• by Wayne Friedman , November 20, 2019

Looking to boost its ongoing effort to improve cross-platform advertising technology, NBCUniversal has hired Ryan McConville in a newly created role.

McConville will be executive vice president of ad platforms & operations, overseeing all advertising technology and platforms.

He will lead new commercial innovations and “AI-powered targeting” intended to make it easier for advertisers to tap into NBCUniversal's content, as well as build a team to develop new advertising technology opportunities.

McConville will be reporting to Krishan Bhatia, executive vp/business operations and strategy at NBCUniversal.

McConville had been president/chief operating officer of Kargo, overseeing the company’s global mobile advertising business. This included moving the business to an automated/programmatic business from a direct sales operation.

Since 2018, NBCU has been offering CFlight guarantees to marketers -- measuring a marketer’s campaign of TV advertising exposures within full episodes of shows across all cross-platform screens -- live and delayed TV viewing, VOD, OTT, desktop and mobile.  

Earlier this year, NBCUniversal inked a deal with TV attribution company Data Plus Math, expanding its efforts to tie marketers' video advertising on NBC with business outcomes such as website visits, in-store traffic and sales.

With that deal -- among other areas -- the company was looking to measure cross-platform campaigns using Comcast’s FreeWheel, the big ad server/management service for digital advertising.