NBCUniversal told us it would leverage AI in its video advertising offering this year – and that is exactly what it’s doing.
At its One24 event in New York, the company announced a set of technological advancements and strategic partnerships aimed at enhancing television advertising capabilities.
We are republishing Beet.TV’s interview with John Lee, chief data officer at Comcast’s NBCUniversal, from January.
Lee discussed the launch of One Platform Total Advertising, a media planning and said advanced machine learning allows audience segments to be created, generating “optimal plans in a way that humans by themselves wouldn’t be able to do”.
One24, Many Products
In the latest announcements…
Generative AI for Audience Targeting
NBCUniversal is utilizing generative artificial intelligence to create emotion-based audience segments for more effective advertising. This system leverages the company’s content library and first-party data to generate 300 distinct segments designed to optimize campaign impact.
Although NBCU has previously announced the underlying system for emotional context targeting in programming, the gen-AI upgrade augments the initial method in which machine learning was used to generate descriptors of in-show moments.
At One24, Lee explained the system will now run video and web content through a large language model (LLM), using generative AI to write a description of each piece of content, before using behavioral science principles to map contextual themes to predicted viewer reactions.
Programmatic Access to Olympic Broadcasting
The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games broadcasts from Paris will, for the first time, be available programmatically to advertisers through a partnership with The Trade Desk. This initiative provides biddable, private marketplace access, allowing advertisers to reach audiences during the sporting events.
Shoppable TV Experiences
NBCUniversal is launching Virtual Concessions, a feature enabling viewers to purchase items directly through their screens during major broadcasts, starting with the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Additionally, the expansion of the Must ShopTV feature across six NBCUniversal franchises on Peacock and a shoppable content pilot on Xfinity’s X1 platform with Bravo’s “Top Chef” emphasize the fusion of commerce and content.
Unified Advertising Measurement
The introduction of One Platform Total Measurement aims to streamline the process of analyzing advertising performance across platforms.
This system combines viewership data and outcome-based metrics, offering a full-funnel view of advertising impact.
New Measurement Partnerships
NBCUniversal is partnering with VideoAmp to power One Platform Total Audience, with EDO for “mid-funnel engagement metrics connected to cross-platform outcomes”, and with Kochava to “inform clients of lower-funnel, multi-screen attribution metrics”.
Upcoming and upfront
One24 is NBCUniversal’s own, tech-focused event showcasing its capabilities at 30 Rock. It is the fourth annual One24 event.
It comes months before its content-centric upfront showcase on May 13th at Radio City Music Hall.
