowly become larger buyers in the TV market—tracking their spend from test campaigns in programmatic, to national buys in scatter to now seeing growth in the upfront market. Although the ad chief said the SMB category will be incremental to its core national advertisers, it does signal future business growth in TV. “We have around 2,000 advertisers that are our core advertisers who are spending, call it $25,000 or more—compare that to a Meta, who has 10 million advertisers,” said Marshall. “There is a large marketplace out there, but it’s made up of a lot of smaller advertisers that want to transact with a credit card as opposed to coming in and laying down a Super Bowl unit. It’s a different way for all of us to think about [the market], and all of the traditional media companies are figuring out their solutions.”

NBCU closes 2024 upfront—inside the media giant’s dealmaking

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