• by Wayne Friedman , July 23, 2014

Following up on what was a successful TV upfront ad sales period, NBCUniversal is creating a new advertising sales research unit.

The new Advertising Sales Research and Strategy group will focus on cross-platform media — providing clients with more access to data-focused media analysis for the company’s two broadcast networks, 17 cable channels and more than 50 digital platforms.

Katie Larkin will lead the group, promoted to executive vice president of advertising sales research and strategy. She had been senior vice president of ad sales strategy. Larkin will report to Trish Frohman, executive vice president of advertising sales strategy and operations.

Larkin's team will work with NBCUniversal’s programming research, insights and analytics teams to help NBC advertisers with media and marketing opportunities.

Earlier this year, NBCUniversal started up “NBCU+ Powered by Comcast,” an optimizing tool that matches anonymized audience information with third-party information.

This week, Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal, said the NBC TV network closed the 20% discount pricing gap that previously existed between NBC and other broadcast networks when it came to the cost per thousand viewers [CPMs]. Burke said the gap is now 10%.

In addition, Burke says while TV broadcasters overall were down 5% on average in upfront revenue, NBC was up a little over 10%. Reports were that NBC pulled in $2.52 billion -- up from $2.25 billion a year ago.