LAS VEGAS — The media industry has experienced significant fragmentation, making it difficult for advertisers to achieve scale and target effectively.
NBCU aims to address that with a new, centralized platform that simplifies access to premium video inventory. Its new Universal Ads platform sets out to streamline the buying process for smaller advertisers, in particular.
“We’re creating an ‘easy’ button for the industry with this Universal Ads platform,” said Mark Marshall, Chairman, Global Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “(We are) having all the publishers come together.”
Universal Vision
Announced this week, Universal Ads will bring together major publishers like NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox, offering SMBs a user-friendly way to buy premium video ads, similar to platforms like Meta and Google.
NBCU has been talking about the need to simplify the landscape for buyers who are now used to buying ads in a turn-key, platform-centric digital manner.
The goal is to simplify the complex advertising landscape and provide SMBs with access to premium TV/video inventory, such as Sunday Night Football.
Enhancing Efficiency and Delivering Stronger Outcomes with FreeWheel
NBCU’s partnership with Comcast stablemate FreeWheel will play a key role in the success of Universal Ads, providing a unified identity spine that enables efficient audience targeting. This will allow SMBs to identify and reach their desired audience across the platform’s premium video inventory. NBCU also wants to deliver more comprehensive measurement and performance metrics for advertisers, going beyond traditional Nielsen guarantees.
“That FreeWheel identity will be out there — if you want to go find an audience, you can just go find it for the SMB,” Marshall said, speaking at Consumer Electronics Show 2025 in Las Vegas.
Driving Results Across the Marketing Funnel
NBCU’s One Platform Total Audience approach was announced around CES 2024, aiming to provide measurement and performance data across screens.
“Since then, we’ve operated across four different categories,” Marshall said. “We’re starting to see results. Brand lift of about 32%, middle about 33%, and we’re actually seeing real great strategies — driving store traffic is up 66% for the advertisers that we’re working with and search is up 22%.”
“So, for the same amount of dollars, if we can look at it in a different way, we’re able to drive different results,” he explained to Beet.TV.
You’re watching “Bringing Simplicity to TV Advertising,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series at CES 2025, presented by FreeWheel. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can view all of our CES 2025 content here.
