• by Wayne Friedman , January 30, 2014

Offering what it calls a first-of-kind advertising product, NBCUniversal and Comcast say it is offering more specific, consumer-purchasing-linked advertising for its linear TV national inventory -- as well as “addressability” of TV ads in video-on-demand TV programming in Comcast homes.

Called NBCU+ Powered by Comcast, the product will allow advertisers to bolster media plans by matching consumer and third-party data for their national buys with data coming from anonymized Comcast 20 million subscriber homes for national TV inventory.

In addition, advertisers can now target “addressable” commercials in Comcast homes across its VOD inventory -- a first for any TV programmer -- from national inventory in NBCUniversal’s networks. This part of the deal works in partnership with Comcast Media 360, a division of Comcast Spotlight, the cable operator’s local advertising sales operation.

“It’s a sophisticated contextualize media planning tool,” says Linda Yaccarino, president of advertising sales of NBCUniversal.

“It is better decision-making on the front end; my national buy that everyone gets to see is going to be more optimized,” says Yaccarino. “In the Comcast VOD space, that’s where it’s almost like the cherry on top --- where we are able to delivery the actual addressable ad to the consumers in that footprint.”

For example, Yaccarino says a deal could involve a luxury carmaker targeting national audiences across NBCUniversal’s networks in geographic zones with a high percentage of previous luxury vehicle owners.

“It’s another invitation to invest more in NBCUniversal because it will better inform down the line and change the conversation,” says Yaccarino. “It’s not about spots and dots, and goes way beyond a 30-second spot. We are here to help clients move inventory.”

Comcast was cautious to say the data doesn’t technically comes from its 20 million subscriber homes.

Andrew Ward, group vice president for Comcast Media 360, says: “It’s important to recognize this is not set-top box data. It’s come off our servers.” Comcast says data comes from anonymized Comcast subscriber data.

NBCU+ Powered by Comcast is using multiple third-party partners for much of its consumer purchase data. “We are going to be data-source agnostic,” he adds.

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