• by Wayne Friedman , November 17, 2022

NBCUniversal has announced that more than 10 major advertisers, including General Motors, Marriott Bonvoy, PepsiCo, State Farm, T-Mobile and Wayfair, have joined its Currency Council.

All the advertisers on the Currency Council are participating in “alternative” viewing guarantees with NBCU in this year’s TV broadcast season.

Looking ahead, the major brands now on the council will also work to “build a new operating framework to accelerate the adoption of new currencies for the next upfront cycle.”

Last March, NBCU made iSpot.tv one of its preferred alternative measurement partners for cross-platform "currency" for marketers to use for the 2022-2023 TV season.  Others that have received certification include Comscore.

Many marketers and TV sellers have been looking to replace -- or at the very least, offer alternative currencies to -- Nielsen, the dominant TV viewing measurer for many decades.

NBCU says this council and other measurement efforts look to improve on legacy age and gender viewer-based measurement to find new cross-platform audiences at scale.

Looking at specific new digital platforms like NBCU's Peacock, NBC says it has certified 11 demand-side platforms (DSPs) for programmatic buying on Peacock. This includes Peacock AX -- Peacock's own digital video advertising selling platform -- as well as third-party DSPs, including Beeswax and The Trade Desk. 

Programmatic buying is now available for live sports on Peacock, where NBCU claims Peacock has more live sports leagues than any other streaming service.

Starting in the fourth quarter of this year, advertisers could buy Peacock programmatically including the upcoming World Cup soccer event and future Olympics telecasts.

The company says NBCUnified -- its first-party identity platform -- has now surpassed 200 million person-level and 90 million households, generating first-party IDs from NBCU's total media platform portfolio.

Offering privacy-compliant brand safety, NBCU says advertisers can target audiences from more than 1200 first-party attributes.

(See currencies previously certified by NBCU below.)