• by Wayne Friedman , January 9, 2019

As NBCUniversal continues to cut back on traditional TV advertising time on all its networks, the company has seen growing digital media outside its traditional TV network.

In an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show, Linda Yaccarino, chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships, NBCUniversal, said that by the end of 2019 "we’ll be at 20% less commercial time."

A year ago, NBCU committed to reducing total advertising time by 10% along with a 20% decline in the number of commercials in prime time.

Concerning non-traditional TV advertising revenue, she said about 35% of NBCU’s revenue comes from digital viewing and over-the-top platforms.

As to finding deeper data for marketers, NBC now has at least 10,000 of its shows attached to specific emotional attributes at the “scene” level, Yaccarino noted. It's for marketers that can then run TV commercials with specific creative that is appropriate for specific content.

NBCUniversal has been aggressive in finding new ways to measure TV programming -- outside of traditional Nielsen data, moving away from C3/C7 ratings guarantees, the average commercial minute rating plus three or seven days of time-shifted viewing.

Last year, NBCU begin selling its ads on a guarantee called CFlight,which combines Nielsen’s TV numbers with digital viewing from other sources.