NBCUniversal kicks off road to 100th Anniversary
January 7, 2025

At CES, NBCUniversal previewed the future of full-funnel advertising for the industry, unveiling new engagement capabilities within its One Platform technology stack as well as success metrics that demonstrate the effectiveness of TV advertising. NBCUniversal said it will provide marketers with “unprecedented access to the biggest programming moments in the world”, leading up to its 100th Anniversary milestone in autumn 2026.
“NBCUniversal has long been a leader in innovative storytelling and advertising technology,” said Mark Marshall, Chairman, Global Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal. “Our One Platform ecosystem has maximised our marketers’ reach and scale over the past five years to prove TV is a performance vehicle in a way no other product in the marketplace has. Now, as we head into our next century, we are kicking off a slate of unrivaled content combined with cutting-edge technology and exceptional end-to-end advertising solutions that will drive demand in new ways and provide long-term viability for our clients.”
ENGAGEMENT
NBCUniversal is supercharging the viewer and advertiser experience on Peacock with new formats and product features and expanding its creative optimisation capabilities with new predictive ad models to forecast creative impact for some of the world’s biggest live events.
- New Peacock features:
- Peacock’s ‘Live in Browse’ feature brings live events to life on the home page, automatically playing in the top row as soon as viewers open the app. Beginning this January, ‘Live in Browse’ will be available for marketers, so they can align their brands with these highly visible marquee moments.
- Additionally, NBCUniversal is making its Pause Ad format available within live events. Pause Ads on Peacock drive +43 per cent lift in site visitation for brands and +43 per cent higher memorability compared to standard ads—demonstrating the effectiveness of this format.
- Looking ahead, Peacock will begin piloting new product features on its iOS and Android mobile apps this month to drive even deeper fan engagement around its most popular titles, all in one place. These daily mini-games and prediction games, along with new curated vertical video playlists of can’t-miss clips from Peacock’s biggest shows, will be tested before a broader rollout, unlocking new potential opportunities for advertisers.
- More Predictive Models
- NBCUniversal’s Ad Creative Engine uses generative AI, machine learning, and statistical models to understand historical performance of ad creative within specific content and predict how creative will perform for specific KPIs including brand awareness, message breakthrough, ad likeability, and search engagement.
- NBCUniversal is now expanding this capability to the biggest moments in live event content, with new models for golf and ad innovations, including Pause Ads and Engagement Ads, as well as an updated Super Bowl ad model for February 2026, leveraging 3x more data points since 2018.
- Heading into Olympic Games Milan Cortina 2026, NBCUniversal has seen significant success with its Olympic ad model, which is powered by +30B data points derived from more than 1,600 ads spanning four Olympic games—generating +73 per cent message memorability for optimised creative.
- New Emotional Metadata
- NBCUniversal has tested the effects of aligning the emotional metadata of advertiser creative with the emotional metadata of content using AI and machine-learning to drive impact on mid and lower funnel conversion.
- Preliminary tests have shown double-digit lift in emotionally congruent ad and content pairings.
- The company plans to make this capability more widely available later this year.
DATA
NBCUniversal’s One Platform was designed to unify streaming and linear media planning, activation, and measurement for marketers, while delivering a relevant and engaging advertising experience for viewers. Across the One Platform tech stack and bespoke partnerships, NBCUniversal’s data clearly demonstrates that TV is an unmatched performance marketing engine.
- New Data Partnerships
- One Platform Total Audience continues to deliver full-funnel effectiveness for brands in every category. In the beauty, retail, and pharmaceutical categories, One Platform Total Audience campaigns have respectively generated a:
- +32 per cent increase in purchase intent and +33 per cent increase in brand favorability;
- 2x increase in search engagement and +64 per cent increase in incremental store visits;
- +28 per cent greater reach, +22 per cent higher search engagement, and +7 per cent lift in prescription conversions
- NBCUniversal was the first publisher partner for Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration, a solution that brings publishers and advertisers together to discover, reach and measure high-value audiences. Through the Beta, advertisers experienced 2X more efficient conversion, 10X better match rates, and 90 per cent lift compared to standard audience onboarding.
- CPG brands that participated in NBCUniversal’s retail media data collaboration pilot with Instacart saw between 8-17x return on ad spend with an average of 37 per cent new-to-brand buyers on Instacart*.
- During a successful real-time outcome measurement beta period, NBCUniversal tracked conversions attributed to streaming campaign exposures in flight. Upon completion of the campaigns, advertisers saw an average 8.5x increase in ROAS, indicating the overall effectiveness of NBCU’s streaming environment. This measurement capability will be generally available beginning in Q1.
- One Platform Total Audience continues to deliver full-funnel effectiveness for brands in every category. In the beauty, retail, and pharmaceutical categories, One Platform Total Audience campaigns have respectively generated a:
CONTENT
Autumn 2025 kicks off with the much-anticipated return of the NBA to NBC and to Peacock for the first time, as well as the return of BravoCon in Las Vegas. An unprecedented February 2026 brings the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games, Super Bowl LX, and the NBA All-Star Game to NBCUniversal all within 10 days of each other – a first in sports-media history; the WNBA tips off in May; June adds the Spanish-Language presentation of the 2026 FIFA World Cup; and Fall 2026 will showcase the WNBA Finals and the Big Ten Football Championship Game. All of this tentpole programming is set against the backdrop of NBC’s 100th Anniversary in 2026.
- NBCUniversal joins Universal Ads platform
NBCUniversal is a launch partner for Comcast’s Universal Ads (UA) – an industry-changing, cross-publisher advertising solution enabling new advertisers simplified access into the premium video category- Launching in Q1, the UA ad manager will provide access to scaled, qualified audiences delivered on premium content that will drive full-funnel performance for advertisers while opening new demand channels for publishers.
- On UA, Marshall shared: “The north star of advertising has always been combining the premium reach of linear with the precision of data-informed targeting for marketers. Now with Universal Ads, we are delivering that vision to businesses of all sizes. TV has always been a performance vehicle for brands, and UA puts the scaled reach and premium content that TV is known for into the hands of marketers everywhere.”