NBC To Offer Wider 'Alternative Audience Guarantees,' Commits $1B In Inventory

by Wayne Friedman , March 2, 2017

Looking to focus on its TV/media clients' “business priorities” versus traditional media metrics, NBCUniversal says its new Audience Symphony will offer media marketers “alternative audience guarantees” across its media platform.

On the eve of the TV upfront advertising market, NBC says it is committing $1 billion in data-driven inventory to do this.

Linda Yaccarino, chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships of NBCUniversal, stated: “By bringing together premium content at scale with guarantees based on business priorities, we’re giving clients the best of both worlds: The audiences they need and the targeting they crave, which is superior to other platforms.”

The move will help, for example, with potential car buyers before any NBCUniversal inventory is committed in the upfront.

NBC says this strategy helped drive record results for Universal Pictures’ “The Secret Life of Pets,” which had the highest U.S. box-office opening ever for an original animated film.

As part of the effort, the network is expanding three other services:

NBC says its 2-year old Audience Targeting Platform -- its advanced targeting capability -- is now available to clients across all advertising categories, extending this opportunity to the scatter marketplace in addition to the upfront.

Its linear TV programmatic offering started last year -- available on a limited basis in the scatter market -- will be available in the upfront marketplace.

In addition, NBCUniversal will expand its Demand Side Platform (DSP) partners beyond Tube Mogul, AOL and Videology. Known as its Audience Studio, the company has worked with more than 400 leading advertisers.

In the last two years, other TV/media companies have also expanded their efforts to guarantee business results as opposed to traditional Nielsen-based TV ratings.

audience measurement, data, data management, tv, upfront

6 comments about "NBC To Offer Wider 'Alternative Audience Guarantees,' Commits $1B In Inventory".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 2, 2017 at 11:32 a.m.
Odd? Is NBC really guaranteeing advertisers sales---"business results"? I doubt that. As for the alternative metrics, NBC is smart to use these---based, in many cases, on "big data" household set usage indices against product buyers as add-ons to Nielsen ratings as the data will, in most cases, position the network's shows in a seemingly more favorable light than viewer ratings. In other words, if you are targeting upscale car buyers, set usage ratings will indicate that many shows index above the norm in reaching such households, but the same shows index at no better than parity or sub par when adult viewer ratings ---in the same homes---are employed. Why? Because upscale homes use their TV sets--and other devices--- much more frequently than downscale households as they contain more residents who can tune in and they have many more TV screens. However, the adults in such homes, as individuals, actually watch considerably fewer shows than their low brow counterparts. As I said, this is a smart ploy for NBS to compete with rival network sellers for upscale ad dollars. I can't fault them on that.
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Jason Burke from All Stage, March 2, 2017 at 1:59 p.m.

Bravo to the team @ NBCU for putting skin in the game for their their clients. Thumbs up to the other handful of other media companies (Discovery, Fox, Turner, Viacom, etc) powering forward with similar innovations.

With the ice now broken, 2017 will provide opportunities to scale this to larger pieces of the $72B pie

michael Kaushansky from Havas Helia, March 3, 2017 at 7:57 a.m.

Agree, it's highly suspect NBC will offer linear spots based on sales or other business metrics. Possibly they may offer a portion of their online longtail as a CPA guarantee; beyond that it will be all indexes and modeling. However if they are serious about business results - what their press release should say IS how they plan to ingest a clients CRM or sales data and match it to their TV inventory? No mention of that???

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 3, 2017 at 8:14 a.m.

Quite right, Michael, yet we will, no doubt, be subjected to a barrage of dreamy eyed "opinion pieces" highlighting NBC's daring "move" as new evidence that the "linear TV" establishment is, at long last, "embracing" alternative ( digital ) selling methods and really cares for the advertisers' interests. As I commented, this is a smart move by NBC ---like shooting fish in a barrel with the deck clearly stacked in your favor. Why? Because it's a single seller operation----no competitors are involved---- using metrics that favor the seller. Call it "programmatic" selling, as some will, but it really isn't---is it?

Rajaram R from TCS, March 3, 2017 at 11:50 a.m.

I also wonder how much of their inventory would be integrated with the DSPs for the real programmatic to work!

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 3, 2017 at 12:55 p.m.

I doubt that any of the NBCU "linear" GRPs would use a programmatic platform as no competitive offers can be evaluated on the same mertics. There would be no point to it--except to use such systems for practicing purposes. I assume that all or most of the digital sales would use programmatic, again, with the qualification that thses are single seller sales, hence the value of a "programmatic" appraoch for the buyer is highly debatable.